Epic Rant Alert: Penn Jillete Laying Wood
[Updated at 5:02 pm]
I was surprised but pleased to see Drudge link to noted Libertarian Penn Jillete’s EPIC rant on the war on drugs and particularly Obama’s disgusting hypocrisy thereto, embedded below. This issue is where I, and many others, part ways with the GOP and the rather large Drug Warrior segment of the Tea Party. The very principle of prohibition is contrary to basic notions of self-ownership and liberty, see, e.g., Lincoln quote below. If the GOP had any brains, much less principled commitment to freedom, it would have a come to Jesus moment and plant the Gadsden flag on this issue, where it rightly belongs. But who am I kidding, tepid social conservatives such as Rubio, Christie, Daniels, and Jindal are the future of the party, while Gary Johnson, Mike Lee, Justin Amash, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul are dismissed to the children’s table where their antiquated notions of individual liberty, adherence to the Constitution, and Washingtonian (beware of foreign entanglements) foreign policy cannot harm the GOP’s stakeholders.
Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.
-Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) U.S. President. Speech, 18 Dec. 1840, to Illinois House of Representatives
Well said ryan