He who reforms himself has done more towards reforming the public than a crowd or noisy, impotent patriots.
Our current prison state has the dual effect of getting rid of a superfluous population of basically unskilled workers (with a close race-class correlation), and also demonizing them... The drug war is basically for this - It has nothing to do with drugs, but it has plenty to do with criminalizing an unwanted population and scaring everybody else.
The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.
Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.
The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and comcribs. Men will walk upright now, women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.
And on the seventh day, god stepped back and said and said, "This is my creation, perfect in every way... oh, dammit I left all this pot all over the place. Now they'll think I want them to smoke it... Now I have to create Republicans."
God is a too palpably clumsy answer; an answer which shows a lack of delicacy towards us thinkers-fundamentally, even a crude prohibition to us: you shall not think!
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
We learn from history that we do not learn from history
Islam makes very large claims for itself. In its art, there is a prejudice against representing the human form at all. The prohibition on picturing the prophet - who was only another male mammal - is apparently absolute. So is the prohibition on pork or alcohol or, in some Muslim societies, music or dancing. Very well then, let a good Muslim abstain rigorously from all these. But if he claims the right to make me abstain as well, he offers the clearest possible warning and proof of an aggressive intent.
Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal.
The prohibition is general. No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give to Congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretense by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.
State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life. Prohibitions and regulations have by their general obstructive tendency fostered the growth of the spirit of wastefulness.
Man has free choice, or otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards and punishments would be in vain.
If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.
Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
I was getting sick and tired of being lectured by dear friends with their little bottles of water and their regular visits to the gym. All of a sudden, we've got this voluntary prohibition that has to do with health and fitness. I'm not really in favor of health and fitness.
Taqwaa is not by praying all night and fasting all day but rather it is abiding by the commands of Allah and staying away from His prohibitions.
It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."
The lesson has already been learned with alcohol prohibition. We tried to engineer an alcohol-free society and ended up with huge criminal enterprises, government corruption, children lured into organized crime and random violence that took the lives of countless innocent people.
I'm questioning it. We're trying to get a lot of money for health and education and I'm wondering... You look at these gangs, and I look back at Prohibition. When we didn't allow alcohol, what did we have? We had gangs. We had big gangs. It's something that needs to be discussed a little more. It's an economic issue and a violence issue.
Discovery can give no right of ownership, for whatever is discovered must have been already here to be discovered. If a man makes a wheelbarrow, or a book, or a picture, he has a moral right to that particular wheelbarrow, or book, or picture, but no right to ask that others be prevented from making similar things. Such a prohibition, though given for the purpose of stimulating discovery and invention, really in the long run operates as a check upon them.
Our current draconian laws prohibiting the use of marijuana by responsible adults are doubly flawed. Not only does such prohibition violate fundamental freedoms but also. . . it undermines personal health and public safety. Regardless of your views on the civil liberties issues. . .another compelling justification for marijuana law reform: that it will promote health and safety for all of us, including our nation's children.
In early January I introduced my legislation, which, besides prohibiting Federal funding of human cloning, also expresses the sense of Congress that foreign nations should establish total prohibition on human cloning as well.
All I kin git out o' the Wickersham position on prohibition is that the distinguished jurist seems to feel that if we'd let 'em have it the problem o' keepin' 'em from gitten;' it would be greatly simplified
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