Posted on 09/08/2002 9:22:43 PM PDT by doug from upland
The evening started innocently enough for Brian Whitman, Sunday evening talk show host on KABC in Los Angeles.
He had on his show four minor candidates running for governor of California. Three were on the phone and the fourth, Libertarian candidate Gary Copeland, was in studio.
The conversation eventually turned to illegal immigration. Copeland did not like Whitman's position and called him a racist. Although Whitman kept trying to answer, Copeland kept talking over him and would not let him speak.
Just as Whitman puts callers in "timeout" on his show when they won't let him have his say, he told the engineer to cut off Copeland's microphone. Copeland became incensed and started packing his things to leave the studio.
Then, in great FReeper tradition, Whitman told Copeland not to let the door hit his ass on the way out. He also called Copeland a lunatic.
Then the rain came. Copeland walked over to Whitman and spit in his face. Whitman couldn't believe it. Two others on the KABC staff couldn't believe it.
Whitman had the station call the police and is considering filing assault charges.
Poor Copeland. He may no longer be the Libertarian candidate for governor. An official high ranking representative of the party called in to Whitman and told him that Copeland would be receiving no more backing and they were going to see what they could do to take him off the ballot.
Now that was classic talk radio. The unbelievable happened. A candidate for governor actually showed himself to be a bigger jackass than Gray Davis. Davis has spit on the law but never on Whitman, at least not yet. Brian, get him in studio.
Didn't he used to be "Mr. KFI" and Mr. Some Other Station before that? Calling yourself "Mr. Fill-in-my-current-station's-call-letters" is among the lamest radio gimmicks I have ever heard.
So how does James LeFevre fit all that on his driver's license?
"S-it"? You mean, "spit?" : )
With respect to encroachments by the Federal government, I agree. However, perhaps you recognize this passage from an original founding document:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." [Emphasis added]
From this I infer that the Founders believed that The People, not governments, are sovereign. How could it be otherwise, given that they recognized the Right of the People to alter or to abolish government? I note also that the Founders recognized Rights as originating with the Creator, and as unalienable.
At least one primary historical significance of the American Revolution is that the ideology contained in the founding documents literally inverted a relationship (between the individual and government) that had been taken as a given throughout history to that point.
That's why we have representative forms of government.
Not so. Yhe terms of his initial probation would have precluded any use of his medicine during the year or so of this sentence.
Of course, you and many others may not accept that cannabis has any therapeutic or medicinal value. With such a viewpoint, you would naturally regard Kubby as merely a dope smoker who wants to be free to get high.
Kubby defied the judge's orders, announcing that he would not "pay a dollar's fine." After he was ordered jailed for violating his probation by leaving the area without notice, Kubby fled to Canada.
Inaccurate. I took the time to inquire of someone closer to and more knowledgeable of the facts of the case than I: Kubby may have expressed defiance, but nobody is required to pay a fine while his case is under appeal.
My source informs me that, according to Kubby, he requested and received permission from the court to travel to Canada. He "violated" his probation by failing to return to Placer county in July 2001 for a court hearing that would have determined some details of his probation, in particular his right to use cannabis during his probation. He says he did not "flee to Canada." He says, however, that if he had returned to Placer county, he believes he would have been taken into custody and incarcerated there, and then might have died "accidentally" in jail - being denied his medicine, etc. He did not want to take that risk.
Of course, given the viewpoint that Kubby is merely a dope smoker and scofflaw, his word would not be credible. As an aside, the peyote buttons were "found" in a film cannister in a guest bedroom, and Kubby has stated that he doesn't know where they came from. The psilocybin consisted of a slice from a mushroom stem, and according to Kubby, was acquired years ago when he was researching for a book he wrote.
False. Your expressed dismissive attitude serves you poorly, by allowing you to disregard substance in favor of an appearance cultivated by the "drug warriors", hardly a group of dispassionate observers. Let me suggest just one substantive argument against the current prohibitions.
As any competent economist will inform you, prohibition of any commodity for which there is persistent appreciable demand will result in the creation of a black market for that commodity, with attendant disruption, violence, corruption of law enforcement and the courts, poor quality control, and collateral damage in the form of injury and death to innocents.
We have already experienced this phenomenon empirically in the attempt to prohibit alcohol (1919 to 1933). Crack cocaine itself was the unintended result of prohibition of cocaine in powder form: the smugglers were motivated to develop a more concentrated, less easily detectable product to smuggle, and voila! We now have crack-heads to deal with.
The libertarian objection is to prohibition as public policy per se, not to prohibition of any specific commodity.
If the objections to "dope" prohibition are motivated only by the desire to get high, how do you explain objections to prohibition raised by people like Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, Jr.???
Taxation is theft.
Picking nits, I would say that abortion is homocide, and an abrogation of responsibility. I would further contend that rather than mere theft, taxation is armed robbery. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't noticed the guns behind the "requests".
I don't know, how about a high inside fastball?
That's also why we regard fundamental rights to be unalienable, i.e., beyond the vagaries of popular opinion as actualized in legislatures at any level to "democratically" infringe or deny.
LOL, well, I guess that is what the whole thread is about anyway, huh?
James Buchanan, Walter Block, Richard M. Ebeling, David Friedman, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Higgs, Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, Mark Thornton, Richard Timberlake, Walter Williams, Ron Paul (R-Texas), Lao-tzu, John Locke, Algernon Sidney, Adam Smith, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Otis, Thomas Paine, George Mason, John Stuart Mill, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Frederic Bastiat, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Herbert Spencer, Franz Oppenheimer, Albert Jay Nock, H.L. Mencken, Garet Garrett, Henry Hazlitt, John T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, Ayn Rand, Leonard Read, F.A. Harper, Willis Stone, Robert LeFevre.
Get it now, L.N.?
LMAO...I got it before. It was a joke. This post is an illustration of how annoyingly condescending libertarians can be. Thanks.
That's also why we regard fundamental rights to be unalienable, i.e., beyond the vagaries of popular opinion as actualized in legislatures at any level to "democratically" infringe or deny.
And dope isn't one of those "fundamental rights."
Right to property is a "fundamental right," and you and your woddie thugs do not own my body - I own my body; It's my property - and you cannot tell me what I can and cannot put inside of it.
Kindly take a flying leap . . .
Contraband isn't property.
I appreciate your well thought out defense of Liberty and the underlying principles involved. However, debating with most of the drug warriors who show up on these threads ends up being rather "cost inefficient". In fact they don't debate at all, but rather prefer to tackle "the straw" and call those of us who stand up for principles of freedom "dopers". Have fun making fools of them, but you too, will soon tire.
God Bless,
rp71
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