Power Always Corrupts
28. Jun, 2008 
6 Comments
Back in ‘99, even George Bush himself was calling for an end to the war on medical marijuana users. It’s not something that’s pointed out too often these days, and thanks to Anthony Gregory at LewRockwell.com, we can all read these statements from Bush himself.
Here’s what Gregory had to say:
I distinctly remembered that Bush said something back during his first presidential campaign about leaving medical marijuana laws up to the states. After Clinton’s horrendous crackdowns in California, I recall thinking Bush’s stance on this, along with his “humble” foreign policy promises, was a reason I quietly rooted for him against Gore. I imagined on civil liberties and war, as well as economics, he’d be slightly less bad.
And, of course, here’s the original 1999 report from the Washington Post:
“Campaigning in Seattle on Saturday, Bush answered questions about medical marijuana laws by saying, ‘I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose.’”
R. Keith Stroup, executive director for the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws in Washington, which has backed D.C.’s drug initiative, said he was “delighted” by Bush’s support of state authority.
“Governor Bush is at least being consistent,” Stroup said. “Republicans frequently talk about devolution, returning power to the states. . . . It is encouraging to hear him indicate that he would leave this decision to them.”
Consistent – sure – as long as he wasn’t running the country as our “commander-in-chief.” But, as Lord Acton warned us about human nature, once he got power, that power corrupted. (Remember? Power Corrupts – absolute power corrupts absolutely.)
Then again, he might’ve just been acting like politicians act – and saying something to get a few votes.
Either way, it doesn’t really matter, because in practice Bush has only upped the ante and supported the seemingly never-ending war on your freedom/drugs.
As Ron Paul has said so clearly, this issue is one that’s supposed to be left to the states – to decide locally:
The Federal government should recognize that states have the authority to decide these issues. This affords all states the opportunity to see which policies are most beneficial. As a Congressman and a physician, I strongly advocate that healthcare decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not politicians or federal agents, which is why I am an original co-sponsor of the recently introduced “Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act” which would bar the Federal government from intervening in such doctor/patient relationships that violate no state law.
As written previously on this site, the federal drug war is an abomination:
…the drug war is based on a repugnant assertion: that you do not have ownership over your own body; that you don’t have the right to decide what you’ll do with your body, with your property and with your life. The position of the drug warriors is that you should be in jail if you decide to do something with your body that they don’t approve of.
Federal “authorities” don’t care what your local laws are, don’t care what your personal choices are and don’t care what reason you have for your choices.
All they care about is their own power. Period.
But, there’s nothing, whatsoever, in the US Constitution which permits the federal government to wage a “drug war.”
The Constitution was written under the principle of “positive grant,” which means that the federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers which are specifically listed in the Constitution. The rest, as the 10th Amendment states, are to be “reserved to the States, respectively, or to the People.”
A simple reading of the Constitution would make it quite clear to anyone, that there’s nothing mentioned about drug wars, drugs, marijuana, plants, or anything of the like.
Thus, it’s not only the federal marijuana laws that are unconstitutional, but the entire federal “war on drugs.”
It’s time to bring this multi-billion dollar attack on your liberty to an end.
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The Drug War is carried out by means of the Commerce Clause (that Congress has the power to regulate commerce). The Commerce Clause has been elaborated on by the Supreme Court to mean that Congress can regulate just about anything. Including the possession of drugs.
Here’s the thing though – Bush et al recognize that the only way to justify a never-ending internal war against the people and the establishment of a full military police state is if we have a scapegoat of drug users and drug dealers. All the military-style policing is excused with the war on drugs. Our prisoner levels are excused by the war on drugs. The abject erosion of our civil liberties and historical freedoms are excused by the war on drugs. The incredible expansion of police budgets is excused by the war on drugs.
The vast majority of arrests and prosecutions are for drug “crimes” – cannabis arrests alone make up more arrests than ALL violent crime, combined! They can point to the “Drug War” to say that they are overwhelmed with “criminals”, and need ever larger budgets and more military equipment. None of this is ever, ever, ever used for ACTUAL crime-fighting, only for digging up more drug users. The police don’t have the “manpower” to investigate rapes, murders, kidnappings, burglaries, assaults, fraud, embezzlement, or anything else because they are “too busy” with drug crimes, so more cops, more money, more equipment are needed so they can “tackle the problem”, but none of this EVER goes to the crimes that REALLY affect society, the violent crimes against persons or property.
Furthermore, the police-prison complex prefers nonviolent, easily controlled drug offenders to difficult, violent, recalcitrant ACTUAL criminals. Who would you rather capture and look after – nonviolent, placid drug users, or truly animalistic violent criminals? Which job is easier?
We use the war on drugs to make neighbors terrified of each other, an unknown evil that could be anyone, anywhere. The War on Drugs divides us against ourselves, pits father against son, brother against brother. It makes us suspicious of everyone, makes us insular, and allows for ever more encroachments against our persons to “keep us safe”. If the WoD were ended, all the existing excuses for government malfeasance would have to be given up. The public is coming to understand this, and so conveniently, “terrorists” have been slotted into the same spot that “drug dealers” used to occupy. If and when the “War on Drugs” is finally quietly scuttled, there will already be a replacement to continue with these false justifications, and more.
This is all just a convenient scam to imprison and enslave the entire public. If we do not own our bodies, we are not a free people. We, then, are NOT a free people. We are slaves in our own nation. Or, what WAS at one time, our nation.
I forgot to mention, if we stopped the “War on Poor People” – so called because the wealthy and influential can always buy their way to freedom, just ask Cindy McCain and George Bush – and focused on the other major nonviolent crime sector, white collar crime, we would be forced to recognize that the biggest nonviolent offenders are also the wealthy and powerful sociopaths that run our government and our major corporations. The inmates are running the asylum, and they do everything in their power to divert attention away from the indirect violence they inflict on the people by decades of fraud, embezzlement, wage imbalance, and other manipulations to provide and maintain their power at the expense of the people. Just image the criminal fruits we would discover if we looked into, say, the financial and banking sectors (ceaseless defrauding of the public), the global mega-corps (rampant pollution and environmental destruction), and the government (you fucking name it, these guys are cross-spectrum offenders of every possible type).
Bush has nothing to do with power corrupting. Too many fools got taken in by an obvious oil baron and looked to his please-vote-for-me word rather than the facts. A little bit of research would’ve been enough to know that no conservative — or at least, no republican — is going to give state rights back. The only freedom they are intersted in is freedom of capitalism, no matter how many are screwed in the process.
Frankly, I think it’ll be liberals who legalize drugs before conservatives. Libertarians are no longe ra legitimate member of the republican party, as the GOP has no qualms about controlling the lives of others as evident by their religious and traditionalism policies. At least the liberals have no reason to keep bans on marijuana, save to cater to the neo-conservative vote.
Frankly, i odn’t know what libertarians are suppose to do in the mean time. Form a splitner party, maybe. Nader’s probably right — the two party system is broken.