John
P. Walters just can't seem to contain himself. Give the career powercrat a
job with the imperial appellation of "Drug Czar" and he just
instinctively grasps for more.
Last
summer, for example, the Top Drug Thug made headlines by declaring that
simple, nonviolent marijuana gardeners are dangerous terrorists.
While
you puzzle over that oxymoronic disconnect, consider this further quote
from the Redding Record Searchlight: "...marijuana gardens are a
terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the
environment."
Apparently,
Walters wants to proclaim himself Terrorist Czar, Public Health Czar,
Safety Czar and Environmental Czar as well.
The
authoritarian thought process that leads the power-addicted to equate a
grower of weeds with a fanatical jihadist offers an easy comparison
between the language of Thuggery and the language of Freedom.
For
example, speaking in the language of Thuggery, the same article quotes
Walters as saying, "Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and
terror."
Noting
that the War on Drugs has caused more misery – loss of life, loss of
money, loss of property, loss of freedom – than actual drug use, a
libertarian speaking the language of Freedom would respond, "Don't
pay taxes. They fund government violence and terror."
Of
course, it's infinitely more likely that buying gasoline made from Saudi
Arabian crude funds violence and terror, but there's no evidence that
Walters and his Praetorian Guard are running amok raiding Exxon stations.
Following
pot raids on clandestine gardens throughout California last summer, the
Weed Warrior warned that some growers were armed with assault rifles.
"Assault
Rifle" is the language of Thuggery.
In
a free society where people have the right to defend themselves from
coercive thugs who work for illegal, unconstitutional government agencies,
these weapons would be known as "self defense rifles."
That's
the language of Freedom.
"These
people are armed; they're dangerous," the Federal Weed Whacker
further fulminated, and then went off the charts by calling them
"violent criminal terrorists."
Of
course, drug enforcement hoods are also armed, dangerous, violent
criminals and they terrorize innocent people. No-knock military raids at
wrong addresses are not merely the isolated incidents Drug War apologists
claim. The libertarian Cato Institute calls it "An Epidemic of 'Isolated
Incidents.'" Author Radley Balko documents the wrong-address
military-style raids that terrorize innocent people, brutalize children
and kill family pets and bystanders in his book, Overkill: The Rise of
Paramilitary Police Raids in America.
Considering
that roughly ninety percent of what the government does is
unconstitutional, the drug thugs are the real criminals because they serve
a criminal government.
Walters
warned that too many people write off marijuana as harmless. "We have
kind of a 'reefer blindness,'" he claimed.
"Reefer
Blindness?" Sounds like a made-for-cable remake of the laughably
mindless government propaganda shtick-flick, "Reefer Madness,"
that suckered many an uninformed voter of the 1950s into believing that
marijuana was a Devil Weed that caused young men to go stark raving
loony-bonkers and drove good little white middleclass teenage Christian
girls into lives of depravity by succumbing to frenzied orgiastic sex with
(gasp!) Negroes and Mexicans.
Yes,
drug prohibition was racist from the beginning. Still is. According to the
ACLU, America has 260,000 people in state prisons for nonviolent drug
charges and over 70 percent of them are Black and Latino.
By
this standard, if pot farmers are terrorists John Walters is racist.
If
you believe in the Drug War you have taken the Blue Pill, gone over to the
Dark Side, become an evil Ringwraith of Sauron in a lost land formerly
known as The Republic of These United States.
Postscript:
There's a bright side to this story. The article describes how, after
raiding a remote pot patch, "the officers who are destroying the
gardens are performing hard, dangerous work in rough terrain."
See?
Who says Americans won't work jobs illegal immigrants work?
Join
the DEA. Work like an honest Mexican.