As recorded for broadcast on WCBC Radio, 2-27-10

"Free thought is at the heart of independence. Now, more than ever, Americans must challenge hollow, destructive orthodoxy..."

I’ve been a tea man all my life, having tried coffee once and determined that the caffeine wasn’t worth the squeeze of bitter bean, even when leavened with sugar and cream.

So I take offense that Tea Party-sans abscond with my preferred hot drink; even more so that they appropriate to their cause the Rebels of ‘73, who lit a fuse that birthed the nation.

Unlike today’s Tea Party toadies, mainlining fear on Fox TV and taking their marching orders from Baby Huey Glen Beck, Americans of 1773 had legitimate grievance with the governing authority. It was not taxes they protested, but rather taxation without representation: A claim that cannot be laid 237 years later.

For all our advances as the supposed epitome of Western civilization, one is nevertheless left to the inescapable conclusion that Americans haven’t learned Dick. And I’m not just talking Cheney, though he’s the Mount Everest of conservative denial; a self-bloviated perversion of the American political system whom history will rightly judge a butcher, as we progressives recognized all along.

Open your eyes, children of the Right, you’ve been far too long of self-induced night. Time to get past the fright, see the light.

And legalize marijuana.

More than ever, the Republic requires a free thinking, intelligent citizenry. Or at least a bare majority thereof. Ten years into the 21st Century, one measure of collective American intelligence is pot, and we don’t score high, as it were.

The federal government last week reported that the value of principal crops in our neighboring Mountain State totaled $149 million in 2009. Hay topped the crop chart at $111 million, soybeans, wheat and corn all under $7 million apiece.

Elsewhere in agriculture, the West Virginia State Police reported that in 2009, they eradicated 44,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $450 million – four times the state’s next-most valuable  commodity. And that’s only what they found.

Facing a deficit of historic and growing proportion that threatens the very foundation of our economy, the U.S. can no longer afford an irrational, wasteful drug policy. Rather than spending untold millions to destroy marijuana, government could generate untold millions by taxing it. 50 million Americans branded criminals would gladly pay for the privilege of being free people in a free land free to do that which bothers no one.

Like drinking beer, responsibly.

Legalization would keep thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens out of jail, reducing prison costs and overcrowding. It would also free police to target genuine scourges, like crack and heroin. Give ‘em a few beers, and most who man the Thin Blue Line would acknowledge that marijuana does not deserve company with such destroyers of lives. It just ain’t so.

Ever more Americans are reaching the same conclusion.

The number of people aged 50 and older reporting marijuana use in the prior year doubled to 4 percent from 2002 to 2008. For those aged 50-59, the rate tripled.

And that’s just the oldsters.

Free thought is at the heart of independence. Now, more than ever, Americans must challenge hollow, destructive orthodoxy.

Legalizing marijuana would be a small but bold step toward the rational governance that these perilous times demand…