Central Library
Prohibitions Are Senseless Exercises
RECEIVED Fri., Aug. 31, 2007
Dear Editor,
Kudos to Jordan Smith for her interview with Rob Kampia [“Reefer Madness,” News, Aug. 31], and I commend the Chronicle for devoting a regular column to the war on drugs, the blueprint for the PATRIOT acts and other abuses to the Constitution.
I think it is time the Chronicle devotes a major issue to prohibition in general. Alcohol, abortion, ganja, guns, and gay rights: all these fronts in the culture wars have been the undoing of many worthy social causes, and "progressives" are just as likely as conservatives to support them with the same slash-and-burn attacks. The goal? Punishment of hated peoples.
These senseless exercises in prohibition can blind us. I propose this example: George W. Bush's equation of the Iraq war with the Vietnam War has most talking heads either dismissing or rationalizing Bush's stance with some sort of historical comparison. But a look at the far right (which controls the GOP) reveals that its unquestioned fervor and bloody determination stems from a hatred of the "Sixties counterculture." What better way to remind Americans of what caused the downfall of our nation than to bring up the chief focus of that counterculture, Vietnam?
The GOP knows whom they brung to the dance. Whom did the rest of us bring?
Kudos to Jordan Smith for her interview with Rob Kampia [“Reefer Madness,” News, Aug. 31], and I commend the Chronicle for devoting a regular column to the war on drugs, the blueprint for the PATRIOT acts and other abuses to the Constitution.
I think it is time the Chronicle devotes a major issue to prohibition in general. Alcohol, abortion, ganja, guns, and gay rights: all these fronts in the culture wars have been the undoing of many worthy social causes, and "progressives" are just as likely as conservatives to support them with the same slash-and-burn attacks. The goal? Punishment of hated peoples.
These senseless exercises in prohibition can blind us. I propose this example: George W. Bush's equation of the Iraq war with the Vietnam War has most talking heads either dismissing or rationalizing Bush's stance with some sort of historical comparison. But a look at the far right (which controls the GOP) reveals that its unquestioned fervor and bloody determination stems from a hatred of the "Sixties counterculture." What better way to remind Americans of what caused the downfall of our nation than to bring up the chief focus of that counterculture, Vietnam?
The GOP knows whom they brung to the dance. Whom did the rest of us bring?
Sincerely,
Stephen W. McGuire
Stephen W. McGuire
