Juan Williams: Bigot or Just Human?

In a little slice of Jungian synchronicity I was reading an article about why 'Islamophobia” is a reasonable and logical feeling  when I heard the news that Juan Williams, Senior News Editor for National Public Radio and Fox News Commentator had been fired for saying something Monday night on the Bill O'Rielly show.

If you don't know what he was fired about, here's what he said that so raised the NPR ire.

Some people say he was badly bigoted in his statement. I've been listening to Juan, both of Fox and NPR for years and at least in my book he's one of the most fair, call it like it is kinda guys. This was a statement of opinion, an honest feeling that I'm sure practically everyone can identify with.

I think he was being reasonable, candid, and truthful in what he said. He was exercising his first amendment rights and NPR, a government funded organization gave him the boot. I'm not so conspiratorial as to think he was fired because of a large donation made to NPR recently by George Sorros, but as Einstein said, or maybe it was Sherlock Holmes, there are no coincidences.

It's being reported that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called attention to Williams' statement and demanded that action be taken against him. They're saying that Juan Williams was there to agree with Bill O'Rielly and support what they percieve as his anti-Muslim views. That tells me they've taking what he said out of context, and likely they've never watched Juan on Fox News. If they did they would know he's one of their handful of token liberals.

Now I feel really bad for all those normal, hardworking, American Muslims who are just like everyone else, trying to get along. Knowing that a large part of the population is afraid of you, not because of anything you've done, but because you happen to look and dress the same as someone bad, has got to be quite a burden. I imagine it feels a lot like being held accountable for 400 years of slavery because my ancestors were also white.

I don't like it but I have the same feeling Mr. Williams does.  I imagine a lot of people feel the same way about some group.  Is it fair to the subject of these feelings?  Not exactly.  But it is a human reaction, a natural feeling to an appearance which reminds us of somebody who wants to kill us.  Having these feelings doesn't make a person a bigot or racists.  It's the actions these feeling inspire that do.

What these normal, peace loving Muslims have to understand is that the obstacles along the path toward American/Islamic relations will take time, and cooperation on everyone's part to hurdle. CAIR making a big stink about Juan Williams just saying was almost all of us are thinking anyway only hinders any efforts to improve relations. Calling for the metaphorical head of Juan Williams on a stick for is the kind of PC feather ruffling that only serve to highlight our differences. Makes me wonder if they'd call for his death if he doodled a picture of Mohamed.

Do I get nervous when I see a Muslim on my plane? Do I get nervous when I see a shark fin in the water?

A Radical Conservative Idea

Marijuana legalization is, or should be, a Conservative concept.

I'll start my argument for the Conservative values inherent to Marijuana legalization with the beginning of Marijuana prohibition in the U.S. The effort to criminalize the largest domestic cash crop  in the United States began in the early 20^th century, with the Temperance Movement which brought us our shortest lived Constitutional Amendment, the 18^th. With the repeal of the 18^th Amendment there existed a new, massive government bureaucracy which found itself with little to do; a bureaucracy dedicated to keeping normally law abiding citizens from engaging in what had been an American Right since Independence was declared.

A handful of powerful men like Harry Anslinger, who had made a career of Prohibition, William Randolph Hearst, newspaper mogul and heavy timber investor, and DuPont which sought to supplant hemp as the fiber of choice with its new substance Nylon, used unscientific and wildly exaggerated anecdotes to sway the public and deceive legislators about the horrors of the “Devil Weed”. They exploited and emphasized a general distrust among the population toward the tide of immigrants flowing north out of Mexico. These powerful men, who had much to gain from Marijuana prohibition planted the seeds of legislation in the fetid soil of racial fears and class differences.  With arguments such as “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.” the effort to prohibit Marijuana would not only fail in our current society, those making such claims would be tarred, feathered, then set on fire while being strung between two buses. Instead they were successful in establishing a massive, personally intrusive, expansion of the federal government which robbed otherwise law abiding citizens of a Creator-endowed inalienable right.

It is believed that the very first fabrics were made from Hemp nearly 8,000 years ago. Nearly 5,000 years ago the ancient Chinese used the plant for everything from food to clothing to paper. It's uses were praised in the Jewish Talmud and ancient Hindus considered it one of their five sacred plants. It was brought to the new world by Christopher Columbus. In 1619 farmers in the Jamestown Virginia colony were required by law to grow it. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, two founding fathers so beloved by this country, their faces were carved into the side of a mountain, both owned plantations where Marijuana was a primary crop. The first production automobile not only ran on ethanol made from hemp, its body was constructed of resin reinforced with hemp fibers.  During the Second World War, farmers who would stay home and grow Marijuana for hemp could receive deferments from combat duty.

In times of war, in times of need, in times of great economic burden, America had a tradition of turning to Marijuana to see her through. It wasn't just a right, it was a patriotic duty.

It's only in the last century that we have turned our backs on the liberties and resources which help lay the foundation for America. The abject prohibition of Marijuana is so recent in the scope of human history that if Marijuana were legalized today, not even a hundred years after the first laws were passed, it would be like the Tea Party rising up and achieving the repeal of Obamacare less than a second after it were enacted.

Conservatives concerned about fiscal responsibility as well as those seeking freedom from foreign energy sources should embrace and encourage Marijuana legalization. According to a report by Harvard economist, Jeffery A. Miron, along with 530 other economists, legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana alone, would return billions of dollars to the American economy, both from tax revenues and reduced spending within the legal system.

That's just the beginning, though. Hemp grows rapidly which makes it valuable as a renewable resource which would reduce the demand for other not-so-renewable resources such as wood, coal, or fossil fuels. Resins, plastics, oils and ethanol made from hemp, as an alternative energy source would help reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

Many Conservatives who oppose Marijuana legalization point to the use of harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine by those who also smoke pot as one of the cornerstones of their argument. The so called “Gateway Drug” concept goes all the way back to the earliest days of the Temperance Movement. The “Gateway Drug” model makes several assumptions, which are rarely questioned in the analysis of the statistics. More complete study shows that there is no temporal correlation from “soft” to “hard” drugs. Often studies which do support the “Gateway” argument fail to examine many other factors such as tobacco and alcohol use, family, employment, or the level of parental supervision. By cherry-picking data which supports a theory, it's possible to show a correlation between practically any two statistics. For instance, who knew that the decline in piracy of the past few hundred years is the cause of global warming?

There are loud Conservative voices which rail against the dangers of Marijuana use. They wrap themselves in morality and oppose Marijuana use from the standpoint of defense of the innocent. These voices are only parroting the very propaganda which led to the disastrous prohibition in the first place. In the United States every year  nearly a half a million people die from Tobacco use. It's perfectly legal for me to go to the liquor store and buy enough alcohol to kill myself, and 85,000 people do that each year. 7,600 people per year go to the cabinet to get some aspirin for a headache and instead suffer a fatal overdose. The number of deaths attributed to Marijuana use annually tops out at a whopping zero. That's none. One less than one.

The United States Department of Justice estimates the LD-50 (the dosage required for 50% mortality) is in the neighborhood of 1:20,000. A person would have to smoke somewhere between 26 to 30 pounds in a single sitting to get a potentially lethal dose.

Unlike those other drugs, the many medical uses of Marijuana are widely documented. If there are dangers associated with Marijuana use they are the direct results of the prohibition of it not the drug itself. Where is the morality of denying normal, peace-loving and law abiding people a safe and legal avenue down which to pursue their happiness while at the same time legitimizing substances which each year kill the population of a medium sized city?

There have been fewer pieces of legislation which are so blatantly un-American, so clearly opposed to the spirit of our founding, as the prohibition of Marijuana. From the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The racism and theft of our liberties by our own Government were a slap in the face of American Freedom and a rejection of the gifts of the Creator from whom our Rights come.

Reduce the size of government? Increase the funds available to reduce our national debt? Do it without raising taxes? Restore civil liberties, God-given rights, which were gobbled up by power-hungry expansionists within our own government? Those certainly sound strongly Conservative to me. I can't tell you for certain what the Tea Party has brewing in their kettles, but in the interest of American Conservative Values, I know what it should be.