Adopting what might be called the Qaddafi defense, the head of Bahrain’s military claimed that the country’s brutal crackdown on dissent was entirely justified because the kingdom’s security forces had been confronted by young protesters under the influence of mind-altering drugs.
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As if Bahrain’s leadership weren’t screwy enough when it comes to viewing drug effects, a right wing Christian organization, the American Family Association (AFA), considers yoga to be ‘diametrically opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ because yoga is said to induce an altered state of consciousness in the practitioner.
So it’s not the alleged health effects of drugs that worries the Jesus addicts, it’s the altered state of mind. They probably think it competes with their own altered state.
http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/586961/religious_right_organization%3A_jesus_hates_yoga
I guess it is somehow evil to expand ones own consciousness thru meditation!? The Right Wing Christians are in lockstep with the Wahhabist. After all, the Wahhabist believe the same thing -> that altered states of consciousness are somehow works of the devil. As they (Wahhabist) have openly attacked the Sufis for their mystical or esoteric practices pertaining to meditation and trace/dance.
Sleep is an altered state of consciousness. I suppose sleep is unchristian.
Who was it that said democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner?
Jhelion, that would be Ben Franklin “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what’s for dinner, liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.” or something to that effect.
“country’s brutal crackdown on dissent was entirely justified because the kingdom’s security forces had been confronted by young protesters under the influence of mind-altering drugs.”
Damn, that’s what Richard Nixon said.
And it worked well for that Dick so…
I believe that first there must be a sufficient effort applied in the court of public opinion regarding the outrageous “interpretation” of the Commerce Clause, before enough success can be achieved within our judicial branch.
That said, any legal challenge on our behalf, especially one in tune with conservative thinking — considering how they generally oppose us, giving us more people who need persuading — contains the potential for a positive step in informing the public.
The ultimate amendment in the Constitution should be the ninth, since it is clearly a catchall amendment:
“The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Other rights retained by the people? Such as the “truths to be self-evident” in our Declaration of Independence, including the naturally given and unalienable right to liberty?
I believe the greatest question our nation faces in law is whether or not our fundamental rights are protected by our Constitution.
Liberty, by its purest definition (and the most appropriate, given its objectivity), is the condition of being free from restriction or control.
By proclaiming that your liberty is naturally given (not granted by mankind in whole or in part), and unalienable (cannot be taken away), “We the people” have given full authority for you to do anything you want, except directly opposing the right itself (i.e. directly infringing upon the rights of another person).
I emphasized the word directly, because regulating acts based solely on indirect or potential rights infringement creates a slippery slope (that we are on now) undermining the unalienable part of your liberty, given the fact that the act of breathing indirectly leads to all rights-infringing acts.
Even if our public servants do not regulate breathing, a “liberty line” must be drawn in law separating that act from ones regulated by them. That legal line (dominantly determined by the Commerce Clause “interpretation”) is illegal, if the rights defined in our Declaration of Independence are protected by our Constitution.
I believe that when we define liberty as a self-evidently naturally given and unalienable right protected by supreme law, we create the most brilliant social construct ever possible.
That boldest of claims is based on the facts that liberty is your greatest asset (you could have all of the money in the world, but if no one has the liberty to spend it, you have nothing), and that when the only limit against your liberty is the right itself, you have optimal liberty in a civilized society.
We are the only nation prominently defining liberty that way, empowering both the majority and minority of Americans.
However, we are effectively standing by and allowing the most brilliant social construct ever possible to be unjustly ignored (to empower the majority, and defy the minority).
I believe we can, and must, do better.
LOL — Of course, that comment belongs in Pete’s last post about the tenth amendment! And I thought the coffee had taken effect.
“If we say they’re on drugs we can do anything to them! The United Nations agrees! People on drugs have no human rights!”
The book Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse is about how the author was one of the few people in Germany in the 1920s who opposed the coming Nazi regime. He smokes weed in the book, published in 1927, and the last section is an elaborate hallucinogenic trip. Drugs have long been associated with dissent.