Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 05/19/06 8:14 pm:
We should obey the law. And if we disagree with the law, we should change it through legal means. And if the issue is so important to you that you are willing to risk your life by breaking the law, then you should be willing to stand by that decision and take your medicine like a man. Otherwise, don't break the law.
There are issues that I am willing to die for. There are issues that I am willing to break the law for, even if it means a life sentence or a death sentence. But if I'm caught I won't demand that the laws be set aside for me because I was breaking the law for high-minded reasons. If it means a life sentence or the death penalty, then I will abide by the ruling of the court, because THAT is the real meaning of personal responsibility.
Responsibility to society and to yourself isn't just about activism. It's also about taking the consequences for the decision to be an activist.
Elliot
Clarification/Follow-up by excon on 05/19/06 9:54 pm:
Elliot Dude,
So we should kill him! According to you, a guy who thinks pot should be legal, it doesn't matter whether what Marc did was wrong or not. The only thing of importance is the LAW itself.
Listen to yourself. You're a Jew. The Nazi's couldn't discern that their duty to the law was wrong, either. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.
excon
Clarification/Follow-up by Itsdb on 05/20/06 7:09 pm:
ex,
"Only if the defendant is (1) the principal administrator, organizer, or leader of the enterprise or is one of several such principal administrators, organizers, or leaders, and (2) the quantity of the controlled substance is 60,000 kilograms or more of a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of marijuana, or 60,000 or more marijuana plants, or the if the enterprise received more than $20 million in gross receipts during any 12-month period of its existence."
I have to admit I didn't know you could ever get the death penalty for selling weed, that's ridiculous. But I have to ask since I don't know, when's the last time someone was excuted in the US for selling pot?
Clarification/Follow-up by ETWolverine on 05/22/06 1:06 pm:
Excon,
>>>So we should kill him! According to you, a guy who thinks pot should be legal, it doesn't matter whether what Marc did was wrong or not. <<<
That'd the point: what he did WAS wrong. The RIGHT way to do it would have been to change the law from the inside. That takes time and patience, and Marc decided that he had neither to spare, so he took a radical stance and disobeyed the law. That is what he did wrong.
That sort of defiance of the law should not be reserved for life-and-death, there's-no-other-way scenarios. The fact that Marc Emery likes pot and wants others to be able to get pot is not a life-or-death situation.
Perhaps it would have been different if Emery werw suffering from cancer and his only relief from overwhelming pain was marajuana. In a case like that, where he has nothing left to lose and everything to gain, he would be morally justified is breaking the law in order to survive. But just because it is more convenient? Sorry, that doesn't morally justify breaking the law.
>>>Listen to yourself. You're a Jew. The Nazi's couldn't discern that their duty to the law was wrong, either. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. <<<
Sorry, there's a world of difference between the "duty" to murder 13 billion civilian non-combatants and the duty to obey your country's narcotics laws. There's a world of difference between a government trying to commit genocide of an entire race of people and an individual who chooses to disobey drug laws because he finds them inconvenient.
Trying to liken the Third Reich's "Final Solution" to the USA's narcotics laws is moral equivalence of the worst kind, and you know better than that, excon.
Elliot
