Yeah libertarians think the state *never* punishes doctors…

Brush up on your reading comprehension, Nick.

Mike T. where do you come down on abortion? Review boards, doctor sign-offs in triplicate, parental notification, waiting period. You support all that right?

Complete outlawing on the basis that it is a biologically distinct organism of the genome homo sapien and a general rejection of the idea that people can initiate force against one another.

“So why are the liberal media more statist than the average liberal probably is?”

That’s by design. They see themselves as a part of the state. The all-important 4th estate. They exist to make sure that the proletariat gets the right information. The good ones see this as some sort of divine mission. Because they have the power to control the information flow, they get to set the agenda for the nation.

Back in the 70′s this was very explicit – and not limited to the news media. The big papers and the network news would coordinate with the TV producers in Hollywood to focus on specific messages: mental hospitals are evil, disabled is a bad word – use handicapped (and later “handi-capable”), child abuse is bad, etc. Every news show would hammer the same story, every sitcom would have characters reading from the pamphlet. Even kids shows would get in on the act. The ABC After School Movie would push the topic. Then the politicians would respond.

It still happens, but it is much less obvious and much more sophisticated. Also more chaotic with all of the information conduits available.

The point is, the media believes that they have the power to control the state. So having more power available to control is a good thing.

http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2012/tle694-20121028-08.html

The important thing isn’t the patients who benefit (or don’t) from smoking pot. The important thing is to end the prohibition on a drug so common that it isn’t unheard of to find it growing (as a weed) in Police property. The War on Drugs does far more damage to us as a society than the presence or absence of ‘medical’ marijuana. It is a threat to our liberties and our civil rights almost unequaled in the whole litany of Government stupidities.

If legalizing medical marijuana helps bring down the Drug War, then it is a good thing. If it prolongs the Drug War then it is a bad thing.

This is not a horse race! Hemp Flower medicine is MEDICINE! It’s not a stalking horse, it’s about actual patients whose lives are actually improved by this wonderful natural medicine.

If I-502 fails, Washington’s medicinal marijuana cottage industry will continue. If I-502 passes, Washington’s medicinal marijuana cottage industry will continue.

I-502 will immediately stop arrests of adults for possession of less than an ounce of hemp flower. This is good. If it doesn;t pass, do you think people will suddenly stop smoking weed?

Give your fricking head a shake and stop watching teevee – they don’t call it programming for nothing, eh?

The Liberal Media is heavily invested in the Liberal side of the power structure. They support the Democrats more than they support Liberalism because it is the Democrats in government that give the journalists (I won’t call them reporters. Reporters are hardscrabble guys with nicotine stains on their souls. Mencken was a reporter. These twits are journalists) access. Without access, they can’t write their stories, unless they are willing to do real legwork. They didn’t get j-school degrees to do legwork on boring stuff. They got j-school degrees so they could wear Banana Republic bush jackets, hang around in bars, and wait around for the next Deep throat to drop into their laps like a ripe plum.

So, pot is fine for them, if they like that kind of thing, but much to good for the unwashed. They are quite comfortable with Drug Prohibition because it generates easy stories, and doesn’t affect anybody they know. They side with the Democrat politicians, because they need them, and the politicians push prohibition because they think they need it for one reason or another (maybe to placate the Police Unions).

The experience of watching dispensaries and prescription mills campaign against full legalization here in WA state has been very eye-opening. Medical MJ may have made the drug more socially acceptable, but it also created a gray market and a constituency with a vested interest in keeping it.

If I-502 (our legalization measure) fails, we need to consider seriously the possibility that medical MJ was tactically useful in the short-term, but probably a strategic mistake in the long-term.

1) The regular fight between the Democrat and Republican parties

and

2) An ongoing fight between factions within the Republican party that do reflect differing political philosophies.

Those factions include, but are not limited to, Social Conservatives, Libertarian-leaning Conservatives who (at least) want more government functions performed locally, and business-as-usual members of the Political Class (who were once called Rockefeller Republicans).

No matter how that second fight goes, it won’t change in a single election, or even over two or three. It may drag out for a generation.

The Democrats have the beginnings of a similar fight; the Democrats who got control of Congress back for their party in 2006 were (at least Publicly) Populists, and they got shoved aside and largely ignored (or so it seemed to me). Further, there is already a divide, of sorts, between the Western Intellectual side of the party (which is much concerned with what could be called Idealism, or Doctrinal Purity, depending on how cynical you are) and the business-as-usual Political Class (which is far more concerned with preserving their position than in being pure).

Changes do not happen fast in our system. We sometimes think that they do, because lazy history teachers like to teach about ‘watershed’ moments.

If a shift can be made away from Statism (and I’m not totally persuaded that one can), it will be incremental. There IS a difference between Romney and Obama; Romney does not automatically assume that Big Oil is the Devil incarnate. Romney is not beholden to people who believe in ‘Alternative Energy’ regardless of how the math works. It may not be a big shift, but it could be enough to get the economy moving again. With luck, that will in turn shift peoples’ perceptions enough to make another small shift in the next elections.

Maybe that’s because it isn’t a word used as an insult by one pol against another, or by a pundit against a pol. If the word isn’t used on tv, it isn’t real.

When the Republicans accuse the media of being “Liberal” they do by and large mean “Democrat”, and they are by and large right. The majority of the media makes approving noises about non-Democrat politicians based (so far as I can see) solely on three criteria;

1) The degree to which the politician’s policies mirror the policies favored by the Western Intellectuals who describe, or at least used to describe, themselves as ‘Liberal’ or ‘Progressive’.

2) The degree to which the media perceives the politician as somebody who can spoil the chances of another politician whose policies oppose those of the Western Intellectuals.

3) Whether the politician is a ‘third party’ candidate whose policies largely agree with the Western Intellectuals and whose campaign is unlikely to throw the election to a Republican.

I would love to reclaim “liberal” for classical liberalism; to encourage this, maybe we should shift to calling modern liberals progressives. I’m not clear if there is supposed to be any difference between liberal and progressive.

Neither faction really has the leadership and brains they once did. They’re both walking shells of what they used to be lashing out at bizarre stuff like surgery soda and useless wars everywhere.

When Republicans accuse the Media of being “liberal” they mean “Democrat.” And when Republicans say “statist” they mean “Democrat.” The Democrats are no more pro-legalization than the Republicans. From that perspective the Media is both statist and liberal.

But if you mean “liberal” as in “promoting liberty,” then the descriptor is inappropriate as applied both to Democrats and to the Media.

#34 C. S. P. Schofield

Dave Krueger,

…

Conservatives are for local control of much that Liberals want to see done on a National level (education springs to mind). Conservatives are for having the State refrain from promoting social change.

I disagree, but then I am not paying attention to what conservatives say. I’m only paying attention to what they do and what they do is exactly what democrats do and on just as big a scale. And I believe they are just as heavily vested in a social agenda (although, for conservatives it’s more of a moral agenda).

I think you’re splitting hairs. You’re magnifying tiny differences between conservatives and liberals, but the fact is that very little changes (and rarely for the better) when when control of the White House and Congress swings toward the right. Conservatives constantly croon about limited government and free markets, but it never happens when they have the power to make a difference, just as privacy and civil liberties never improve under democrats. It’s all just talk directly at gullible voters who obediently line up behind their respective candidates completely unwilling to acknowledge (even to themselves) that the king has no clothes.