LIBERTY AT STAKE BY OUTLAWING POT

Dear Editor: It is hard to take the advice of editors regarding law
seriously. Whoever wrote the editorial Sifting through the smoke (June 6,
Flamborough Post) is not taking into consideration the timeless wisdom of
the ages.

"Whenever legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of
the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put
themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved
from any further obedience," wrote John Locke in 1690.

"There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost,
and religious liberty preserved entire. If therefore we yield up our
temporal property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into
bondage," declared Rev. John Witherspoon, the only man of the cloth to sign
the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

"If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the
law," wrote Sir Winston Churchill.

There never was any respect for drug laws.

Well, apparently there is an excuse for breaking the law. In fact, it was
Martin Luther King Jr. who reminds us that "we have a duty to disobey
unjust law."

Unjust laws do not live up to the cardinal virtues of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude are those virtues and not one
is evident in drug prohibition. Vainglory is the first of the Seven Deadly
sins and is defined as wanting your way so bad that you would be willing to
harm another to get your way. Giving someone a criminal record for their
vices is vainglory defined.

On and on a liberty lover like myself could go. But we wouldn't want to
corrupt the children with foolish notions like that they own themselves or
anything like that, would we?

Better not let the children hear any of that kind of "revolutionary" talk
from liberty's greatest champions. Who is it that preached to obey all laws
no matter how unjust - Hitler, Stalin and every other tyrant?

We do the youth of this nation no favour passing hypocritical unjust laws.
Liberty and not love of the state is my message and I have the wisdom of
the greatest men who ever lived on my side.

Chris Buors,

Libertarian Party of Manitoba