"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Time to End the War on Drugs
Portugal’s ten year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. By Richard Branson.
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Although I wonder what right or obligation any government has to prevent drug use in the first place.
The master has the right to tell his servants, i.e. subjects, what they can and cannot ingest.
Subject. ...Men in free governments are subjects as well as citizens; as citizens they enjoy rights and franchises; as subjects they are bound to obey the laws. The term is little used, in this sense, in countries enjoying a republican form of government. Swiss Nat. Ins. Co. v Miller, 267 U.S. 42,45 S.Ct. 213, 214, 69 L.Ed. 504.~ Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition (c.1991), page 1425
The latter is true, I believe, because a true "republican form of government" is restrained by the laws of nature, that is to say, the natural law of the human world. What you and I do not have the lawful authority to do, the government does not have the lawful authority to do. In other words, it is a government that "derives its just powers from the consent of the governed [its voluntary members]". This is why you now are "subject" to a "democratic form of government", and not republican.
"Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." ~ James Madison, Federalist No. 10
"A true state is distinguished from nonstate societies by the presence of political leaders who maintain a socially approved monopoly on the legal use of legitimate force." (Service, 1975)
Suverans2, you're subject to that monopoly of force, whether you consent or not, whether it's legitimate or not. If you don't think you're subject to the State's enforcement, grow a some pot and start openly advertising and selling it. You'll learn the effectiveness of your legalistic word-magic.
There is no voluntary city-Statism (civilization,) which is what your Black's Law Dictionary spell-casting rituals assume.
Only people in an egalitarian Non-State sociopolitical typology are observed to be free. "Historically, people in non-state societies are relatively autonomous and sovereign. They generate their own subsistence with little or no assistance from outside sources. They bow to no external political leaders." (Service, 1975)
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Service, Elman (1975), Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York: Norton.
NON-STATE AND STATE SOCIETIES
http://faculty.smu.edu/rkemper/cf_3333/Non_State_and_State_Societies.pdf
For anyone who may be interested here's a bit more from the Online Etymology Dictionary.
republican (adj.) 1712, "belonging to a republic," from republic + -an (see -ian). In noun sense of "one who favors a republic," it is recorded from 1690s; and in sense of a member of a specific U.S. political party (the Anti-Federalists) from 1782, though this was not the ancestor of the modern U.S. Republican Party, which dates from 1854. [Emphasis added]
republic c.1600, "state in which supreme power rests in the people," from Fr. république, from L. respublica (abl. republica), lit. res publica "public interest, the state," from res "affair, matter, thing" + publica, fem. of publicus "public" (see public).
"'Constitutionalism': The White Man's Ghost Dance," an essay by Bob Black, states:
"Constitutionalists are certain that conniving judges, legislators and lawyers switched their own false law for the real law when the people weren't looking ... Constitutionalists look upon law as the word-magic of lawyer-necromancers who draw their wizardly powers from grimoires, from books of magic spells they have selfishly withheld from the people. Constitutionalists have extracted from these books -- from judicial opinions, from the Constitution, from legal dictionaries, from the Bible, from what-have-you -- white magic with which to confound the dark powers of legislation..."
They all think that somehow, some way, agricultural city-Statism (civilization) will change its spots.
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"Constitutionalism": The White Man's Ghost Dance
Robert Black
http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/black/sp001650.html