Jesse Ventura and Lew Rockwell Discuss Ending the War on Marijuana

Lew Rockwell’s new Lew Rockwell Show interview with author Jesse Ventura provides interesting criticism of the war on marijuana in America and thoughts on the prospect of a future without that war.

Rockwell mentions at the beginning of the interview that he loves the books Ventura has written and says that Ventura’s new book Marijuana Manifesto is “so needed, so timely, so well documented, so well written” and may be Ventura’s “most important” book.

Ventura’s criticism of the war on marijuana did not begin with the publication of Marijuana Manifesto. In his book Do I Stand Alone? — published in 2000 while Ventura was governor of Minnesota — Ventura wrote that he saw “no reason for marijuana to be illegal.”

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Five Minutes Five Issues: Marijuana Arrests, Johnson ‘Gaffes,’ Presidential Debate, NPR Bias, Legal Heroin

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. 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.

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Judge Napolitano: Donald Trump Supports ‘Authoritarian Police State’ Stop-and-Frisk

Constitutional scholar and former New Jersey state judge Andrew Napolitano, in an interview Wednesday with host Brian Thomas at KRC-Radio in Cincinnati, Ohio, decried as an authoritarian police state activity the now-discontinued New York City stop-and-frisk program that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump praised in the Monday presidential debate.

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Five Minutes Five Issues: WaPo Betrayal, Tulsa Charge, NYPD Cash, Marijuana Defense, Boehner’s Bonanza

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. 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.

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Senators McCain and Corker Use Faulty Geography to Support US Arming Saudi Arabia

During the debate Wednesday in the United States Senate concerning Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) resolution (S. J. Res. 39) to prohibit certain US military equipment sales to Saudi Arabia, resolution opponents Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Bob Corker (R-TN) spoke regarding their concern that a Houthi victory in Yemen, which US military equipment sales to Saudi Arabia is supposed to help prevent, could result in increased danger at the Strait of Hormuz. Corker, in the discussion, even seems to say Yemen borders the Strait of Hormuz. However, as pointed out by Steven Nelson in an interesting US News and World Report article regarding McCain and Corker’s comments, the Strait of Hormuz is hundreds of miles from Yemen.

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Five Minutes Five Issues: Israel Aid, Anti-Marijuana Dollars, Ballot Access, Guantanamo Vote, Conference Report

A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. 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.

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Politicians Won’t Make America Great Again

On Wednesday, I was a guest on Liberty Talk Radio with host Joe Cristiano. The interview explored many topics, including foreign intervention, incarceration in America, the United States presidential election, and my new book, A Tipping Point for Liberty: Exposing and Defeating Leviathan Government.

Early in the interview, Cristiano asked me a question that concerns a fundamental problem in American politics — how American politicians over and over make things worse when they say they are trying to make things better. Cristiano observed that presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump say they want “to make America greater and better and whatever, more prosperous” and propose accomplishing this goal via solutions that “always include another government program” despite the US government being bankrupt. Cristiano continued to note that he very rarely hears “any government official saying ‘the only way we can get out of this is if we get government out of the way.’” Yet, even when he hears that, Cristiano says, “right after that then they talk about another government program that will cost another $50 billion or whatever the case may be.”

Asked by Cristiano “how do we break through” this situation with politicians always wanting to add to government but not subtract, I answered as follows:

Well, you’re right: That is the typical politician way. They don’t have the humility to say that, even though they have this ultimate power, they don’t have the solution.

The solutions to problems are dispersed throughout the people in the country. And if the government stepped back, then things would improve, through people taking their own initiative and through the free market, and from the fact that if the government were able to step back and not spend the money there would be more resources on hand for individuals to solve their own problems. There would be less police standing in the way to enforce needless regulation and enforce laws against nonviolent conduct such as consuming drugs or gambling.

So, there is this fatal conceit that Friedrich Hayek, for example, talked about that these politicians have, and they think that they can solve all the problems. You know, it’s not a bad phrase to say, ‘Make America great again.’ But, the problem is that a politician — whether it’s Donald Trump who uses that phrase or Hillary Clinton who doesn’t use the phrase but thinks the same thing — they say that to make America great they just have to use this enormous power in a different way than people have used it before. And they think that if only the right people were in positions of power that then America would be great.

And that’s giving them the greatest benefit of the doubt, because sometimes they really don’t even want to make things better for the average person. Many times, politicians’ interests are to make things great for the connected special interests, for the military-industrial complex, for the pharmaceutical companies that send the lobbyists around. But, even giving them the greatest benefit of the doubt, it is a failing proposition for them to through political action and increasing government make America great again.

Listen to the complete interview here:

For an introduction to Hayek’s thoughts related on the topic of my answer to Cristiano’s question, read below the conclusion of Hayek’s 1974 speech upon his receipt of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences:

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever-growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, “dizzy with success,” to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society — a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

 

My New Interview with Joe Cristiano on Liberty Talk Radio

I was a guest Wednesday on Joe Cristiano’s show Liberty Talk Radio. Cristiano is a provocative and entertaining host. In fact, Cristiano reminds me of Larry David of the HBO TV series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The interview is worth watching for Cristiano’s stories and humor alone. Cristiano and I discuss in the interview a number of matters including United States intervention overseas, incarceration in America, the presidential race, and my new book A Tipping Point for Liberty: Exposing and Defeating Leviathan Government.

Watch the complete interview here: