RAISING THEIR IRE FROM AFAR

Editor, The Record:

Letter writer Larry Bennett ought to consider what constitutes "traditional
thinking" because Alan Randell's proposal is the traditional self
responsibility thinking of Jeffersonian classic liberalism which traces its
roots back to Aristotle.

To be more specific, the war on (some) drugs is all about the work habits
of other cultures.

Opium-smoking Chinese people were congregating in Vancouver after doing the
back-breaking work of building this nation's railroad. Whiskey-drinking
hung-over white union members had a tough time keeping up with the "coolies."

Canada's first drug law, the Opium Narcotic Act of 1908, was born of a race
riot in 1907 in Vancouver over the issue.

Thirty thousand Chinese were deported from Canada over that piece of racist
legislation from which prescription rights were born. The work habits of
the South American coca leaf chewers is legendary too.

It is only when the white missionary medicine men arrive does there start
to be problems in these most ancient of cultures. The fact that America has
bullied the world into the drug war and destroyed the traditional cultures
of peoples all over the world ought to be viewed from an inverse to see
just how exactly perverted the drug war is.

One of the deadliest substances is tobacco. The Americans are the world's
largest exporters. What if China decided that the way to rid themselves of
the plague of tobacco addiction was to spray the fields of North and South
Carolina? That is precisely what Americans do to the Columbians.

Asserting that something is immoral does not make it so. My measure of
morality uses temperance, prudence, justice and fortitude, which are the
four cardinal virtues of St. Thomas Aquinas.

The drug war does not measure up to a single one. In fact I would suggest
that the harm Americans have inflicted on other cultures by wanting to live
in a regimented worldwide drug-free Utopia is vainglory defined. It is the
Americans who live in a Sinful State and deliver a culture of death
everywhere they go.

Talk about misguided moral righteousness run amok!

Chris Buors, Libertarian Party of Manitoba