Re: Re: Re: The Big Lie
Mike Bennett (luchando@email.msn.com)
Tue, 7 Apr 1998 21:10:25 -0700
Wally,
Hard to know where to start. These were issues during the sixties, maybe
but not now. Jimi scared mothers and fathers of kids but not the power
structure in any way. Charlie Manson scared everyone. Now that was
anathema!
Autopsies can not reveal addiction, except in advanced cases of alcoholism
and years and years of heroin addiction. It is determined by drug-seeking
behaviors. Jimi is still dead from drug use.
If you need drugs to feel good, you should head immediately for the nearest
12-step meeting or psychotherapist.
The use of drugs and alcohol cost the taxpayers billions of dollars in
medical care, accidents, homicides, suicides, etc. So drug use is not
victimless. Alcohol and/or drugs are involved in 70% of domestic violence
cases. Sixty percent of felony arrests for crimes other than possession are
of people under the influence.
Whatever spirituality may be, it does not come from a bottle or a syringe.
Drugs cause permanent brain changes which can be mistaken for spiritual
phenomena.
In the sixties (the purpose of the list, after all), there were those who
were self-centered and self-indulgent who wanted to be free to do their own
thing, no matter what the societal consequences, and usually just to piss
off authority figures. Their sentences began with a whine: "I don't see
why I can't..........."
Others were more concerned with service to their communities and were
interested in organizing workers and in creating a more just society even if
it meant tearing down the existing one, and they were willing to fight and
die for those reasons. They believed, as I do that the good of the greater
community must come before any fantasy "rights" of the individual. You can
not do drugs because it is harmful to the rest of us. Drugs were made
illegal because of the behaviors of those who used them. Being arrested has
saved more dope fiends lives than anything else. Libertarianism is another
name for selfishness.
Mike Bennett