Conservatives Aren't NORML
My letter to Andrew Sullivan: The nut case who sent you the e-mail in defense of our Marijuana laws spouted out a lot of facts about The Netherlands, but didn't back any of them up. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. For some well researched statistics, check out norml.org or the mpp.org. I was glad to see you were unconvinced. Let's use prohibition as an example: did prohibition stop, or even slow, drinking in this country? No. It did make the mafia stronger, just as prohibition of drugs has made the cartels stronger. But even that is off the point. No one would argue that coke and heroin are bad news, but there are plenty of arguments that pot is no worse, or even less worse, than alcohol or tobacco. And having John Ahscroft (your kind of conservative?) busting terminal cancer patients who are smoking pot for pain, in states that voted to let them do it, under a doctor's orders, well, let's see some right-wing nut defend that.I could care less what your sexual orientation is. When it comes to politics, if you want to be in the same party as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and GW Bush for that matter, that's your stupid mistake to make. My contention is with your statement that somehow Republicans stand for "small government, a free society, market economics, and a strong defense." Certainly this doesn't apply to the idiot you "elected." In case you've been busy, the latest stories were about how Bush has increased spending more than any president since Johnson. Even if you take homeland defense out of it, what you have here is a deficit spender who says he wants smaller government while he doles out tax cuts and government projects to Enron. The blue dog Democrats seem to be the only ones who want a balanced budget and controlled spending. Bush only cares about re-election and he knows that pork is the ticket.
Furthermore, you seem to suggest that Democrats aren't for a "free society." What kind of logic is that? Only Republicans are for freedom? Give me a break. This is the typical crap a lot of you right-wingers spew: if anyone is against your policies they're somehow not patriotic. Please spare me. You and John Ahscroft can go sing some hymns about God and Freedom but that doesn't mean you're for a free society. To say that progressives aren't shows that you'd rather call us commies than debate us, Mr. McCarthy.
Finally, I wonder where you come down on your Religious fanatics' (Face it, how many atheist Republicans are there? The party has been taken over by Ralph "Enron" Reed and company) feelings about the environment. Are you with the James Watt theory that "We don't need to protect the environment; the second coming is at hand." This seems to be this born-again Jesus freak president's position. So, you'd have these guys destroy the world in the name of a "free market"? And, do you really think Bush is for a free market? Only when it helps the people who got him elected. This is the politics of money, and it is anything but free. Republicans are for the elite, and free markets, if they ever were truly free, or if they ever actually calculated the true costs and benefits of actions, would be the one thing Republicans couldn't stand.
Beyond all the philosophical discussions you and I could have on conservatives vs. progressives, the bottom line at the moment is that this drunk, AWOL coke-head in the White House was not elected. Have you read Greg Palast's Harper's article? The Katherine Harris scrub list contained 8000 names it shouldn't have in Florida, mostly of black people who were wrongly (feloniously) turned away from the polls, in some cases at gun point. Seems the only way your precious "conservative" could win an "election" is to have white state troopers in Florida point guns at black people trying to vote.
If they were pointing guns at gay people, I assume you'd still profess that they are the party of a "free society." Even while they're forcing my kids to pray in school, arresting you for sodomy, forcing abortions into back alleys with clothes hangers, cutting taxes for billionaires, sponsoring third world coups, bombing civilians in the middle east, giving money to terrorists while denouncing them, and executing innocent people?
Scott Supak
http://supak.com
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