Free Advice and Opinions

The most obvious motivation to prohibit any form of recreation is fear. The Prohibitionists list the various evils that people, presumably all people, will surely do if they are permitted to recreate by, for instance, smoking a joint:
They tell us it’s a “gateway drug”, by which they mean that more and more will be required to satisfy the craving, until the user moves on to try stronger and stronger drugs, with greater and greater frequency, until finally a formerly-innocent teenager (”Johnny was such a good boy”) becomes a ne’er-do-well, a lazy bum, a thief or a parasite on government welfare programs, and finally he either dies in ignominy in some alley with a needle hanging out of his arm, or perhaps he “hits rock-bottom”, repents, and “goes forth and recreates no more.”
To say that prohibitionists are motivated by fear that all who smoke pot will meet such a fate does not go far enough: clearly the fear has no basis in reality so it must accurately be called COWARDICE. Not long ago, I called a radio talk-show host named Phil Valentine to advocate abolition of prohibition laws. He did not even attempt to refute anything I said to him, instead he told me of the harm I must be doing to my lungs by “inhaling”. I reasoned, “So you’d have the government protect us from ourselves”. He smugly replied, “No, I’d have the government protect us from you”. There you have it, taxpayers, Phil would have the government protect society from the Great Pariah, John Ray. At least Phil’s not abashed of his cowardice!
Those who arbitrate Morality, the Self-Righteous Anointed Ones who accuse, try, and convict us of all sorts of imagined “crimes” without the inconvenience of a jury, or evidence, or testimony, or cross-examination, or any other vestige of jurisprudence, would be elated to throw us in prison for life, or better yet, to place us in a “Re-education Resort” until we are “Healed”. Then we can safely be returned to normal life, where we will dutifully take our places in factory assembly lines so we can be “productive members of society”, just like Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s “1984”, after he was “converted” in Room 101.
Prohibitionists have another motivation, even uglier than the cowardice discussed above, and that is ENVY: They say, “If I can’t have that kind of fun, then neither can anyone else!” Their error of grammar, using ‘can’ in place of ‘may’, is, at least subconsciously, a sneaky way of refusing to acknowledge that they attempt to deny permission, not to discount possibility, but I digress. Back to ENVY: the Self-Righteous Anointed Ones seem to believe that they are assured their place at the Right Hand of God, if only they abstain from having any fun, but if they don’t get to have fun, they’ll be DAMNED if they’ll just sit by while someone else shamelessly -gasp- Recreates!! Ovine in their docility, they resent and ENVY those who do not kowtow to their authority. Christians are correct in calling ENVY a “Deadly Sin”, and prohibitionists will surely rue the day they misused their numerical majority and empowered government to at least attempt to prohibit recreation.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 8:20 am and is filed under Politics, Religion, Prohibition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.