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.
Libertarian doctrine holds that the 13th Amendment is an infringement of the absolute right of contract, which necessarily includes a right to sell yourself into slavery as well as to buy and sell slaves.
Libertarians are typically the loudest opponents of programs designed to educate school children about drugs.
Congressional legislation could have been repealed in a day.
False. Libertarian "doctrine" agrees with the assertion of the Founders that our Rights (especially those to Life and Liberty) are unalienable. One always has the right to enter into contracts for services, but such contracts may also be terminated when and if they become unstaisfactory. A contract freely entered into, even for provision of long-term service, does not constitute slavery: one essential element of slavery is that it is involuntary from the slave's point of view.
Nonsense. We are, however, generally the loudest opponents of any "program" that is to be funded via taxation.
I might add that there is also a conflict of interest issue, when the same people who are running the WOD and the FDA are also sponsoring the propaganda intended to convince the general public that unapproved and/or unregulated drugs are an unmitigated evil. Refer to my previous comments regarding the folly of propaganda.
How would you know? In any event, as a one-time Republican, I can say with conviction that there would be no need for Libertarians if the Republican leadership would only adhere to the principles to which they give lip-service.
By your reckoning, the Green Party are the Republicans' best friends, since they draw most of their support from the Democrats' ranks. Call us "self-appointed" or "self-righteous" if you wish, but we're just telling the truth as we see it.
Are you really trying to say that those who sheltered runaway slaves were "just lawbreakers"? Perhaps you would then applaud the Nazis who were just upholding the law when they rounded up Jews for the concentration camps and eventual extermination. Or perhaps you would applaud those who might have shot Mormons in Missouri, because the law said it was legal.
I do agree with you that it is wrong, in fact and in principle, to bomb abortion clinics, just as it's wrong to kill unborn children. (Two wrongs don't make a right?!)
The limitations that you suggest exist within Libertarian/libertarian doctrine to the absolute right to contract seem to be in conflict with the necessary consequences of the philosophy. The individuals in that thread seem to me to be taking the "pure" libertarian position.
In the second instance, in direct response to your assertion concerning Libertarians, and having identified myself as a libertarian, I was (obviously) referring to libertarians as a group, and asserting that libertarians, rather than loudly opposing "drug education programs" per se, oppose tax-funded programs in general. I hope that clears things up a bit.
How much have they spent on programs educating kids against drugs?
It's hard to believe that a supposed conservative would resort to this standard liberal canard: "Oh yeah? So what have you done for the children?"
Given the hostility you seem to harbor for the ideas that I have expressed to date, I doubt that you would be interested in a discussion of the immorality of taxation as a mechanism to promote social betterment. Am I mistaken in this?
Not at all. Obviously, individuals may act unwisely and to their ultimate disadvantage. Nothing in this world is perfect. But it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which an individual, unconstrained by coercion and in full possession of her wits, would voluntarily agree to bind herself to abolute, unquestioned service to another for life. In return for what?
Clever use of sophistry can often serve to entangle one's opponents in endless, circular, and fruitless discussions, but this may also be done with "Republican" or "Democrat" doctrine. The real question is, which aspects of a philosophical viewpoint are likely to be useful in the real world? I submit that an unfettered individual right to enter freely into contracts fits better with our vision of a free society than does constant and intrusive scrutiny and second-guessing in these individual decisions by governments. (Governments are, after all, composed of human individuals who cannot be presumed to possess superior knowledge of the particular circumstances than the individuals who propose to enter into a contract, committing their own energy and resources to the matter at hand.)
WHY I'M FIGHTING FEDERAL DRUG LAWS FROM CITY HALL
SANTA CRUZ, Calif.
How did I, a mayor of a small town in California, wind up in a tug of war with the Drug Enforcement Agency?
This week, I stood in front of Santa Cruz's city hall as a local group that provides medical marijuana went about its weekly task of distributing the drug to the sick and dying.
My story begins on the morning of Sept. 5 when approximately 30 men, dressed in military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, descended on a small cooperative farm run by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in northern Santa Cruz County, about 65 miles south of San Francisco. They were pulling up organically grown marijuana plants.
When the Santa Cruz County sheriff's office learned what was going on, it was at a loss to explain who the intruders were or what type of response was in order. I didn't hear about the raid until 10 a.m., when I was called by members of the collective. I then telephoned the Santa Cruz police chief and other local officials. The chief hadn't heard anything either.
Later it became clear that the D.E.A. was making a raid. Agents collected more than 130 plants and arrested the founders of the medical marijuana collective, Valerie and Mike Corral. The Corrals were taken to a federal detention center in San Jose, but no charges were filed and they were subsequently released.
The D.E.A. was right to release them. But the Corrals shouldn't have been there in the first place. They had not been breaking the law. They were growing marijuana specifically for people who had been legally prescribed the substance to help them with chronic pain brought on by cancer, diabetes and other illnesses.
These weren't new laws, either. Residents in Santa Cruz County had voted in 1992 to legalize the use of medical marijuana. In 1996, Californians approved Proposition 215, a statewide measure to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Two years ago our city council passed an ordinance to make it easier to grow and distribute medical marijuana under the new law.
Before the morning raid, Santa Cruz had a good relationship with drug enforcement officials. Santa Cruz, like many communities, has a problem with illegal drugs, most notably heroin and methamphetamine. In the last 15 months, the D.E.A. has conducted two operations here; working with the sheriff's office and the Santa Cruz Police Department, the agency has caught hundreds of drug dealers and users. According to our police chief, "the D.E.A. did an excellent job" in these operations.
That was not the case on Sept. 5. The D.E.A. came to town unannounced and under cover of darkness.
I'm worried that the agency is going to be coming to other towns, too. Since 1996, eight other states - Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, Colorado and Maine - have passed laws allowing for the use of medical marijuana. At the same time, the Department of Justice has made it clear that it opposes the use of marijuana under any circumstances.
Clearly, state law and federal law are on a collision course. I would not be surprised if there are more raids.
And if there are more raids, more mayors and elected officials will find themselves doing what we did here this week: standing with people like the Corrals as they deliver medical marijuana to patients who are using the drug on the advice of a physician.
The government is fighting a losing battle. In the states where medical marijuana has been on the ballot, it has received overwhelming approval from voters. Canada and Great Britain recently approved the medical use of marijuana and plan to have the government grow and distribute it.
As medical costs skyrocket, medical marijuana is a cost-effective way to treat people with chronic pain. Most of all, making medical marijuana available is an act of common sense and compassion. The Corrals' collective lost 40 members this year; many of them left this world with Ms. Corral holding their hand.
I'm hopeful that this week's events will prompt the federal government to begin working with state and local governments to determine how far it can go in regulating activity that has been approved by the states and that has negligible effects on interstate commerce. There's legislation in Congress, supported by a bipartisan coalition, that would allow all states to approve medical marijuana, thus eliminating any conflict with federal law. To me, that makes sense. But until it passes, I'm standing with the Corrals.
It's not hard to believe that a self-described libertarian would resort to that disingenuous anti-American canard.
America has representative systems of government. Through our representatives we have established laws against illicit drugs at the federal level and in all fifty states. We have also, again through our elected representatives, established educational programs to dissuade individuals from using drugs and to support their efforts to break their addictions.
Libertarians oppose ALL of the efforts just described.
Sophistry is the foundation of Libertarian doctrine. When their dogmas fall apart in real world applications, Libertarians simply become angry with reality. Its what True Believers do.
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