The Affairs of Government

The issue of marijuana has intrigued me in the past years. For as long as I had even heard of the existence of the drug, I’ve heard arguments mostly on the pro side of the issue. It’s rare that someone will come out on the undeniably pro-weed internet to excoriate the supposed ill effects of marijuana. After all, we’ve come a long way since scare-mongering movies like “Reefer Madness” attempted to showcase these so-called dangerous effects in an unintentionally laughable fashion. And the article “Legalize the Lettuce!” by Matthew Serpas is no exception to the modern-day ideas about weed.  In the article, Sherpas extols the virtues of a well-regulated and legal marketplace for weed. He argues that the popularity of the drug combined with the taxes that the government could levy on its sales would be beneficial to those governments. An aspect of this taxation argument that took me by surprise, however, was the idea that a certain portion of the tax revenue should go towards a p...

Ask any citizen of the United States, either on the left or right of the political spectrum, to lay out their list of government grievances, and you’ll soon realize that the list is almost unending. Indeed, it is practically a national pastime to blame the U.S. government for our multitude of problems. Healthcare, immigration, climate change, etc. are all issues current and past governments have floundered to address. Yet, while it may be common to use this line of thinking, it masks a deeper and more vexing issue underneath: that if the American public really wanted to solve these problems, they could. Indeed, the frequent adjustment of our founding document gives a clue of the potential for radical change in the United States. Furthermore, the public has never had more power when it comes to directly changing their situation through election of officials. When it comes to discussions of governance, the public often looks to the Constitution for guidance. It is the refere...