Fairly recently engaged in a quantitatively brief (but productive) exchange over fundamental law (so inclusively liberty) at the Cannabist (the cannabis section of the Denver Post), I’m sharing those critical fruits here to preferably include your thoughts.
From the article oddly titled “Op-ed: Why legalizing USA harder than you’d think”…
The bottom line is that states can have whatever laws they want with regard to marijuana or any other drug
That subheading says it all with respect to the article (noting that line connects with the author’s frustration over the torturous path towards cannabis legality), but important (and sadly unique) educational nutrients are within the comments section there.
Let’s start with my comment…
If judicial corruption is removed, then it’s easy to ensure cannabis legality instantly nationally.
Alcohol Prohibition required a federal constitutional amendment. Relevantly speaking, there are two in our Constitution — one beginning that prohibition, and another one ending it for basically the same reasons that should have prevented Certain Drug Prohibition (if you will) in the first place (such prohibition is only an ineffective, taxpayer expensive, and highly destructive failure of a “solution” by any concrete measure).
When our “public servants” (horribly in the name of racism) needed cannabis (science term for marijuana) to become constitutionally illegal without meeting the very serious national challenge needed to secure a similar amendment, they ridiculously turned to the Commerce Clause — 16 words stating “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes” — a severely tragically vague clause with the intent to prevent state-based economic favoritism against our national economy (nothing more).
That was the “constitutional” basis for banning (not regulating) the growth, transportation, and mere possession of a plant.
Meanwhile, the ninth amendment — the one nobody talks about (unbelievably enormous elephant in the room being nationally ignored) — has been corruptly judicially disarmed from being the catchall amendment that can only rationally serve to judicially recognize the truths to be held as self-evident (i.e. our fundamental and unalienable rights in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, obviously including liberty).
The ninth amendment states “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”. The only other place where rights are formally defined is the aforementioned national declaration.
The ninth amendment should have even prevented Alcohol Prohibition on the purely logical (so fair, so just) basis that nobody has authority to infringe upon the liberty to harmlessly drink a glass of wine with dinner.
Combine that amendment with the Supremacy Clause (which demonstrates that federal constitutionality trumps state and local law), and we have no uncorrupted judicial rationale to sustain the war on some drugs at all.
The whole thing is a national judicial scam (compliantly unchallenged by the mainstream media on behalf of the critical “people’s right to know”) to sustain an agenda system usually (and too often politically) serving to maintain and grow oligarchical power — so not a justice system to (for prime example) protect millions of non-violent (sanely innocent) citizens from having their lives ruined to varying degrees for several decades (and strongly counting) by sanctioned thuggery in the “land of the free”.
Disrespect for constitutional limits of government power (necessary to prevent law abuse — logically the worst form of abuse due to its mainly broad scope of destruction) is so utterly obscene, even self-proclaimed constitutional experts declare our Constitution is a “living document” naturally amenable via (usually politicized) oligarchical conclusions then entrenched as legal precedence.
The Commerce Clause was illegally redefined (solely within the judicial branch) to regulate any activity (not just commerce) having a substantial effect on commerce. Our judicial branch of government has no authority to (re)define law — just interpret it.
Your thought activity — which literally determines all of your buying and selling decisions — always rationally has a substantial effect on commerce. Therefore rationally according to that illegal redefining, Congress has authority to regulate your thought activity.
Note that technology is quickly advancing to allow external manipulation of your thoughts (just ask Morgan Freeman — host of the science documentary “Through the Wormhole” — specifically about his “Can Our Minds be Hacked?” episode).
There’s no way our Constitution is a “living document”, and that fact is simply based upon Article V of our Constitution, which defines the aforementioned very (very) serious national challenge understandably necessary to amend our self-proclaimed “supreme law of the land”.
We are not a nation of laws. We are nation serving oligarchical dominance against our fundamental judicial principles, and the horrible result is a severely complex judicial mess discrediting our rule-of-law, which naturally corresponds with destabilizing our nation “to protect the children”.
This is not another ‘us versus them’ issue. Everyone from the nationally powerful through powerless stands to suffer a lot from this egregiously rampant abandoning of justice to instead threaten the very stability of whatever national integrity (if any) remains.
After thankfully receiving some likes there, here’s the helpful reply by C Money…
Like the thoughts, however, the 9th does not supersede the 10th and vice-versa. The 9th DEFAULTS any rights, not recognized by the constitution, to be held by the people and the 10th insures that any restrictions or powers to control or regulate those rights, not granted to the federal government via the constitution, to go first to the states and then punted back to the people.
The states ultimately have the right to regulate/ban drugs or any other activity (gay/straight marriage, abortion, public schooling, etc..) not specifically granted to the federal government by way of a constitutional amendment.
That’s a strict interpretation and is inline with the founders’ (sans Hamilton) views.
My response, which (thanks to C Money) includes an advancement of my understanding of the critical problem undermining the nationally urgent need to prevent abusive law upfront (which is also logically inline with founding views)…
Thank you for that clarification, and that’s exactly the kind of comment I was hoping for to progress this judicially critical line of reasoning.
I believe you’re right, but that judicial methodology is fundamentally ridiculously problematic.
Tenth amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
What ultimately is the difference between a right and a power?
A right upon being exercised is a power by natural definition. If I don’t have the power to do ‘x’, then the right to do ‘x’ is meaningless, so without power, there’s effectively no right in that case.
Amendment nine has no purpose (that claim partially backed by nobody even prominently citing it these days). What case can possibly be won by citing the ninth amendment? That’s not rhetorical, but a serious challenge to judicial experts. Though my confidence is healthy, maybe I’m missing something here, so feel free to enlighten me.
The ninth amendment must be effectively granting some power to have purpose, and that grant clearly goes to the individual (in perfect tune with our fundamental rights nonetheless), which then greatly and justly minimizes the reach of the tenth amendment.
It’s not about superceding another amendment, but managing rights and powers properly, so they all have meaning without conflict.
Either liberty is an unalienable right or not. Any exception (including that to protect the children) starts the slippery slope of exceptions that American society is sliding down now throughout our national history (too many of those exceptions involving discrimination).
The unalienable property of liberty should prevent inevitably unfair (so unjust, so abusive) laws restricting rights (and obviously their corresponding power) upon the basis of weak/junk science, subjective sensitivity, etc.
Otherwise, our fundamental rights have no meaning, and liberty (that many brave people fought and too often died for) is the same here as it is (inclusively historically) worldwide — you have the liberty to do whatever the people in power tell you that you can do, so not an unalienable right to liberty by literally any stretch.
Despite the current situation spanning national history, the states logically have no power to infringe upon unalienable rights (obviously including liberty — objectively the condition of being free from restriction or control), because of the demonstrably serious risk of abusive law (a risk typically publicly ignored for no good reason).
The only logical limit against the right to liberty is the right itself, and that becomes purely civilized liberty, which necessitates a maximally objective definition of harm (which doesn’t exist these days — that definition is mainly subjective and even too often includes the risk of harm).
There’s a fundamental language issue here, and since law and its interpretation are all about language, this is a critical (inter)national issue literally affecting everyone impacted by law.
Our Constitution serves to prevent abusive leadership by implicitly limiting power — a result of the violent revolution against an abusive British monarchy, according to our national declaration of independence.
Vague language defies that prevention, and the Commerce Clause (and the demonstrably insane war on some drugs) epitomizes that judicial crisis.
Certainty in language equals objectivity (so fairness, so justice) in law.
Without that certainty, we have the monstrously judicial mess growing like a wildly rampant weed into all of our lives at terrible stress, so logically putting our nation at severe risk of exploding into the same revolutionary spirit that ironically gave rise to our national definition.
To minimize confusion, increasing certainty in language is critical, yet obscenely missing.
Controlling the evolution of language is like herding cats (unrecommended), but occasionally carefully and scientifically shaping language to increase certainty (e.g. insisting upon a hard-line distinction between use and abuse, so the latter solely pertains to harm — no more misuse, use disorder, being used by someone, etc.) makes flawless sense.
Then laws can focus solely upon that most objective definition of harm to oppose abuse without infringing upon the right towards use — a wonderful boost to responsible liberty and all of the positive health and consequences (e.g. innovation, resource efficiency, etc.) that comes from that necessary societal flexibility — the macrocosm of an athlete (etc.) staying loose similarly for maximum performance.
If something I write doesn’t make sense, and/or you disagree in part or whole with any of it, and/or you have anything else pertinent to say, please help us all by including your mutually constructive comment(s) herein.
Ignoring this critical and fundamental legal issue can only logically be described as denial — and many of us understand how devastating denial can be in terms of addiction at the personal level, so imagine increasing that devastation to literally a national degree.
Without exaggeration, I’m deeply concerned that rampant reason abuse has corrupted so many minds, the result is mass mental illness towards a serious detachment from reality to undeniably embrace demonstrably feel-good fantasy “to protect the children”.
In accordance with common sense, how many people understand the value of honesty in terms of sound mental health?
Similar to facing cancer (or such), if you don’t voluntarily face the (sometimes horribly brutal) truth, then that truth will eventually face you — and by then, the mess from growing the tension of lies will require a likely very painful cleanup for reality’s inevitable balance.
I cannot possibly be alone in my fully logical and grounded assessment of this national need.
This isn’t scaremongering.
This is my (unfortunately necessarily repeated) public plea to popularize sanity, for maturely crying out loud.
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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