Lucky
Member
Maybe my mindset is drifting farther away from the norms, but I'm starting to question the mores of society.
A few years ago I'd have watched a tv show like Miami Vice and never questioned that the drug smugglers were the bad guys. But now I'm looking at the big picture.
The Underground Railroad was illegal at the time. In 1920 alcohol was prohibited, only to be repealed 13 years later. In 1933 the USA passed a law to confiscate citizens' gold, and people who held out were criminals and smugglers.
So I'm having trouble seeing smugglers as bad people.
Furthermore, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote great stories in the late 1800's, and Sherlock Holmes used cocaine for its benefits, while Watson carried a revolver freely. They were free men, and they carried implements for defence and administered pharmaceuticals of their choice at their will. No-one would suggest Sherlock Holmes and Watson were bad men.
Even in the early part of the 1900's cocaine was widely available, and it was sold in stores that focused on a specific product range, say drugs, and used their efficiencies to offer the low prices. And these proprietors, as far as I can tell, never got into shoot-outs or car-bomb-wars to decide who would sell their drugs to school-children. What's more, their products were refined. Compared to today, children can get drugs more easily than alcohol, and the drugs are highly-toxic because they're made ad-hoc, as a substitute for the cocaine which is now illegal.
And the RKBA, when people had the means to defend themselves and others on-hand, logic would suggest that assaults and rapes and robberies were much lower than today, where people are mandated to be defenceless.
So when I read the following article I see a businessman doing no harm being railroaded, and wonder if maybe he's not a political prisoner?
A few years ago I'd have watched a tv show like Miami Vice and never questioned that the drug smugglers were the bad guys. But now I'm looking at the big picture.
The Underground Railroad was illegal at the time. In 1920 alcohol was prohibited, only to be repealed 13 years later. In 1933 the USA passed a law to confiscate citizens' gold, and people who held out were criminals and smugglers.
So I'm having trouble seeing smugglers as bad people.
Furthermore, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote great stories in the late 1800's, and Sherlock Holmes used cocaine for its benefits, while Watson carried a revolver freely. They were free men, and they carried implements for defence and administered pharmaceuticals of their choice at their will. No-one would suggest Sherlock Holmes and Watson were bad men.
Even in the early part of the 1900's cocaine was widely available, and it was sold in stores that focused on a specific product range, say drugs, and used their efficiencies to offer the low prices. And these proprietors, as far as I can tell, never got into shoot-outs or car-bomb-wars to decide who would sell their drugs to school-children. What's more, their products were refined. Compared to today, children can get drugs more easily than alcohol, and the drugs are highly-toxic because they're made ad-hoc, as a substitute for the cocaine which is now illegal.
And the RKBA, when people had the means to defend themselves and others on-hand, logic would suggest that assaults and rapes and robberies were much lower than today, where people are mandated to be defenceless.
So when I read the following article I see a businessman doing no harm being railroaded, and wonder if maybe he's not a political prisoner?
