A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Friday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
Listen to the new episode here:
Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.
Starting in five four three two one.
Hello, I am Adam Dick, a Ron Paul Institute senior fellow.
Let’s start.
Issue one.
In a May 15 article at the Ron Paul Institute website, I wrote about polls suggesting that, this year via ballot measures, voters in Michigan would approve recreational marijuana legalization and voters in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Utah would approve medical marijuana legalization.
Here is an update. Oklahoma voters were the first this year to approve a medical marijuana ballot measure, doing so in a June 26 election. Then, on Tuesday, Missouri and Utah voters approved medical marijuana ballot measures as well. Also on Tuesday, voters in Michigan, which already had legal medical marijuana, approved the legalization of recreational marijuana.
Now, 33 states have adopted legal medical marijuana and 10 states have adopted legal recreational marijuana.
Issue two.
You might think when you vote for a Libertarian Party candidate that you are sending a clear message in support of change in the libertarian direction. But, sometimes a Libertarian Party candidate on the ballot is putting forward a non-libertarian message. I encountered such in the Tuesday election in Texas. Neal Dikeman, the Libertarian United States Senate candidate, had on his campaign website a series of short videos regarding different issues. That is a great idea. Unfortunately, watching the videos, I discovered that Dikeman was repeatedly avoiding supporting libertarian positions, and often any substantive positions, on the issues he addressed. Voting for him would send no clear message generally. Plus, it would send the party a message of approval for abandoning libertarianism.
Issue three.
Ludwig von Mises Institute President Jeff Deist, in an editorial the day before this week’s US general election, noted that which party controlled the US House of Representatives would depend this year, as had which party’s nominee would become president two years ago, on a relatively small number of votes across the country. The alternating of US government control through elections from one party to another is a dangerous proposition, argues Deist, when so much power is concentrated in that government. The solution, Deist indicates, includes the transfer of power to state and local governments.
Deist concludes the editorial with the following:
Federalism and subsidiarity, applied with increasing intensity, are the non-violent path forward. Insistence on universalism, decided by a slight majority and applied top-down from DC, will fail here at home in the same way — and for the same reason — nation-building fails abroad.
Issue four.
Many marijuana legalization advocates say that marijuana should be treated the same as alcohol. But, that is not the result in any state where recreational marijuana has been legalized. Instead, a new bureaucracy has been set up in each state to administer many rules peculiar to marijuana.
When will the first state move to list marijuana along with beer and wine or liquor in much of the state’s laws? How about buying marijuana along with a bottle of wine at the local grocery store or along with a bottle of cognac at the local liquor store? How about ordering a marijuana brownie as part of your meal at a restaurant, the liquor license of which was automatically expanded to be a marijuana license as well? How about it being legal to keep at home and to carry as much marijuana as you choose? It seems like a natural legalization path. Yet, it is a path not yet taken.
Issue five.
Some Americans are saying that the US general election this year was the most important election ever. Some Americans said the same thing about the US general election two years ago as well.
Maybe the 1860 US general election was the most important ever for Americans. The victory of Abraham Lincoln in that election was a major catalyst for the war between the United States and the Confederate States. Counting deaths on both sides, that war, by a large margin, caused the deaths of more American troops and civilians than has any other war.
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That’s a wrap.
Transcripts of Five Minutes Five Issues episodes, including links to related information, are at the Ron Paul Institute blog.
Five four three two one.
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.