Televangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition Pat Robertson, with whom I have major theological, philosophical, and political differences, recently said something that even I must acknowledge was important, truthful, and courageous.
Speaking about the criminal justice system on his “700 Club” television program, Robertson remarked that it was a “shocking statistic” that the United States has “the highest rate of incarceration of any nation on the face of the Earth.” Then he said something few “law and order” conservatives – and especially Christian conservatives – would dare to say: “More and more prisons, more and more crime. It’s just shocking, especially this business about drug offenses. It’s time we stop locking up people for possession of marijuana. We just can’t do it anymore…You don’t lock ‘em up for booze unless they kill somebody on the highway.”
This is not the first time that Robertson has come out for the legalization of marijuana. Back in 2010, he raised the same points:
We’re locking up people that have taken a couple puffs of marijuana and next thing you know they’ve got 10 years with mandatory sentences.
I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.
Not everyone at the Christian Broadcasting Network, however, shared Robertson’s views. A spokesman claimed that Robertson “did not call for the decriminalization of marijuana.” He was merely “advocating that our government revisit the severity of the existing laws because mandatory drug sentences do harm to many young people who go to prison and come out as hardened criminals.”
Pat Robertson is exactly correct on the subject of marijuana possession. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he favors the legalization of other drugs or even the fully legalized cultivation, sale, and distribution of marijuana, but it does raise the important question of whether Christians should support the war on drugs.
Although I am a theological and cultural conservative, and neither advocate nor condone the use of mind-altering, behavior-altering, or mood-altering substances, I believe that Christians shouldn’t support the government’s war on drugs any more than they should support the government’s wars on poverty, obesity, dietary fat, cholesterol, cancer, and tobacco.
Not only do I not use what are classified by the government as illegal drugs, wouldn’t use them if they were legal, and would prefer that no one else do so whether they are legal or illegal, I would rather see people use drugs than the government wage war on them for doing so.
As a believer in moral absolutes, I consider the use of any drug for any reason other than because of a medical necessity to be dangerous, destructive, and immoral, but I also consider the government’s war on drugs to be dangerous, destructive, and immoral.
As an adherent to the ethical principles of the New Testament, I regard drug abuse to be a vice, a sin, and an evil that Christians should avoid even as they avoid supporting the government’s war on drugs.
As a Christian, I oppose root and branch every facet of the government’s war on drugs just as much as I oppose the use of drugs themselves.
Yes, I know I am being redundant. But that’s because some Christians still just don’t get it. So let me make myself perfectly clear: drugs are bad. Smoking crack is evil. Getting high on marijuana cigarettes or brownies is a vice. Snorting cocaine is destructive. Shooting up with heroin is sinful. Swallowing ecstasy is immoral. Injecting yourself with crystal meth is dangerous. But none of these things means that there should be a law against doing any of them. And it is a myth that those who favor marijuana legalization or drug decriminalization just want to get high without being hassled by the police. Pat Robertson certainly doesn’t. And I certainly don’t either.
There are many reasons why Christians should not support the war on drugs.
Read more at LewRockwell.com
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That Vance would side with the likes of Robertson and Liber-tarians shows his true libertine theological leanings. Further proof of his error is that he would post on a site like “Lew Rockwell” that supports racism and anti- S e m i t i s m. Rockwell & Co. are the “ghostwriters” of Ron Paul’s infamous newsletters along with their support of David Duke and StormFront. Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell both come from the school of Murray Rothbard, who was a self-h a t i n g J e w and atheist.
Vance’s libertine humanism denies the role of our Judeo-Christian heritage enshrined in the Constitution by the Founders, and also denies the God-ordained right given to governments to maintain law and order in passages such as Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2:13+. These passages show us plainly that commands in Scripture given to individual Christians and those given to government are not necessary the same. By Vance’s own libertine logic he also endorsed g a y marriage, p o l y g a m y, b e s t i a l i t y, p e d o p h i l i a, and more. More and more of America’s once fundamentally biblical teachers are now gone over to a from of last days libertine gnosticism…
Yes, we understand that the oligarchs who employ you are unable to extract as much of the fruit of Americans’ labor when the products they import are decriminalized.
We understand that the immense number of uniformed drug distributors would have to figure out another way of shaking down the public if they were no longer able to lock people up for using their product.
And we understand that their paid propagandists, such as yourself, would be hard pressed to find another issue about which to sanctimoniously conflate , in order to criminalize some other underclass so that your socialist jackboot can be brought to bear in the interest of destroying liberty and freedom in America.
And lastly, we understand God’s wisdom in the creation of essentially infinite diversity in every atom of his existence, and the lesson given to us in the story of the tower of Babel, that he will not allow this world government that you and your owners presume to shove down our throats to succeed.
I don’t use the trash your bosses ship in here and market, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that prohibition is ineffective at everything except breeding corruption and misery, as history has proven repeatedly. Of course, the whole prohibition scam is extremely effective at providing a series of rationales that can be used to impinge on the rights of reputedly free citizens, so that our republic and the constitution establishing it can be undermined.
If you ever get tired of posting your hypocritical blatherings you should perhaps ask your superior to reassign you to some kind of real job where you can salvage the last remaining shreds of your integrity, in the interest of avoiding the obvious consequence of having to commit hari-kiri in penance to humanity.
The solution to Libertine secular humanist and anarchists like yourself is to:
- Secure the borders so you and your doper and human trafficker buddies can be stopped.
- Streamline and severely limit the appeals process for you crack heads and your ACLU lawyer cabal.
- Implement Sheriff Joe style jails and prisons to teach you dopers what work, hard labor, and consequences for lawlessness and anarchy are.
- Impose mandatory CAPITAL sentences for repeat offenders like you and offenses involving violence.