But Now You Know

Obama Could Earn That Nobel Prize, After All

What could move a Conservative advocate of Liberty to commend Barack Obama on a policy decision? How about taking perhaps the first significant pro-freedom action by a president since Reagan?

Obama has pretty much failed the “peace” part of his campaign/policy promises…which is really bad, because that’s the only good part of his entire platform…until now.

His Iraq policy is a mirror of what Bush was claiming to plan, anyhow. His Afghanistan policy is one of increasing warfare and expanded support of the terrorism-sponsoring Pakistani government. He isn’t actually closing Guantanamo. He is pushing to maintain the unconstitutional, police-state PATRIOT Act. His government has been more transparent than Bush’s, but that’s like having more water than the Sahara Desert; he’s still been secretive, and deceptive.

But he’s now doing one thing right.

Obama is the first Democratic president I know of to actually act on the Liberal claim of opposition to the insane drug war. At all.

In case you didn’t know, he has actually rescinded the Bush/Clinton orders to target, under unconstitutional Federal law, medical marijuana users in states where that treatment is legal.

Carter didn’t do anything good about the drug prohibition. Clinton…well, he was the first president to attack the medical marijuana users. Johnson is the guy who started the modern drug war. FDR and Truman were the ones who pushed the prohibition of marijuana in the first place.

Reagan privately opposed drug prohibition, but sold out on the “you’ve gotta pick your battles” theory of compromise with the badguys.

The 1994 Republican Revolution involved some rumblings of decriminalizing marijuana, but of course they sold out all Conservative, pro-liberty principles, within a few years. Gingrich adopted the very desirable platform of the Contract with America based on the popularity of liberty in the polls, but never believed in it.

Anyway, to get back to the topic at hand, the last two presidents violated the Constitution, especially the 9th and 10th amendments, by specifically going after medical marijuana users in those states where it had been legalized. I had no reason to expect otherwise of Obama’s Business as Usual administration, but they have announced that this practice will now end.

I commend him, on what is actually the first important pro-liberty action from a president I can recall having encountered in years. Drug prohibition is one of the most harmful and inexcusable of American domestic policies, but is generally overlooked, or made worse, by the Mainstream political sellouts.

If he kept going down that path, he’d actually deserve to have been given a Nobel prize…years from now, when he left office.

October 26, 2009 Posted by kazvorpal | liberty, Politics | alfred nobel, decriminalization, drug prohibition, drugs, hemp, marijuana, medical marijuana, nobel peace prize, nobel prize, obama, pot, prohibition, recreational drugs | 2 Comments