Yeah, The Right Wing Is Sooo Pro-Pothead
David Bernstein worries that the outlook on Randy Barnett's case to allow medical marijuana (Raich v. Ashcroft) looks glum, according to Nina Totenberg, then blames it all on the "liberals" (a code word used by right-wingers for "turds who stand for everything that's wrong in the universe). Now, I'm no liberal, but I can smell horseshit just fine when somebody sticks it right under my nose; for example:
...I think that Randy did a great job. Whether that will be enough to overcome the statist liberal obssession with ensuring that every aspect of human life may be regulated by the federal government (despite a profound lack of constitutional legitimacy for such a position)...
Oh, please. Like the nutbag fundamentalists (read: right wingers, mainly) aren't riding the lead horses for the dumbass war on drugs -- along with about a dozen other dumb wars; all based on their selective interpretations of their favorite book of fables. And I say that as a libertarian more than anything else. Certainly not a Democrat. Or a turd...I mean, liberal.
Getting back to the case, here's an interesting excerpt Jim Lindgren pulled from Larry Solum's account of the proceedings.
Souter: Suppose that 100,000 people are in chemotherapy in California. Then couldn't there be 100,000 users of medical marijuana?Barnett: There could be.
Souter: If there are 34 million people in California, then there could be 100,000 people in chemotherapy.
Barnett: It is important to remember that the law confines medical cannabis use to the people who are sick and have a physicians recommendation. Wickard v. Filburn's aggregation principle does not apply if the activity involved is noneconomic.
Souter: But isn't the argument that it is economic activity if it has a sizeable effect on the market?
Barnett: No. The effect on the market is only relevant if it is market activity.
Souter: But in Lopez wasn't the effect on the market much more remote than the effect involved in this case?
Barnett: The point is that economic activity and personal liberty are two different categories.
Souter: That is not a very realistic premise.
Barnett: The premise is that it is possible to differentiate economic activity from personal activity. Prostitution is economic activity, and there may be some cross substitution effects between prostitution and sex within marriage, but that does not make sex within marriage economic activity. You look at the nature of the activity to determine whether or not it is economic.
Breyer: If marijuana is medically helpful, can't your clients go to the FDA and get it rescheduled. Then if the FDA rules against them, they can go to court and the FDA ruling can be reviewed for abuse of discretion. And if there is no abuse of discretion, then wouldn't I believe as a judge and an individual that it is doubtful there is a medical benefit? Is medicine by regulation better than medicine by referendum?
RB: I would simply ask you to read the account of obstruction of research in the amicus brief and the Institute for Medicine report cited by both us and the government. It is true that marijuana is smoked, but that is because it saves the lives of some sick people.
I hope you get that horseshit sensor in your nose fixed because it it's interfering with your ability to detect sarcasm. Randy Barnett mentions the Republican infatuation with the drug war that you pointed out in the very same sentence you quoted.
nash at November 30, 2004 12:39 PM
Thanks, but I read just fine, too. My comment was a comment on the tiresome use of that word "liberal" as David Bernstein wrote it -- as a way of writing people off entirely through a sort of name-calling.
Amy Alkon at November 30, 2004 12:53 PM
One of the amicus briefs in this case came from the states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi. It supported the California pot law, which was enacted by the people not by the liberal legislature.
The description of *federal* drug laws as a liberal enterprise (dating back to FDR) is fundamentally sound.
Richard at December 1, 2004 2:30 AM
I'm sorry but the word libertarian is not very clear to me. Are they hopscotch liberals or pothead conservatives?
I suspect that with all the name-calling if you feel bad being labeled (even branded) a liberal you come to say: "Oh but I am a good Fiscal Conservative, you know." "Hum. So you're kind of a half-breed conservative?" "Well in fact I'm a Libertarian. Yes, that's it, a Libertarian."
Makes your reservation.
I don't mean you have to chose your side but it doesn't make sense to me to try and marketing-mix different political standpoints.
Simply put: it's not a political statement to say "My heart is on the Left side but my wallet is on the Right side."
Anyway I think citizens without a party affiliation are not required to find a single word to express the nuance of their views. For instance swing voters are perhaps more broad-minded than self-anointed true-blue liberals and conservatives.
viktor at December 1, 2004 10:51 AM
Perhaps you've been too busy to notice, but FDR is no longer president, and in fact, has been absent from the scene for quite some time. "Liberals" don't want drastic drug laws. Come on, be real. PS The biggest nanny-staters out there are the conservatives.
Amy Alkon at December 1, 2004 11:34 AM
Sorry, but I'm a little hard to place. I am, yes, a libertarian, and fiscally conservative, both. Sorry not to have a nutshell for you, but that's the way it stands. I'm against government funding for NPR and I think parents should pay their children's way through school, not rely on property taxes from the rest of the country, unless they're quite poor, and then we should pay, so we have an educated populace and no permanent underclass. And I think drugs and prostitution and any behavior between consenting adults shoudl be legal.
Amy Alkon at December 1, 2004 11:37 AM
Thanks for your answer(s). I think FDR is a little more than a protohistoric president (middle-class America, a spontaneous baby-boom generation?). As a liberal I think all that is not directly profitable should be subsidized, partly or temporarily at least. School, NHS cannot be profitable even if everybody wants these services to be efficient, cost-effective...
Of course by Francis Fukuyama's standards it sounds like a prehistorical idea - maybe you remember the ice age chilly war, just before the world became hemiplegic. With Liberal now a hiss-word I find the Left-of-center retreat spot a bit crowded.
viktor at December 1, 2004 10:27 PM
I'll pay for fire, health care, roads, and health care and schooling for those who can't afford it. The rest should pay for their own damn lives and interests!
Amy Alkon at December 1, 2004 10:44 PM
Someday, Amy, you’ll be astounded at how stupid that ideology is, and you’ll be embarrassed that you were ever duped into embracing it. Your suggested reading list begins with Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class.”
SeaRaven at December 2, 2004 8:49 AM
Which ideology, exactly, are you relating to Veblen? This is only about consumption in that conspicious consumers (of McMansions and shiny new Navigators) are expecting the rest of us to pick up their costs. There's a Spanish proverb: "Take what you need and pay for it." Too many people want to shove the costs of their choices on the rest of us.
Amy Alkon at December 2, 2004 10:12 AM
I'm referring to the libertarian religion, wherein the price system is God.
The unfettered market “solution” is not always optimal. What about that lady who parked her Mercedes outside Starbucks? Do you not want government to have the authority to intervene in her decision-making? (Oh, but she can *afford* to park there, so it’s OK!)
Some people don’t have enough money to buy food, clothing or shelter, even though they have the “right” to buy it. Do you think the current allocation of wealth is fair and that it’s solely the function of “hard work”? Or do you think maybe that power and luck might have had a wee bit to do with it?
If you want to see one of the most visible market solutions perpetrated by the god of libertarianism, take a look at the sky over L.A.
Next on your list: Galbraith’s “The Affluent Society.”
SeaRaven at December 2, 2004 6:54 PM
How many liberal politicians have openly called for drug legalization, Amy? The only public figures of any note doing that are Milton Friedman conservatives. The Congressional Black Caucus was behind the increased penalties for crack, for example.
There are two types of conservatives, libertarians and authoritarians, but there is only one type of liberal.
Richard at December 2, 2004 7:57 PM