Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jun 2003
Source: Flamborough Post (CN ON)
Copyright: 2003, Flamborough Post
Contact:  http://www.haltonsearch.com/hr/fp/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1639
Author: Chris Buors
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n861/a13.html?1153

LIBERTY AT STAKE BY OUTLAWING POT

Dear Editor: It is hard to take the advice of editors regarding law 
seriously. Whoever wrote the editorial Sifting through the smoke (June 6, 
Flamborough Post) is not taking into consideration the timeless wisdom of 
the ages.

"Whenever legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of 
the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put 
themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved 
from any further obedience," wrote John Locke in 1690.

"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, 
and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our 
temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into 
bondage," declared Rev. John Witherspoon, the only man of the cloth to sign 
the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the 
law," wrote Sir Winston Churchill.

There never was any respect for drug laws.

Well, apparently there is an excuse for breaking the law. In fact, it was 
Martin Luther King Jr. who reminds us that "we have a duty to disobey 
unjust law."

Unjust laws do not live up to the cardinal virtues of St. Thomas Aquinas. 
Prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude are those virtues and not one 
is evident in drug prohibition. Vainglory is the first of the Seven Deadly 
sins and is defined as wanting your way so bad that you would be willing to 
harm another to get your way. Giving someone a criminal record for their 
vices is vainglory defined.

On and on a liberty lover like myself could go. But we wouldn't want to 
corrupt the children with foolish notions like that they own themselves or 
anything like that, would we?

Better not let the children hear any of that kind of "revolutionary" talk 
from liberty's greatest champions. Who is it that preached to obey all laws 
no matter how unjust - Hitler, Stalin and every other tyrant?

We do the youth of this nation no favour passing hypocritical unjust laws. 
Liberty and not love of the state is my message and I have the wisdom of 
the greatest men who ever lived on my side.

Chris Buors,

Libertarian Party of Manitoba
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom