Civil Disoweedience

In a country that reflexively and self-righteously describes itself as "free" (and not just "free", but the freest, indeed the leader of the "free world") Americans have a depressingly juvenile understanding of the word. Simply put, most Americans wouldn't recognize freedom if it bit them in the ass.

In order for people to be free, they must enjoy certain rights. We can all agree on this. If I have no inalienable "rights", then I am not "free". Simple enough. But what is less simple is the task of defining what those rights are.

The source of Americans' ignorance of how un-free they really are comes from their ignorance of what the different types of rights are and what their sources are. Broadly speaking, there are two types of rights. There are natural rights and there are civil rights. Every drug law in the United States, or in any single state therein, is a clear violation of both natural and civil rights.

First, for natural rights. Natural rights predate all governments. They existed before states, before nations, before cities, before all trappings of civilization. Natural rights are given by God or, if one prefers, by nature. Whether one is religious or not is beside the point. The point is that we ALL have rights that we enjoy by the simple virtue of being alive.

Since these are natural rights (Thomas Jefferson termed them inalienable rights), and their source is nature itself, no earthly authority can deprive us of these rights. For example, every person has the right to live. Governments, of course, kill people the way most people throw out used coffee filters. But that sad truth does not change the fact that every person has the natural right to their own life, as often violated as that rights sadly is.

We also have the natural rights to own and promote our own ideas, beliefs, and consumptions. Put much more simply, every single person owns his or her own body, mind, and soul. Unless that person violates the body, mind, or soul of another person, it is entirely illegitimate for any government to exercise any control over one's body, mind, or soul.

For example, I can believe in whatever I want to believe unless or until my beliefs deprive others of their natural rights. The most well-known example of this premise is that I can say whatever I want, no matter how hateful or vulgar, but I can NOT shout "fire!" in a crowded theater.

According to natural law, I own my body and I have the right to use it as I see fit. Ask yourself, if someone does not have freedom over their own body, do they have any freedom at all? The question answers itself.

Any law, therefore, that restricts or regulates what I put into my body is a clear violation of my natural rights. Unless my consumption deprives others of their rights, no limitations can be put on what I choose to put into my own body. The best example of this caveat is that I have the natural right to drink alcohol, but I do NOT have the natural right to drive drunk because that behavior may deprive others of their natural right to life.

The most insulting ignorance that Americans show about rights is evident in our drug laws. Most Americans think drugs should be illegal. I do not. Most Americans would think that I am advocating drug use. I am not. I am advocating freedom.

If heroin were legalized tomorrow, how many of us would start using heroin? If this questions seems absurd, that only betrays the absurdity of our drug laws. I do not need the government to forbid me to use heroin; I need my own common sense to do that.

Drug laws are based upon this premise: the government needs to "take care" of people by restricting their freedoms because if people were truly free they would degenerate into heroin addicts. This concept of benevolent tyranny is so antithetical to what the American Revolution was supposed to be about that we may as well have never had a revolution.

All of the wrangling between the federal government and the states over medical marijuana laws, for example, are a charade and a distraction from the true matter at hand here, which is that no government has any right to regulate what plants we eat, drink, or smoke. Any restriction on our personal use of our own body violates natural law.

For the people who think that government does have the right to outlaw certain drugs, our drug laws are still a deep violation of the American system.

The federal government supposedly only has the powers specifically enumerated to it in the Constitution. Of course, the history of American government is largely the history of the federal government inventing all sorts of new authorities for itself. It has tyrannically insinuated itself so far into our lives that is lies lodged somewhere in between our lips and our lungs.

The Constitution does not say "We, the people, in order to prevent people from getting high....". That's not in there. Trust me. Nowhere in that document is the government given the authority to regulate any food, drug, medicine, etc. That doesn't stop them, of course.

What the Constitution says (in the 10th amendment, the most ignored element of the Bill of Rights) is that any power not explicitly granted to the federal government goes to the states or the people. The federal government can legally do very little. Most powers (in theory, if not in practice) go to the states or the people.

So when Rhode Island passed a medical marijuana law, two things should have been clear. Firstly, that law violated our natural rights to our own body, as explained above. Secondly, if we accept the premise that the government can regulate what we ingest (which I do NOT) then that power should rightly go to the states. The federal government has no role in this issue whichever way you slice it.

Now Rhode Islanders are being doubly tyrannized. We are tyrannized by our state, which violates our natural rights by telling us what, when, and how we can use our own bodies. We are also tyrannized by the federal government, which tels our state that it has no right to even partially lessen or rationalize these tyrannical infringements.

What is left to us when every level of government fails us by insisting it has the right to take our rights in the interest of "protecting" us against ourselves? All that is left to us is where this whole issue should have ended in the first place. With We. The People.