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Locked on 01/15/2014 11:23:33 AM PST by Jim Robinson, reason:
Enough already! |
Posted on 01/13/2014 11:39:29 AM PST by Kaslin
Right now, China and Russia are having a great laugh at America’s expense. For a once proud country with strong moral character and intellectual ambition, we have become a nation intent on destroying itself from within. The publicly sanctioned and widespread celebration of indolent potheads toking themselves into oblivion in Colorado is only the latest example.
We have come a long way from Nancy Reagan’s largely successful “Just Say No” campaign to educate students on the dangers of drugs and their consequences. Call it “You Can Say Yes. “
In the minds of many conservatives, the lines are becoming quickly blurred on the legalization of mind-altering substances as well as the punishment of drug offenders. Libertarians are taking up the cause to push for universal legalization of marijuana around the country. Some are doing this because of Americans’ growing fear of our government’s intrusion into our private lives while others are doing it because of easier access to their favorite recreational pastime. Indeed, the latter motivation seems to be so popular, that it quickly turned into one of the most popular battle cries amongst the young adults for the election of Rep. Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican Primary.
Unfortunately, many traditional Conservatives are also getting on the drug bus because they have bought the Democrat lie that the money collected by drug users could be fiscally beneficial. In the most recent year, Colorado generated $9.1 million in retail sales tax from the sale of medical marijuana. This figure is bound to grow with the introduction of recreational sales and the additional 25% in excise and sales taxes since becoming legal on January 1st.
Looking beyond just the tax revenue, the industry generates millions of dollars every year for the state from licensing and application fees. To apply for and obtain a license to run a medical marijuana facility serving more than 500 patients, for instance, the necessary application and license fees alone approach $40,000. Colorado has agreed to take this new revenue and use it for the education of its children and construction of new schools. Does this mean at 18 every high school graduate will be handed their diploma and a doobie with the instructions to get addicted in order to help fund future generations’ educations?
We are now seeing a very odd mix of bedfellows. One of my favorite Tea Party Senators, Mike Lee of Utah, and one of the most odious liberals in the Senate today, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, both are now in agreement to reduce the mandatory jail sentence time on non-violent drug offenses in hopes of reducing prison expenses. A federal inmate’s yearly cost for one inmate ranges from $21,000 to $33,000 depending on the prison's level of security. Because of the current system, about half of the nation's more than 218,000 federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes with virtually all of them subjected by some form of mandatory minimum sentencing.
Am I living in the twilight zone right now? Has our country become so ignorant that we have abandoned one of the few positive goals of eliminating substances from our cultural landscape? Drugs that have reduced the productivity, health and advancement of our society? Don’t think drugs have a negative effect on the community? Just look to Washington State, where within the first 6 months of pot being legalized, 745 drivers stopped by the police tested positive for marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient THC and over half of those tested were over the state’s legal limit of 5 nanograms. This means there are more impaired drivers on the roads of Washington and now Colorado driving alongside families on their way to school and people on their way to work. Please tell me how a price can be put on their safety or tell me that drugs cannot hurt innocent bystanders? Please go ask a family who has lost a loved one to drug use or more importantly whose family was affected by someone under the influence.
We are witnessing the steady decline and intentional corrosion of America’s social structure. This is the ultimate goal of leftists: total control of the state that would make middle and lower class its feudal subjects. What better way to destroy a culture then to encourage mind altering substance use by the general public?
Ronald Reagan often quoted John Winthrop’s shining “City upon a Hill” but ultimately under these types of legislative policy, we might suffer more the fate as predicted by Alexis de Toqueville who said “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
Nothing wrong with a little incidental genocide, it would only kill the undesirables anyway.
I promise to never try and fly a helicopter.
Poor you being abused by the authoritarians.
Let me ask you, forget the tit for tat.
Do you think drug use has helped this country?
You think America needs laws forbidding a baker from baking a cake for a gay couple who were going to have a pretend marriage ceremony? Probably not, right? I mean, if some baker said, "Sure, I'll bake a cake for you two fruitcakes in your pretend ceremony," you wouldn't have a problem with that? I wouldn't. That's the baker's business.
Do we need laws forbidding a company from saying, "Sure, I'll go along with it and pretend you guys are married, and will extend the same benefits to your so-called 'spouse' if you want" -- do we need laws forbidding that? We never have before.
What we have is law that forces it, punishes anyone who doesn't go along, when I think the business owner has the God-given right to say, "Nah, go find some other place to work. I reserve spouse benefits for real spouses." That's conservative.
Americans don't need laws forbidding them to "marry" gay partners. Members of the military don't need laws forbidding homosexuals from acting openly in its culture of officers and ranks.
Americans by nature reject open homosexuality civilly and peacefully -- civilized Westerners have done so for centuries.
Recent judicial and civil rights law forbid a cake baker from refusing to serve a homosexual couple. Laws now punish military folks for discriminating against an openly homosexual person from being included in various activities and venues. That is the authoritarian way of today's government, and it got there because a minority basically cheated and manipulated its way into power over a majority, and then used government to dictate morality.
That very authoritarianism via laws forbidding moral choices, is what has brought the problem about -- government is the mechanism of tyranny. Advocating for more of it in the other direction is as misguided.
I think you may be paraphrasing, and that doesn't really help me. Again: Please cut and paste an example of my words from my posts of: -- liberalism -- self pity -- victicrat mentality from my posts. Thank you!
No.
Tit for tat, let me ask you:
Do you think tobacco consumption has helped this country?
Fixed. It is not illegal to grow male pot plants, they do not have buds and cannot get you high.
You think forbidding homosexual marriage or gays in the military, is authoritarian? or conservative?
It looks like your answer is “authoritarian”, you are pushing liberalism and starting a new anti-conservative attack by labeling conservatism “authoritarian”.
You lefties come at conservatism from all kinds of angles, using all kinds of vocabularies, in all kinds of mediums, and on all kinds of forums, even conservative ones have people working the left’s angle (with adjusted language of course).
But you all have the same end goal.
PLEASE HELP ME by showing me, cut and paste if that's what it takes -- what is liberal or anti-conservative in my post?
I'm not fighting with you, I am genuinely confused. Please be specific, I'm not fighting with you, I honestly want to know.
For the record, I think it is impossible for homosexuals to be married, so automatically any "marriage" between homosexuals is false, law or no law. A law stating that marriage is ONLY between man and woman, is fine with me -- in my mind, it's already there. So in that regard, I am for law "forbidding" homosexual marriage in that, too bad so sad, marriage is off limits for them. Does that ease your mind?
Do you think there should be laws forbidding two guys from a private ceremony where they pretend to get married? Do you think there should be laws forbidding a baker from baking their cake?
Also for the record ... yes, I think that would be authoritarian on a federal/national level, though if a state wanted to try to pull it off, more power to it.
WERE there ever laws forbidding gays in the military? If so, then what was Don't Ask Don't Tell?????????
Don’t know.
Maybe.
LOL, from promoting drugs, to the gay agenda, and attacking conservatives and conservatism, yeah, you are pushing liberalism.
You are arguing against conservatism and conservative positions.
And of course there were laws against homosexuals in the military, until you guys started this fight against “authoritarianism”.
CUT AND PASTE words from my posts to back up your claims if you’re going to broadcast that divisive crap here. Otherwise, remove your post.
Just read your posts, you aren’t aware that you have been posting as pro-pot?
You aren’t aware of how you started your weasel game when I asked you “”You think forbidding homosexual marriage or gays in the military, is authoritarian? or conservative?””.
So you want to argue for something and pretend that you aren’t? You want to fight conservatism and pretend that you aren’t? You want to label conservatives as “authoritarian” and pretend that you aren’t?
He fails to perceive that the problem we have now is because government, for the first time, presumed to enforce morality by punishing individuals, businesses, the military, schools, you name it, when they told open homosexuals to go somewhere else, put it in the closet, hit the road. Until then, that's exactly what individuals, businesses, the military, schools, you name it did, and it's what they would still be doing now, and the homosexual "agenda" would be much less of an issue.
Federal government that presumes to dictate morality (it thinks you and I are immoral for telling openly gay folks to take it somewhere else) is what has CAUSED THIS PROBLEM.
You fail utterly to see it, and instead call for more government and then WRONGLY cast folks like me as "liberals."
Government is the problem; you are looking to government to solve America's moral malaise. THAT is not "conservative," it is STATIST.
You sound confused. Terribly confused and pigheaded.
Please answer Yes or No.
It's the least you can do, and it's a very simple question.
The first marijuana stores in WA aren't even expected to start opening until at least May of 2014.
It is easy enough to see what you support.
As gay marriage sweeps the land, and homosexuals serve in the military and drugs are being promoted and legalized, you side with the left, and oppose we conservatives, and oppose our political efforts.
Please answer Yes or No.
Please advise how opposing laws that punish bakers for refusing to cook wedding cakes for homosexual "weddings," and how opposing laws that punish the military for (rightly!)discriminating against folks they know are homosexuals in their ranks, and how opposing laws that punish companies for refusing to extend spousal benefits to "gay" spouses, is siding with the left.
As I said, you sound confused.
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