Prompted by “Republican Voters in Key Election States Want Feds Out of State Marijuana Laws”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/republican-voters-key-election-states-want-feds-out-state-marijuana-laws
Never to be a jerk towards High Times magazine, but I have no idea regarding the credibility of the poll cited in the prompting piece, and I feel too many statements such as the following are questionable.
Millennial voters now have a larger share of the electorate, while the senior vote has dropped off significantly. Therefore, it is conceivable that a more progressive presidential platform, which certainly includes allowing marijuana to crawl out of the darkness of prohibition, is more likely to be appreciated by the majority of the voting public.
Senior generations actually consistently show up to vote (younger ones are often historically unreliable in this regard).
Therefore, my focus necessarily shifts away from the prompting piece, but this post basically grows from the use of progressive in that statement.
Legalizing cannabis is popularly observed as a progressive idea. However, the facts make the contrary clear, and ignoring those facts has caused (and continues to cause) serious mass suffering.
Perhaps removing the wool pulled over your American eyes, our national obligation to uphold the self-evident and unalienable right to liberty as actual progressivism (formed by revolutionaries against abusive law) is completely lost in the corruption fueled dominantly within all American generations — whom have factually opposed that obligation across the political spectrum with no sign of changing momentum towards correcting that inevitable injustice.
Had that right been consistently logically (so fairly, and therefore justly) realized upon establishment against pre-American conservatism…
- slavery (and judicially approved racism overall) would have necessarily ended instantly by law (and as a fitting aside, anyone believing skin color determines competency, social value, and/or such, would be righteously diagnosed as mentally ill).
- women would have been necessarily instantly granted equal rights by law (feel free to fittingly add a similar mental illness diagnosis with regards to gender superiority and remaining items in this list).
- there could never be any just law discriminating against the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) community (or discrimination on the basis of marriage against single people regardless of sexual preference — e.g. any tax law unfairly benefiting married couples).
- selectively opposing certain drug users would never have been lawfully allowed (including Alcohol Prohibition).
- there could be no just law against any form of fully adult-consensual sex (including that requiring a financial component).
- no reverse discrimination could be lawfully possible.
Your liberty is illegally and unethically instead defined by the people in power — and liberty has been defined that way all throughout American history (and obviously beyond).
The mechanisms enabling that corrupt definition comes from a combination of three ideas — judicially defining risk is prudent and legal, vague constitutional clauses are judicially reasonable, and subjectively (so unfairly against the basically powerless) defined law is somehow just — even though the definition of just includes fairness.
To define risk is inevitably to define liberty.
Risk cannot be a suitable threshold for defining liberty by law. That seems insane when you fail to critically factor in the serious risk (if not outright mass harm) ironically from abusive law. Effective education is the only possible risk management solution in a nation with an actual unalienable right to liberty — an enormous “elephant in the room” still ignored after over two centuries of national existence.
If we don’t insist upon conclusive (not suggestive) science to define harm (not risk) and focus laws solely upon dealing with harm, then we cannot possibly honor our obligation to uphold that critical right necessary to prevent harmful law before it can be destructively enacted and enforced. This area is complicated, because harm cannot be objectively defined.
Even the best scientific minds have not objectively defined life, so how can they possibly objectively define harm against life? Unhealthy stress (from lightest discomfort through agony) comes in an overwhelmingly dramatic variety of possibilities, so subjectively defined harm makes sense.
Wildly subjectively defined harm forms one end of the subjectivity spectrum (i.e. dominating favoritism with or without rationality defines your liberty — obviously the current situation) and best efforts to closely objectively define harm forms the other end — that latter end logically being closest to justice and better understanding actual harm and therefore survival (so far more sensible).
There’s honestly agreeably defined harm (i.e. all humans can only honestly agree when a claim of harm meets that agreement). Murder is the prime example, but solid examples at least include rape (and other forms of assault), theft, and slander. Any injury beyond full-healing capability is directly harmful, and since indirect harm (e.g. being harmed, but meeting the love of your life as a result) has no ultimate grounding (any action can ultimately be tied to some form of harm — even breathing), direct harm only makes judicial sense.
Conclusively scientifically (not unfairly by one dominating form of religiously) upholding the self-evident and unalienable right to liberty is true progressivism. The right was concisely defined as guaranteed liberty limited only by the right itself, but not refined to concisely match modern sensibility (e.g. successfully leverage that fundamental right — not other brutally torturous and unconstitutional legal assaults — to judicially end racial/gender/religious/etc. discrimination, etc.)
Suggestive science is pathetic, because it suggests all sorts of conflicting results — e.g. coffee, chocolate, cannabis, etc. is good or bad for you (depending upon your “scientific” leaning), so conclusive science to best define harm for law is mandatory for optimal justice in the “land of the free”.
The great Republican secret (another “elephant in the room”) causing grand confusion throughout the political spectrum (especially within the Republican Party) is the absence of the boundary forming the inevitable conflict between American and pre-American conservatism.
Temporarily putting aside abusive private sector practices often targeted by the traditional political left in the form of ample blanket regulations (constitutionally sourced at the Commerce Clause), everything true progressivists stand for is basically in the aforementioned list.
American conservatives and true progressivists (nonetheless true libertarians) actually want the same thing — when hypocrisy is removed.
Hypocrisy (and the other forms of abusive reasoning forming it) is why our nation is a serious mess these days. Hypocrisy negates principle, so “We the people” no longer have any concisely defined principle to agree upon. A nation without principle is like a house off of its foundation — and we can clearly see that destructive national forces emulating the destructive forces against that house.
This isn’t a matter of cleaning house, but fundamentally restoring the house to its foundation before it collapses.
When learning a skill, we all must start with the basics. Even if professionally engaging in the complexities of that skill, the basics still must be honored for success. Because of society’s overwhelming complexity, so-called societal basics too often match that complexity (there are no true basics, but agendas and such are merely grounded in that complexity). To clarify, if you have basically heard (or said), “It’s more complicated than that.” when debating popular issues, then you get my point about grounding a political stance in complexity (spin is then the only game in town).
Cannabis is illegal (constitutionally sourced at the Commerce Clause).
Cannabis Prohibition is fully factually sourced in traditional political leftism. It’s yet another ‘we can trust the government’ idea joining the lengthy list of such failed solutions spanning history — so not progressive — on behalf of the amply demonstrated reasons why we basically cannot trust the government — basically governments too often take that power and selfishly wield it (often supporting their wealthy friends in the private sector) against public safety.
Favoritism against public safety is not solved by merely altering the style of favoritism against public safety. That’s why the political left needs a new (progressive) foundation matching their honorable intentions against harm.
It’s terribly boring, but essential — the very powerful judicial hinge is the Commerce Clause (“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”).
Our judicial branch (e.g. Supreme Court) has no power to define law — only interpret it based upon the limits of power implicitly defined in our Constitution. If a law is federally unconstitutional, then the Supremacy Clause kicks in to additionally negate state and local legitimacy of that law.
I maintain Alcohol Prohibition constituted mass rights-infringement in the form of violating amendment nine of the Bill of Rights (“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”). Still, while putting aside that righteous conclusion to make another point, Alcohol Prohibition required a federal constitutional amendment.
Certain Drug Prohibition magically and “mysteriously” negates that requirement.
The reason for that inconsistency is the Commerce Clause was redefined from ‘regulate commerce’ to ‘regulate any activity having a substantial effect on commerce’. As that clause is part of our Constitution, it cannot be redefined without a constitutional amendment — which does not exist to support that redefining.
That indisputable fact negates the legality of Certain Drug Prohibition, and that fact needs serious resonating throughout the court of public opinion until the problem is properly resolved, because the Commerce Clause problem literally extremely extends beyond the “right to get high” (as you can read at the bottom of this post).
Traditional political leftists dominate the major drug policy reform organizations, and they (at least to the best of my fairly substantial knowledge) refuse to even minimally address that necessary fix that would logically slam the judicial door shut on the horrifyingly failed sequel to Alcohol Prohibition, so save many lives from abusive law (the ironic prohibition addiction). The logical reason for that refusal is to address that fix would also be to slam that same door shut on aforementioned regulations deeply complexly against the private sector (as historically happened before the Commerce Clause was illegally redefined essentially via President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal).
Scientific constitutionalism (as defined in my Liberty Shield informational roots) is the only logical path forward for a sensible society. By perpetually maximally coming close to objectively defining harm, laws would be optimally sharply focused upon dealing with actual harm — including any harm caused by capitalism (cannabis, and any other form of) abuse.
Society needs real basics. Liberty Shield was built from the ground up with strict reliance upon the scientific method to form better language (in part by working with and increasing certainties) and therefore naturally better law and consequently better societal health. In other words, the scientific method works brilliantly in advancing technology, but through improving logical certainty (not necessarily limited to math), that powerful method logically works equally brilliantly to advance optimally fair (so just) law.
Righteous basics don’t negate the inevitable complexities.
Righteous basics logically grow into those complexities, so we can better resolve problems by way of working with that logic.
If you agree, then please like and share this post.
If you disagree, then please leave a comment explaining the basis for your disagreement.
As promised, the following comes from my Liberty Shield informational roots and addresses why the Commerce Clause issue is extremely pressing.
By some ‘judicial legislation’ (i.e. blatantly illegal redefining of constitutional meaning by simply redefining that clause in legal precedence) — the Supreme Court’s judicial attitude these days presses upon allowing Congress to regulate any activity rationally having a substantial effect on commerce (not just “To regulate Commerce”, as our Constitution clearly states).
That vagueness is nothing shy of literally utterly being disastrous against freedom within American society (including ironically logically far more harmful than all drug abuse combined).
Your thought activity, my fellow Americans, which literally determines all of your buying and selling decisions always rationally has a substantial effect on commerce.
In other words, if merely holding a certain plant in your American hand has a substantial effect on commerce (which our judicial branch has publicly ruled in the affirmative multiple times), then under no sane circumstance can judicial interpretation rationally consistently negate Congress having authority to regulate your thought activity.
Before dismissing regulating your thought activity as ridiculous, understand leading science and consequent technology (at least as demonstrated in prominently credible documentaries found on well-known science channels — e.g. “Can Our Minds Be Hacked?” episode of Morgan Freeman’s “Through the Wormhole” series) is rapidly advancing towards reading and manipulating your thoughts.
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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