Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I must cleanse my soul, for I am about to re-tell a glorious, scrumptious tale of someone backpedaling. But in the last few hours, I have had to backpedal too, so let us tell that story first. I tossed in a quart when a pint was the correct dose.
It happens.
Daphne’s place is being buzz-bombed with a charming, snarky liberal gadfly — which also happens. There seems to be a great epidemic of snarky liberals showing lots of “wit” without saying anything anyone, even anyone sympathetic to their side of things, would find too funny. Daphne had her fill of it but, having a heart of gold, decided to play the Three Ghosts to my Ebenezer Scrooge and whispered the words of wisdom to me —
Morgan, I think most of them are truly well meaning and decent people…its just that they’re stupefied. They can’t see the forest for the trees or make the leap from A to Z without a linear finger tracing of every letter. They’ve been taught to think in a particular groove and never bother to poke their heads out for a glimpse of another side of the equation.
The smart liberals are dangerous, but they aren’t in the majority. Unfortunately, they have too many quislings, thanks to the cesspool of mediocrity known as public education.
The latest example of liberal nastiness still plying its aftertaste upon my palette, I was less than completely receptive, although deep down somewhere in the recesses of my subconsciousness I knew the lady was right:
Daphne, with most of what they’re taught that might be true. To a weak and feeble mind, you say “pass a law to raise the minimum wage” and my goodness, who with a decent conscience could ever oppose that?
However, some of it wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance of taking root, if there wasn’t some internal nastiness in the host to keep it nourished. I’m speaking here of some of the liberal policies that are, overtly, about trying to destroy things. Like the Boy Scouts for example. I am well aware of the euphemisms — but I call bullshit on the idea that anyone, anywhere, in their heart-of-hearts thinks it will make life more bearable for anyone else if a wedge is driven between the Boy Scouts and the United Way. That right there is a desire to destroy something — period, full stop. That’s a “we’ll show you.”
All of these might start with benign intentions (or, to be more accurate about it, an obsequious effort to showcase decency that possesses only a remote chance of actually being there).
There have been lots of folks who started out liberal, and then when the liberalism inevitably twists and mutates into a perverted form of its former self and starts to become evil, becomes all-concerned about destroying whoever doesn’t fit in — leave. Charlton Heston did it. Ronald Reagan did it. That means anyone can.
But when Napolitano put out that DHS report, the only folks I saw protesting, were the ones who called themselves conservatives. If liberals were really about decency, that would have been the point of an irreversible mass exodus.
Now, I’m not going to completely renounce this. There is much truth in it. But some of it needs to go, or at least, to be polished down. I can’t sit here and say, show me a hundred liberals and I’ll show you a hundred people with dark souls. I can’t even say, show me a hundred liberals that have gotten snarky and mean on someone’s blog, and I’ll show you a hundred mean people. There is an overwhelming temptation to play Let’s-Pretend on that one. But it isn’t true. Falling for a bunch of stupid shit doesn’t make you necessarily stupid, let alone evil. Perhaps less than fully attentive, and perhaps incurious. But that’s about all that can really be said.
The problem really is — there are certain milestones on this short, quick bunny trail between the start of the hike, which is “I’m reading a liberal snot-rag newspaper and believing every single word,” and the final destination which is “I hope Rush Limbaugh’s kidneys fail.” From the one point to the other…from “I think I got both sides of the story when I really didn’t,” to “I can’t believe George W. Bush could have ever done anything right, even by random chance, or Barack Obama can ever make a mistake.” There are gradients between these two extremes; there are degrees of corruption. And that’s important to keep in mind. We should work at keeping it in mind because it’s easy to forget.
The reason it’s easy to forget this, is that the hike isn’t quite so much along a level dirt road, as down a sleep, slippery icy slope. Those of us who’ve been paying attention have seen so many turn to the Dark Side, that it all seems inevitable.
But we should recognize the levels. There is an absolute verticality to them; if you’ve slid (or ascended) past this one, but not that one, then you likewise may be safely assumed to have not hit that-one-or-that-one-or-that-one. So by recognizing them, maybe some of us can save some friends.
And to recognize them, we need to identify them.
So here they are.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number One
What I Call Them: Goo-Gooders.
What They Cannot Understand: The Natural Consequence.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they have compassion.
How to Spot Them: They think Thomas Jefferson had the right idea but they also think Earl Warren had the right idea. The truth of the matter is, if you could invite both of these gentlemen to your dinner table on the same night, plates would be broken.
Where They Go Astray: They tend to think there’s a certain level of pain that should not be felt by anyone without some artificial intervention to make everything better; then they lower that limit as time goes on. It starts out with a legitimate protest against slavery. Next thing you know, everyone has a “human right” to wait five minutes for a bus instead of ten. There’s no limit to how far the pain threshold can be lowered.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Two
What I Call Them: Cutie-Pies.
What They Cannot Understand: Some Cute Things Are Wrong.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They’re cute.
How to Spot Them: All the things they own, from cars, to furniture, to the stuffed animals on their beds, to their pens, notebooks, and party invitations they hand out, are cute, sassy, round wherever possible, and purple.
Where They Go Astray: They start to systematically buy into any and all ideas that can be articulated or displayed more concisely and adorably than their opposites (which as a general rule, are expensive, unworkable, and not only errant, but profoundly embarrassing to anyone who starts to apply some responsible thinking to their content).
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Three
What I Call Them: Pamphlet Readers.
What They Cannot Understand: You Can’t Believe Everything You Read.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they have read something about the issue(s).
How to Spot Them: Having studied up on such neutral and encyclopedic resources as The New York Times, the AARP newsletter, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and e-mails from the chairman of the DNC…they start conversations about politics that it turns out they cannot handle. Because they weren’t expecting their viewpoints to be intelligently challenged, by someone inclined toward and capable of doing so. (More often than not, they recall the conversation later as if the other person started it — which makes them somewhat dangerous.)
Where They Go Astray: It’s the “OJ Simpson Trial” situation. They fail to see someone else might have command of the same facts, and come to a different conclusion about what happened or what should be done about it.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Four
What I Call Them: Secularists.
What They Cannot Understand: That There Just Might Be a God.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they don’t go to church.
How to Spot Them: The “Darwin” fish on the back of their car.
Where They Go Astray: They start to believe that non-believers are morally superior, because they do good things just-because, whereas religious people do the same thing to try to appease a judgmental, omnipowerful being.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Five
What I Call Them: Small-l libertarians.
What They Cannot Understand: Drugs Aren’t Good.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They want to legalize drugs.
How to Spot Them: They really don’t care too much about anything besides legalizing drugs.
Where They Go Astray: They want to legalize drugs.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Six
What I Call Them: Non-Discriminators.
What They Cannot Understand: Men Shouldn’t Be Hooters’ Waitresses.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They are blind to class membership — which isn’t even close to being true.
How to Spot Them: They talk about “laws that end discrimination,” which, when you think about it responsibly for a little while, you can see is some of the purest nonsense.
Where They Go Astray: Simply put, they start discriminating.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Seven
What I Call Them: Nanny-Staters.
What They Cannot Understand: The Nature of Government Makes Self-Restraint Impossible.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they don’t trust “corporations”.
How to Spot Them: They claim the death tax is not a double-tax, using the “it’s the first time that guy saw the money” argument. Also, we always seem to be, as the saying goes, one regulation away from total bliss.
Where They Go Astray: Their arguments start to rest on an unstated premise that government is capable of a balance, a wisdom, and a sense of ethics that is somehow unattainable to anyone who isn’t in government.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Eight
What I Call Them: Peaceniks.
What They Cannot Understand: Sometimes, War is the Answer.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: That they are dedicated to ending violence and conflict (the violence part may be true, but the conflict part sure as hell isn’t).
How to Spot Them: They refuse to acknowledge any problem in human history that was ever solved by a war.
Where They Go Astray: They start to see themselves as enmeshed in a conflict with imaginary ideological antagonists who actually like war. Much in the same way that liberals who are opposed to pollution disease and hunger, seem to start believing that someone, somewhere, enjoying significant power or numbers, is actually in favor of pollution, disease and hunger.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Nine
What I Call Them: Finger-Pointers.
What They Cannot Understand: Not All Tragedies Have a Villain.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: Their capacity for anger. Typically, they used to be peaceniks, and one day they realized their peacenik-ism left them unfulfilled, and with something they needed to prove.
How to Spot Them: One, and only one, bad guy (or class) for everything about the world they don’t like.
Where They Go Astray: They probably always were astray; they have a thunderhead of frothy rage on hand that finds a convenient lightning-rod in whoever or whatever they’ve identified as the villain. The storm is always there. When the lightning strikes, is the only question, and it’s definitely a “when” and not an “if.” These are crazy, angry people. Keep clear.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Ten
What I Call Them: True Believers.
What They Cannot Understand: Liberal Positions Are, or Should Be, “A La Carte”.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: Their devotion.
How to Spot Them: They think convicted murderers have a right to life, but unborn babies don’t.
Where They Go Astray: These people have crossed the fourth milestone on the way to complete insanity. They don’t think anyone with conservative recognition can ever have a good idea, or that anyone with proper liberal credentials can ever have a bad one.
Update 5/22/09: I wasn’t aware of the content of this promo for the new V series until this morning when I saw it on IMAO. FrankJ compares the reptilian aliens to Obama.
When the lady in the trailer says the aliens’ weapon is “devotion” — the same word, coincidentally, I used in the final terrace — this helps to capture how the ten terraces work in concert with each other as parts of a simple machine. Like the threads in a screw, or the teeth on a gear.
You say “I want to run everything. Be devoted to me!” You’ll net yourself very, very few takers. But you carve up the mission into lots of smaller incremental tasks and it’s easy. Now go back over those terraces again. Notice how the very first ones, the ones that invite people to climb aboard the bandwagon for the first time, all have one thing in common: They have to do with the new disciple proving something about himself. He’s compassionate, he’s adorable, he’s informed, he’s a critical thinker. This is the point of the screw that is supposed to pierce the hardwood first.
When you get a person’s ego involved, you can get him to do whatever you want; if you don’t, then you can’t.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News.
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Liberal taxonomy. Brillliant.
- Jason | 05/21/2009 @ 23:52Not that you’ve given much thought to this Morgan.
Nice job.
- tim | 05/22/2009 @ 12:35If it stops just one reasonable, clear-thinking American from lunging across the dinner table on Memorial Day to wrap his fingers around the jugular of that somewhat-admired but significantly-ignorant Bush-bashing peacenik hippy hopenchange father-in-law…nearly all of us have a relative like this…then it’s worth the effort.
Together we can do this.
- mkfreeberg | 05/22/2009 @ 12:54Very good! Brilliant, for the most part. I imagine you realize you threw Buck and me under the bus with Level 5, though.
Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number Five
What I Call Them: Small-l libertarians.
What They Cannot Understand: Drugs Aren’t Good.
What They Want to Prove About Themselves: They want to legalize drugs.
How to Spot Them: They really don’t care too much about anything besides legalizing drugs.
Where They Go Astray: They want to legalize drugs.
Buck and I would be pretty hard to spot by your method because we care about a lot more things than legalizing drugs and a substantial number of those things have higher priority. And it certainly isn’t a badge of our identities. I think this is what makes us Big “L” instead of, as you say, Small “l”.
Buck and I (I’m pretty sure I’m representing Buck here pretty well) recognize that especially pot tokers are no worse, philosophically, than drinkers. There are lots of people who use it as responsibly as I use alcohol. And most of them, you’d never know if you met them on the street or in a bar. They’re just folks. A bit daring folks, given the penalties they’re risking, granted. But show me a lazy ass bastard whacked out on weed, and I’ll show you another lazy ass bastard plastered on hydroxyl fluids ruining his life in pretty much the same way. Me, I like my alcohol. But I control myself. Alcohol is a drug. And I don’t want it to be illegal.
Ultimately, there are a lot of things that are legal that are stupid, but still shouldn’t be illegal. I think smoking cigarettes is stupid, but I don’t think it should be illegal. I smoke the occasional cigar or pipe myself. Because I wanna. Liberty, you know. Bottom line is, victimless crimes shouldn’t be. Crimes, that is.
- philmon | 05/22/2009 @ 13:35I saw Penn Jillet the other night on Beck saying that the Libertarian movement could move forward if the pot smokers would recognize that the gun nuts are ok, and the gun nuts would recognize that the pot smokers are ok.
I’m already there.
- philmon | 05/22/2009 @ 13:36That’s why I respectfully disagree with you about 5. You and Buck have both shown intellect and energy in opining on a number of other unrelated issues.
This is not true of some of your terrace-five brethren. It is quite surprising how unrelated a given subject can be to legalizing drugs, and in short order, they’ve managed to change the subject to legalizing drugs.
I’m talking about people who really don’t care about anything else. They’re out there. One cannot help but suspecting there’s a certain “Perfect Victory Here Would Ruin Them”; the day drugs became legal across the board, they’d wander the streets, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, like zombies, looking for a purpose…or like slobbering Obama fans on January 21.
- mkfreeberg | 05/22/2009 @ 14:11I will admit that many of my terrace-five brethren I would not choose as brethren. We just happen to have an intersection point of agreement.
- philmon | 05/22/2009 @ 14:17“…the day drugs became legal across the board, they’d wander the streets, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, like zombies…”
The types you’re referring to are already there, Morgan… the law is irrelevant to those people. And they are largely harmless to others and arguably harmless to themselves. They are also in the minority. Phil and I are on about the largely SILENT group of people who use illegal drugs in moderation and act responsibly in all other aspects of their lives.
As Dylan sang… “the times, they are a changin'”… even Tom Tancredo went on the record yesterday as saying The War on (Some) Drugs has failed. You’re on the wrong side of this argument, Morgan, and the tide is turning. Finally. The thing I find most amazing about usually rational people such as yourself who make the “Drugs Aren’t Good” argument is the complete abandonment of the “personal responsibility” stance, and the support for selective intervention/proscription on the part of the government. This is, above all, a PERSONAL CHOICE argument. Are we free, or are we not?
I used to believe I’d never see the day when drugs would be decriminalized, let alone legalized. Now I’m not so sure.
Phil: You did represent me quite well. Thank you.
- bpenni | 05/22/2009 @ 23:47My anti-drug stance is limited to the following:
1. If a “legalize drugs” option appears on my local ballot (meaning state, but county would be better, and neighborhood would be better still), I’m voting no. This is a cultural question, in my mind. I believe in federalism. And that’s the culture for which I’d vote in my district.
2. If you, in New Mexico, want to put in a Federal government that would force people here in Folsom to legalize marijuana, I will oppose you. (Similarly, however, if people in my neck of the woods want to force people in your area to criminalize it when they don’t want to, I’d oppose that as well.)
3. Since drugs are illegal, whether you want them to be illegal or not — if someone knows they’re against the law and indulges in them anyway, and gets busted and convicted, I think they should serve out the sentence even though you happen to think it’s a “stupid” law.
We can agree to disagree on #1. I’m sure you’re on my side with #’s 2 and 3.
Also, it should be pointed out there is a difference between keeping drugs illegal, and the “War on Drugs.”
- mkfreeberg | 05/23/2009 @ 00:02Ok, I can no longer resist weighing in on this.
First of all, Morgan, this is invaluable. Great, great job.
Now, drugs. As always, my only opinions on this come from painful experience. I’ve always been somewhat of a pot smoker (musicians, you know,) and until the last few years, I’d probably come down on Buck’s side.
I’ve lived in Sonoma County since 2003, where marijuana is essentially legal. There are now full-size billboards on US 101 advertising Medical Marijuana certification (Seniors and Military discounts.) Anybody can get certified for about $125 a year, given a card, and shop at a “club” featuring myriad designer brand-name varieties of pot. I’ve lived with the effects of Polio my whole life, and I had an accident 5 years ago which broke bones and wrenched my back up completely, and for 3 years I was a member. The medical examinations were a joke.
Soon after that, life took me to a community inhabited by people who had never left the ’70s. Suddenly I saw the effects of long-term untrammeled drug use; I met people my age who had literally never had a job. Imagine. In almost every instance, marijuana was not the only drug involved, and I watched several people die from long-term abuse of alcohol and meth. Whores and meth dealers were my neighbors.
Despite the encouragement of hippie growers, there is still an enormous influence of Mexican narco-gangsters, who maintain large plantations in National forest areas, staffed in many cases by illegals (who are also drawn to the area because of the work available doing stoop labor for the wineries.) Among the hippies, casual criminality of all sorts is endemic. There is a huge cash economy which coincides with corruption in the city councils, county government and courts (and as I’ve noted before, the Congressional record refers to Lynn Woolsey’s Congressional District as “the leftmost county in America.”) Gangs and tough-guy behavior are everywhere you look.
Corruption means you can’t trust anybody about anything. Moral equivalency is a way of life; if you play it straight, you lose. End of story.
I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty wised-up guy, but this has been a profound re-education. I finally realized that daily pot smoking was leading ever downwards, and quit. It’s been over a year now, and I can still feel the effects of confusion and poor judgment, gradually dwindling, despite the fact that I was very careful to only smoke the lightest-grade stuff.
There’s no question in my mind that THC stays in the body for a long, long time, nor that marijuana use affects judgment. There’s also no question, imo, that legalization is going to have any other effect than to bring this mess to any community it touches – and by the way, Sonoma is also about to be graced with a new Casino, which was simply presented as a fait accompli by one of the aforementioned city councils (without a vote), and justified as a payback to a supposedly-victimized local Indian tribe (which is actually a legal fiction) headed by a former male model from LA. Their partners, to no one’s surprise, are a “gaming” organization from Las Vegas which shows every indication of being a Mob front. In the same way as the legalization of gambling, the only people who are ready to take advantage of new laws are stone criminals.
They don’t call it “dope” for nothing.
- rob | 05/23/2009 @ 10:37I (for one) appreciate your input, Rob. I, too, lived in northern CA at the dawn of decriminalization… from 2000 until late 2002 … in Berkeley for a year and the East Bay (San Ramon) for another year before I took my leave. I agree with the first parts of your observation, in that certification for medical marijuana was so easy to get as to be a running joke and that pot was widespread. We kinda sorta part company after that in the philosophical sense, less so in the personal sense.
I think you and I are about the same age… I’m 64. I used to be a daily smoker yet I quit for different reasons, primarily because I was unwilling to continue taking the risks associated with buying and holding the stuff. That said, I didn’t find the effects of long-term use (we’re talking over 40 years, here) to be debilitating personally, nor did I observe those effects in the people I knew, speaking strictly from anecdotal experience. Moreover, I was a professional during my time in SFO and before; in SFO I was a mid-level manager in a small IT firm who was promoted to director level. I personally knew MANY productive, responsible adults who used marijuana much as my parents’ generation used alcohol… i.e., two martinis after work. In other words…they used pot just as responsible people use alcohol, i.e., they didn’t get high on the job, just as responsible people don’t get blitzed or stay sloshed… just because alcohol is legal. I also knew a few folks who abused both pot and alcohol… albeit usually in a mutually-exclusive manner… and I’ve known many such throughout life. When I lived in CA I was fortunate enough to live, work, and move in socio-economic circles that contained VERY few of those genuine sleazeballs.
My point is the naysayers point to the Armageddon that will happen were we to legalize drugs. My experience tends to differ, and seems to be different from yours. In making my points I’m NOT saying your experience is or was invalid… it was just different. There are sleazeballs and n’eer-do-wells everywhere, regardless of their drug of choice. I’m of the personal opinion that pot is the lesser of two evils when it comes to alcohol and marijuana… and I miss it. I DO enjoy my beer and my single-malt but the quality of the high pales by comparison, and then there are those damned hangovers if I occasionally go over the line. 😉
Morgan: We’re pretty much on the same page, now that you’ve submitted your clarifications. I pretty well know where you’re coming from anyway, based on past “discussions.” You’re entirely correct that drugs are another manifestation of The Culture Wars, and we can agree to disagree on that point. That said… I’d delete Item Five in your taxonomy were I you. It is NOT true in all cases, but I suppose that’s life, eh? There are always exceptions that prove the rule… but in this case I think the exceptions cut the OTHER way.
- bpenni | 05/23/2009 @ 12:51Buck,
Yup, i hear ya. One thing to make clear is that I lived in much the same world you did, suits and ties and English shoes in the daytime, pot and t-shirts at night. Like I said, all of this left me feeling exta-remely hip to it all, and I’d seen the straight people who smoked dope at night for the same amount of time as you (you guessed it, I’m 64.)
Howsomever, my experience in this county has slapped me upside the head in a big, big way. I remember reading your experience with the local bikers who suddenly decided you were a child molester, which raises the question “Whaddaya do about people who are (a) overdosed on testosterone and godknowswhatelse, (b) consequently paranoid as hell and lacking in any perspective whatsoever, and (c) suddenly and irreversibly focused on you as the source of their unhappiness?”
My recent experience (in concert with some earlier ugliness which I had mercifully suppressed) suggests that when drugs are free, the nuts start to take over. And when it gets down to who’s the biggest badass, everybody loses – except, of course, those whose cultural aspirations pretty much peak out at head-banger music and “Oh Yeah?” Hunter Thompson nailed it when he described hanging out with the Hell’s Angels as boring, depressing and occasionally terrifying.
The thing about this that is the most difficult to address, since not personally experienced except by observation, is the effect of combining high-THC-percentage pot with the chaos of adolescence. I suspect you were in your 20s when you started, as I was, and of course what we were smoking in those days wasn’t nearly as schizophrenia-inducing as strains which have names like Trainwreck and AK-47. I haven’t seen much good effects on guys in their 20s and 30s who started smoking polio-weed in high school. What I have seen is a lot of guys that age who haven’t done anything and resent anybody trying to help.
Legalization has essentially already happened, at least around here, and I agree, I don’t know how it could be reversed. What I DON’T believe is that legalizing it is gonna do anything to control distribution, and I still think the analogy of the Mob is the best one. California (among others) is making casino gambling widely accessible on the pretext of guilt credits to the Indians, and to no one’s surprise, every single time the surrounding area is immediately flooded with whores, takedown artists, burglars, meth dealers and other upstanding citizens. The local economies are primarily stimulated by growth spurts in pawn shops, cheap motels and bail bondsmen. I don’t see any reason why legal marijuana is suddenly gonna flood the area with yuppies in nice suits who have a harmless private habit in the evenings.
Well, what do I know? Everything is personal to me; like I’ve said before, I came to California with a backpack and no family, education or prospects, and lived for a while in a world where I owned my own tuxedo and knew Symphony sponsors. I’ve had another profound experience with lowlife in my (ahem) middle age, and as they say in Louisiana, je me don’t like it.
God help us all.
- rob | 05/23/2009 @ 14:37Good points, Rob, about the potency of today’s pot vs. what we had in our youth… and about the effects on adolescents. Those are things to ponder, to be sure.
That said, we’re reasonably effective today about keeping alcohol away from adolescents… more or less… depending upon values and upbringing, mostly. I’m thinking we could be at least as effective where marijuana is concerned (and perhaps more so) if we took it out of the black market and moved it into the light. A lot of the problems we have today are because the distribution network is controlled largely by criminal elements, and I’ve seen the bloody results of THAT in the “Crack Wars” that occurred in Detroit during the ’80s. Some of the same sorts of things are going on in our border states, today… and that was what Tancredo was on about if you followed the link I posted earlier.
We all have a POV on this issue. My main argument is what we, as a society, are doing today ain’t working. I’ve seen and experienced the Dutch Model (the coffee houses, et al) and think they reached a workable accommodation. I’m thinking we could achieve the same sort of thing here… and we probably already have, in the Bay Area. Your mileage obviously varies.
Oh, well. I’m done. 😉
- bpenni | 05/23/2009 @ 15:31Thanks for the talk, Buck – always interesting to see how somebody else went through the last few decades. Like I said, this whole mess seems to be headed nowhere in a big hurry. What to do? And upbringing, the answer to be sure, is increasingly affected by statistics like over 30% of kids were born to single mothers last year. Yeeesh.
My last point, too: research indicates that the Dutch are also experiencing a high level of criminality around pot cafes. And even though it’s been 6 years or so since I lived in the Bay Area (Sausalito, working in the city,) my friends’ stories make it sound like SF isn’t as much fun as it used to be.
Oh, well. Stay healthy – maybe we can talk story sometime about the wonders we’ve seen.
Thanks again.
- rob | 05/23/2009 @ 16:09I totally got Morgan’s inclusion of number 5. He wasn’t slamming Libertarians, he was calling out the potheads of the party who only care about legalizing pot and are essentially liberal on all other issues.
I’m open to a discussion on legalizing pot, I’m not sure it’s the best thing to do, but I know our war on drugs certainly doesn’t seem to be working and I’m a pretty firm believer in personal liberty and responsibility.
By the way, Morgan – a commenter of mine has a post up at his blog taking down this very post. He was hung up on number 5, too and fairly unpleasant in his criticism. Unsurprisingly, he hasn’t posted my rebuttal comment. I may have lost a reader. 😉
- Daphne | 05/23/2009 @ 18:20I think the easiest ones to convert are the goo gooders and Non-discriminators, those compassionate souls who think life shouldn’t hold it’s share of hard knocks, consequences shouldn’t exist and life should be, above all, fair.
It’s fairly easy to gently knock down their positions with facts and logic without going ballistic, most of the time.
The ones that get me crazy are the abortion nuts who maintain that the life in a womb isn’t a baby until birth and tough shit if the mother gets a third trimester abortion – it’s her right. Those people make me nuts and I always lose my cool with those pro-murderers.
- Daphne | 05/23/2009 @ 18:54Morgan: We’re pretty much on the same page, now that you’ve submitted your clarifications…That said… I’d delete Item Five in your taxonomy were I you. It is NOT true in all cases, but I suppose that’s life, eh?
Over on Right Wing News where this is cross-posted, there is also a whole bunch of comments transforming the entire discussion into one about legalizing drugs. How does that not prove exactly what I said, that there are a lot of people who can take a conversation about anything, and turn it into a conversation about legalizing drugs?
As I’ve said before — you’ve managed to come up with a whole slew of intelligent, reasonably-thought-out positions on other things so you’re not included in this (or if you do fit the description, you don’t fit very well). But this certainly is a cultural issue. I see this drug as something that manufactures liberals. That makes it decidedly on-topic. People become fascinated in this culture, and suddenly their concept of freedom is unbelievably whacked-out. If they’re required to stay in a crappy apartment day and night with a camera trained on them every minute, but their precious drugs are legal, they are “free.” And that other guy, if he can go where he pleases, eat meat, drink beer, work, play, own guns, but can’t smoke pot…then he is “not free.” There are a lot of people who see it that way — and it’s a most effective way of hamstringing the common man, if you happen to be a politician in power. You know it’s true.
I’m past twenty years of consistently opposing state lotteries (in vain), for exactly that same reason. Governments letting folks do stupid crap, I’m good with that. Governments gettin’ in the business — that is a completely different kettle o’fish.
- mkfreeberg | 05/23/2009 @ 22:36[…] ALL of this was inspired by a great article about the Ten Terraces of Liberalism. I loved the article, and highly recommend it to all my leaders. And I wouldn’t have read it in the […]
- The different degrees of Republicans explained, and where they go wrong « Smash Mouth Politics | 05/24/2009 @ 21:14[…] trace the path upon which the momentarily negligent become hardcore fanatical liberals, identifying ten terraces descending into the pit. The final terrace is, of course, a simple thing to define. Extremist; […]
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- House of Eratosthenes | 08/29/2009 @ 06:19[…] for future reference: Morgan Freeburg’s sieve for grading liberals at his House of Eratosthenes. To summarize: Liberal Dimwit Terrace Number One What I Call Them: […]
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- House of Eratosthenes | 09/13/2009 @ 08:56[…] They begin the certain tumble down the ten terraces of liberalism. […]
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