The University of Pennsylvania just blacklisted the words "freshman" and "sophomore." Whatever we may think of this latest politically correct gambit, it strikes me as amusing that we have this faux freedom to tweak the dictionary while we have no freedom to use the plant medicine that grows at our very feet. If the university wants to be truly progressive and take a truly courageous action, they would ban the word "drugs," which is used in the US as a Christian Science pejorative for psychoactive medicine. But that would be a real stand that might cause real pushback, and that's not the kind of "bold action" that university deans are known to favor. "Look at us, we're attacking patriarchy -- but we still grant government the right to control how much we can feel, how we can think, and how much we can think."
August 30, 2022
You see what he did there? Brian's suggesting that progressives these days are hitting easy targets while steadfastly ignoring the biggest infringement of all time, both of personal and civil rights: namely, the Drug War, which punishes us (albeit usually indirectly) for saying or doing anything that conflicts with the Drug Warrior's attitude of substance demonization. For almost 40 years now, the government's official policy about "drugs" has been to lie to us about them. Not so much by saying false things but rather by reporting only negative outcomes of substance use. Office of National Drug Control Policy actually has a charter that forbids its members from even considering any positive uses for the substances that America has criminalized. And yet we're talking about the kind of medicines that have inspired entire religions.
What Have We Learned?
August 30, 2022
Mouse over questions to read answers
What is the main point of this mini essay?
To compliment University of Pennsylvania for their new rules about forbidden speech?
To task that otherwise worthy institution for ignoring the 24,000-pound gorilla in the room, viz the Drug War, which has created endless problems out of whole cloth.
To congratulate the school for ignoring the Drug War like everybody else.
In other words, Brian is wondering, when the heck is anyone going to realize that "drugs" is the loaded term par excellence?! For the way it's used today by Drug Warriors, it means: psychoactive substances for which there is no beneficial use whatsoever: not today, not tomorrow, not at any dose whatsoever for any person whatsoever for any reason whatsoever in any country whatsoever, ever.
Of course there are no substances like that in the entire world. A scientific country (not to say one that studies history and was founded on natural law) knows that any substance can be used for good or ill. There are no evil substances. Evil is not a property of things, but of people. Evil, for instance, is being done when a government purposefully tries to scare its people from psychoactive substances rather than educating them in the ways of safe use.
Author's Follow-up: October 10, 2023
I am not seeking to opine here on any particular progressive cause célèbre. My meaning is merely this: If the far left would get as indignant about their rights to Mother Nature as they currently are about the misuse of pronouns, the world would be making far more progress in overthrowing the anti-scientific, racist and panic-driven ideology of the War on Drugs -- which, of course, is actually a war on the users of the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
It is folly to put bureaucrats in charge of second-guessing drug prescriptions: what such bureaucrats are really doing is second-guessing the various philosophies of life which are presupposed by the way we use psychoactive drugs.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
Freud thought cocaine was a great antidepressant. His contemporaries demonized the drug by focusing only on the rare misusers. That's like judging alcohol by focusing on alcoholics.
I have yet to find one psychiatrist who acknowledges the demoralizing power of being turned into a patient for life. They never list that as a potential downside of antidepressant use.
The 2024 Colorado bill was withdrawn -- but only when pols realized that they had been caught in the act of outlawing free speech. They did not let opponents speak, however, because they knew the speeches would make the pols look like the anti-democratic jerks that they were.
In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.
The problem with blaming things on addiction genes is that it whitewashes the role of society and its laws. It's easy to imagine an enlightened country wherein drug availability, education and attitudes make addiction highly unlikely, addiction genes or no addiction genes.
I am not seeking to opine here on any particular progressive cause célèbre. My meaning is merely this: If the far left would get as indignant about their rights to Mother Nature as they currently are about the misuse of pronouns, the world would be making far more progress in overthrowing the anti-scientific, racist and panic-driven ideology of the War on Drugs -- which, of course, is actually a war on the users of the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions.
We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
