REPUBLIC REBORN

In light of the revelation that the Oklahoma Department of Health’s attorney, Julie Ezell, sent herself fake threats of harm via email and then claiming it came from the pro-788 activist camp, I thought it would be suitable to revisit a few passages from a few of my favorite writers, Friedrich Hayek and Albert Jay Nock. First, Hayek, from Chapter 10 of his The Road to Serfdom, Why the Worst Get on Top:

“There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian systems are not accidental byproducts, but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce. Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending towards totalitarianism. Who does not see this has not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from a liberal regime, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentially individualist Western civilization.”

And now, Nock, from his wonderful essay, Prohibition and Civilization:

“The advocates of prohibition ought to get a clear grasp of the fundamental objection to their theory, and meet it with something more substantial than feeble talk about the influence of “the liquor interests.” Our objection is to Puritanism, with its false social theory taking shape in a civilization that, however well-ordered and economically prosperous, is hideous and suffocating. One can at least speak for oneself: I am an absolute teetotaler, and it would make no difference to me if there were never another drop of liquor in the world; and yet to live under any regime of prohibition that I have so far had opportunity to observe would seem to me an appalling calamity. The ideals and instruments of Puritanism are simply unworthy of a free people, and, being unworthy, are soon found intolerable. Its hatreds, fanaticisms, inaccessibility to ideas; its inflamed and cancerous interest in the personal conduct of others; its hysterical disregard of personal rights; its pure faith in force, and above all, its tyrannical imposition of its own Kultur: these characterize and animate a civilization that the general experience of mankind at once condemns as impossible, and as hateful as it is impossible.”

From Chapter 9, ‘Social’ or distributive justice, of his profound Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“As primitive thinking usually does when first noticing some regular processes, the results of the spontaneous ordering of the market were interpreted as if some thinking being deliberately directed them, or as if the particular benefits or harm different persons derived from them were determined by deliberate acts of will, and could therefore be guided by moral rules. This conception of ‘social’ justice is thus a direct consequence of that anthropomorphism or personification by which naive thinking tries to account for all self-ordering processes. It is a sign of the immaturity of our minds that we have not yet outgrown these primitive concepts and still demand from an impersonal process which brings about a greater satisfaction of human desires than any deliberate human organization could achieve, that it conform to the moral precepts men have evolved for the guidance of their individual actions.”

I’ve noticed a strange tendency among those that scoff at adherents of an intelligent design theory of life and the universe simultaneously, and ironically, adhere to an identical theory in the economic realm, in the sense that the processes of the economy have been created by some single entity, and can be successfully controlled and directed by an all-powerful entity, almost always the government.  20th century communism proclaimed atheism, despite worshiping an all-powerful State and bestowing upon it unlimited power to interfere in the market, with hideous consequences.

KOCO: People cite rules for SQ 788 as reason for signing recreational marijuana petitions

And more: Marijuana.com: Marijuana restrictions may make Oklahomans mad enough to vote

Tulsa World: Oklahoma attorney general will advise Dept. of Health on legal challenges to SQ 788 rules

We’re making the news a lot lately: High Times: Oklahoma Republicans join fight against medical marijuana restrictions

Techdirt: Oregon Supreme Court sets up new limits for digital device searches

New York Times: Looking through the eyes of China’s Surveillance State

The Verge: How AT&T’s plan to become the next Facebook could be a privacy nightmare

The Federalist: Why the world no longer needs the Cold War’s NATO

Reason: Florida police chief charged with arresting random black men to improve his department’s record

LEW ROCKWELL: The Police State abolishes the trial

WSWS: British and Ecuadorian authorities in talks to evict Julian Assange from London embassy

Ars Technica: Dangerous plutonium stolen from rental car in a hotel parking lot

The real questions from Forbes: How large is the unobservable universe?

NewsOK: Only 20,000 more signatures needed for recreational marijuana petition, organizers say

High Times: New Yorkers may now replace opioid prescriptions with medical marijuana

ABC: Detaining immigrant kids is now a billion-dollar industry

Forbes: An Israeli startup raises $12.5 million to help governments spy on IoT

The American Conservative: Keeping cops’ hands out of your pocket

Activist Post: Jury nullifies Georgia marijuana law, finds man not guilty despite admitting to growing weed

Washington Times: Rand Paul undecided on Brett Kavanaugh, disagrees with Fourth Amendment ruling

FEE: Washing machine tariffs started the trade war. Result? Largest-ever three-month increase in washing machine prices

The Intercept: Trump finds a new weapon for his war on journalism: Leak indictments aimed at smearing reporters

Also The Intercept: With last charges against J20 protesters dropped, defendants seek accountability for prosecutors

CATO: Subsidies galore: corporate welfare for politically-connected businesses is bipartisan

USA Today: Microsoft raises alarm about facial recognition

Reason: Innocent until proven guilty, but only if you can pay

From Chapter 8, The Quest for Justice, from the second volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“Strictly speaking, only human conduct can be called just or unjust. If we apply the terms to a state of affairs, they have meaning only in so far as we hold someone responsible for bringing it about or allowing it to come about. A bare fact, or a state of affairs which nobody can change, may be good or bad, but not just or unjust. To apply the term ‘just’ to circumstances other than human actions or the rules governing them is a category mistake. Only if we mean to blame a personal creator does it make sense to describe it as unjust that somebody has been born with a physical defect, or been stricken with a disease, or has suffered the loss of a loved one. Nature can be neither just nor unjust. Though our inveterate habit of interpreting the physical world animistically or anthropomorphically often leads us to such a misuse of words, and makes us seek a responsible agent for all that concerns us, unless we believe that somebody could and should have arranged things differently, it is meaningless to describe a factual situation as just or unjust.

But if nothing that is not subject to human control can be just (or moral), the desire to make something capable of being just is not necessarily a valid argument for our making it subject to human control; because to do so may itself be unjust or immoral, at least when the actions of another human being are concerned.”

Reading Hayek is an acquired skill. His tendency to place his most important insights somewhere within 100-word sentences that require multiple readings and ponderings to fully digest his meaning can be exhausting to the first-time reader.

But one thing I’ve found when reading Hayek’s books for a second or third time, is that it’s not quite the same book.  What appears as needless redundancy reveals itself to be deeper insights into the phenomena of spontaneous order, it’s functioning, and the rules needed that create the environment for it to form. Once you’ve acclimated yourself to his surgically precise, yet lengthy, writing style, you realize he’s not repeating himself anywhere. There’s nothing extra here, Hayek has distilled his explanation of spontaneous order as far as possible without pouring the liquid out.  I also remain convinced that the most invincible, most convincing defense of liberty lies within the pages of Hayek’s trilogy.

NewsOK: Health board broke tradition in setting medical marijuana rules, author unknown

NewsOn6: Medical marijuana impairment while driving illegal in Oklahoma

Other health department’s slightly more tolerant than ours: Reason: New York’s health department recommends legalizing recreational marijuana

Techcrunch: ACLU calls for a moratorium on government use of facial recognition technologies

The Verge: Federal court rules that TSA agents can’t be sued for false arrest, abuse, or assault

The Intercept: Immigrant mothers are staging hunger strikes to demand calls with their separated children

Mises: You now can’t leave the U.S. unless the IRS lets you

The Free Thought Project: Cops bulldoze unarmed man to death because they suspected him of growing marijuana

Techdirt: Guy gets tossed in jail on contempt charges for refusing to unlock his phone for cops

GEORGE WILL: What might a socialist American government do?

Fox OKC: Lawsuits filed against State of Oklahoma over medical marijuana rules

KOCO: Oklahoma House, Senate announce bi-partisan group for medical marijuana implementation

Well that was quick: Tulsa World: Recreational marijuana petition nears signature goal to get constitutional question on November ballot

ACLU: The Trump administration is hiding a crucial report on NSA spying practices

Huffington Post: Brett Kavanaugh’s pro-surveillance record could haunt him in SCOTUS fight

WIRED: How the U.S. government secretly sold ‘spy phones’ to suspects

The Guardian: ‘Data is a fingerprint’: Why you aren’t as anonymous as you think online

Military: Senators: Where’s the military family suicide data?

PETER VAN BUREN: Why I stand with Julian Assange

FEE: China only makes $8.46 from an iPhone–and that’s why this trade war is futile

From his too-little-read Law, Legislation, and Liberty:

“The preservation of a free system is so difficult precisely because it requires a constant rejection of measures which appear to be required to secure particular results, on no stronger grounds than that they conflict with a general rule, and frequently without our knowing what will be the costs of not observing the rule in the particular instance. A successful defence of freedom must therefore be dogmatic and make no concessions to expediency, even where it is not possible to show that, besides the known beneficial effects, some particular harmful result would also follow from its infringement. Freedom will prevail only if it is accepted as a general principle whose application to particular instances requires no justification. It is thus a misunderstanding to blame classical liberalism for having been too doctrinaire. Its defect was not that it adhered too stubbornly to principles, but rather that it lacked principles sufficiently definite to provide clear guidance, and that it often appeared simply to accept the traditional functions of government and to oppose all new ones. Consistency is possible only if definite principles are accepted. But the concept of liberty with which the liberals of the nineteenth century operated was in many respects so vague that it did not provide clear guidance.”

KOCO: Gov. Fallin signs medical marijuana rules, including ban on smokable forms at dispensaries

KFOR: DEA: Pharmacists dispensing marijuana would be in violation of federal law

NewsOn6: Oklahoma medical marijuana groups vow legal action over last-minute regulation changes

Forbes: Medical marijuana reduces opioid prescriptions, another study finds

Slate: The Surveillance State’s eyes at the U.S. border

The Outline: Silicon Valley is funding the future of warfare

Common Dreams: Legal scholars warn ICE agents that ‘just following orders’ won’t save them

The American Conservative: Killing Yemen with hunger

Daily Beast: Hacker selling Pentagon’s killer drone manual on the dark web for cheap

Gizmodo: Walmart patents audio surveillance tool to monitor employees

Techdirt: Federal court says taking people’s licenses away for failure to pay court fees is unconstitutional

Reason: A cop attacked and threatened a man who did nothing wrong, then made his life hell for complaining about it

Consortium News: Israel bulldozes Al Ahmar and buries the two-state solution

Seattle Times: Inside China’s dystopian future: AI, shame, and lots of cameras

DAVID STOCKMAN: Time for a mercy killing at NATO

FEE: 7 things you might not know about Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom”. Ed: Hayek’s work has always had a ‘through the looking glass’ air about it, especially his later work into spontaneous order.  Shackle’s work as well, with his strange and wonderful terminology such as ‘unknowledge’ and kaleidics. But for Hayek, the Road to Serfdom is the book to begin with.

PLOSblog: Ayahuasca: Ritual psychedelic turns modern-day anti-depressant

Rolling Stone: Behold the DEA’s massive list of marijuana nicknames

ASCH: Is aging a disease?

Botanophobia, the fear of plants, is apparently widespread among Oklahoma’s political and bureaucratic elite, as evinced from the first stirrings of pro-medical marijuana activism in this state. And, despite the easy win for State Question 788, proof of the clear favor that normal Oklahomans have for legal medical marijuana, the medical/political/bureaucratic Establishment is proving particularly hard to dislodge, much like a barnacle on the underside of a boat. One such cluster of barnacles resides within the state’s Department of Health, a cluster that is apparently committed to damaging the spirit of 788 as much as possible, with it’s weapon of choice being 75 pages of ridiculous regulations that will, in practice, have no other effect than shielding their cronies from the devastating competition that this plant will undoubtedly bring. Indeed, easy access to medical marijuana will be an extinction-level event for much of the pharmaceutical establishment, as their expensive, patent poisons, churned out by the billions in various pill mills, will be tossed in the garbage and replaced with a plant that patients can grow themselves.   The absurdity of the regulations speak for themselves: Dispensaries must have a pharmacist on site, plants must be grown only behind a 6 foot fence, locked, shielded from the eyes of both the public and God too, apparently, as dispensaries also must remain closed on Sunday. Of course Oklahoma would require that last one. Also, no smoke-able marijuana shall be allowed. Given all these commandments, it’s a virtual certainty that a lawsuit will immediately be brought forth, as the ACLU of Oklahoma’s Ryan Kiesel predicts.

They will have the effect similar to that of a circus dog, scared out of its wits, attempting to jump through an endless series of flaming rings without igniting.

The true purpose of such restrictive regulations is to discourage a prospective medical marijuana patient to the point that they give up on obtaining the plant and revert to the same old insanity-inducing pharmaceuticals that we see advertised throughout the day on television, the ones that are presently leaving a wide trail of dead and insane US citizens in their wake.

You can’t patent a plant, and how can you make money on a medicine that the patient can grow at home?  Those are the only questions that matter to those in power. Not our health, not our future, not our liberty.

Another prediction, one made by pretty much everyone with eyes, is that this will ignite a huge push for legalizing recreational marijuana in this state. Something that should probably happen now, once and for all. While from this vantage point it appears more of an “Aqaba, from the land” scenario, Lawrence did cross the Nefud, and did take Aqaba. It is possible. Barnacles can be struck off a boat, and the Political Class can be dislodged from our liberty. All it takes is a will, belief, and the way will appear.