politics – Page 113

Who Wins From Having The Cannabis Referendum at The Same Time as The 2020 General Election?

The process about the cannabis referendum next year is starting to take more concrete shape. Not only are we starting to get some kind of idea of what question is going to be asked, but we have had confirmation that the referendum will take place at the same time as the 2020 General Election. In this article, Dan McGlashan, author of Understanding New Zealand, explains the likely electoral ramifications.

In the 2004 American Presidential Elections, George W Bush’s adviser Karl Rove had the genius idea of scheduling a number of referendums to take place at the same time. These referendums all related to state constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. Because this issue aroused strong conservative sentiment in the electorate in 2004, it brought conservatives to the polls, where they also voted for George W Bush.

The scheduling of the cannabis referendum at the same time as the 2020 General Election ought to have a similar effect. The sort of person who turns out to vote in this referendum will be those who would normally vote in a General Election, plus some otherwise disenfranchised demographics who didn’t previously feel an incentive to vote at all.

It’s worth looking at who those otherwise disenfranchised demographics are, because if they turn out vote in the referendum, and if they cast a vote for a party in the General Election at the same time, there might be enough of them to tip the balance of the election towards one or the other side.

The cannabis referendum will not bring out a meaningful number of extra conservatives, for two major reasons.

The first is that conservatives don’t really care about cannabis. Conservatism isn’t about being stupid, or being backwards. The average conservative is intelligent enough to have observed that many places overseas have now legal cannabis, and these places are no longer spending tax payers money on enforcing prohibition. Apart from morons like Bob McCoskrie, there’s no real appetite for continuing cannabis prohibition on the right.

The second is that conservatives already vote. As I showed in Understanding New Zealand, the correlation between voting for the National Party in 2017 and turnout rate was 0.68, which is very strong. Because there are no firm boundaries between party lines, this is unlikely to get any stronger from a referendum unless the conservatives really cared about it. And they don’t.

Who the cannabis referendum will bring out are the currently disenfranchised who have lost faith in the democratic system because of (among other reasons) its inability to deliver anything close to the public will on the issue of cannabis law. These people will come from the demographics that did not vote in the 2017 General Election.

The most obvious will be the remainder of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party’s demographic. The ALCP got 8.075 votes in 2017, and the correlation between voting ALCP in 2017 and turnout rate in 2017 was -0.63. This suggests that at least another 10,000 potential ALCP votes were lost to disenfranchisement.

Whether they would vote for the ALCP is anyone’s guess, although most will realise that, if cannabis is legal, there is no reason for the ALCP to exist, and therefore they might as well vote for someone else.

Many have made the assumption that the largest beneficiaries of a cannabis law reform referendum will be the Green Party. After all, it is the Green Party who has pushed for it, and it seems reasonable that this might lead to some otherwise non-voting cannabis users turning up to the polling booth for the referendum and throwing a vote the Greens’ way.

This simple assumption is likely to be mistaken, also for two reasons.

Simply put, Green voters tend to already vote. The correlation between turnout rate in 2017 and voting Green in 2017 was 0.27 – not very strong on the face of it, but strong if one considers that Green voters come from young demographics, and the turnout rate among those demographics is very low. Green voters and supporters are not disenfranchised.

The other reason is that the demographics that truly support cannabis law reform, the ones who are adversely impacted by the current law, are not the same demographics as Green Party voters.

There is a correlation of 0.73 between being New Zealand-born and voting ALCP in 2017. The reason for this because cannabis law reform is of little interest to those who aren’t either white or Maori. Cannabis is an integral part of true Kiwi culture, and many of those who come out to vote will be nationalists. They will not have much interest in supporting Green Party policies, aside from cannabis, which they can now support without voting Green.

This strong correlation relates to the correlation of 0.91 between being Maori and voting ALCP in 2017. This suggests that a very large number of the people who vote in the General Election because of the referendum will be Maori. Maoris seem to have an aversion to the Green Party, and this probably exists because they distrust globalists – the correlation between being Maori and voting Green in 2017 was -0.14.

Policies like increasing the refugee quota will prove devastating for the cohesion of Maori neighbourhoods and communities, and this is widely understood. The sort of person who is most heavily affected by this kind of thing is precisely the disenfranchised voter who is likely to turn out for the cannabis referendum.

The extra voters will undoubtedly be much younger than average, because the correlation between voting ALCP in 2017 and median age was -0.57. This makes them much younger than both Greens and New Zealand First voters, and only a little older than Labour voters. The young are much more passionate about cannabis law reform because they do not have the generational brainwashing that the older generations endured.

Finally, the extra voters are likely to come from the least educated demographics. The correlation between voting ALCP in 2017 and having no formal education qualifications was 0.68, the highest for any party. New Zealand First was not far behind, on 0.67, but the Green Party were at the other end of the scale, at -0.56. These extra voters are not likely to be impressed by the aloof superiority of the Greens.

Paradoxically, then, it’s most likely that the timing of the cannabis referendum to coincide with the 2020 General Election won’t benefit the party that most strongly pushed for it. Gratitude is not an emotion that can be counted on. It’s much more likely that the young, disenfranchised, Kiwi-born and Maori people who come to the polling booth for the referendum will vote Labour and, perhaps unfairly, New Zealand First.

Understanding New Zealand, by Dan McGlashan and published by VJM Publishing, is the comprehensive guide to the demographics and voting patterns of the New Zealand people. It is available on TradeMe (for Kiwis) and on Amazon (for international readers).

The Case For Cannabis: God Put Cannabis Here

An uncommon argument for cannabis is that God put it here. This is an uncommon argument on account of the fact that religious sentiments are becoming rarer and rarer, but it has pull even for those who don’t follow an organised religion. As this article will explain, the argument that God put cannabis here remains a powerful one for some people.

Genesis 1:29 states: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth…”

It’s obvious from reading this, on one of the first pages of the Bible, that according to Christian belief, God created cannabis specifically for the benefit of humans. Cannabis is a herb that bears seed, and we encountered it on the face of the Earth, so therefore a Christian ought to believe that its presence here on Earth is a gift from God that ought to be cherished.

Indeed, it’s obvious why a benevolent God would have created such a thing. For someone with the kind of illness that cannabis treats, it can feel like a godsend. Many people with psychological problems have found that cannabis can make the difference between a restful night’s sleep and eight hours of torture. For such people, providing cannabis is bound to engender feelings of gratitude.

Is it not true, then, that a human Government working to prohibit this medicine, and to make it harder for people to get hold of, is causing people to suffer needlessly, and therefore is doing evil work?

Christians are fond of saying that the world is ruled by Satan, and that the Governments of the world all serve Satan. This will to serve evil is the main reason, they contend, that evil exists. Satan desires to thwart the will of God and to destroy the creation of God, and to cause God’s most blessed creation to suffer on account of his infernal envy.

Fair enough, but then why support evil by opposing cannabis law reform? If Satan tricked the rulers of the world into prohibiting a medicine that God had created, why not vote to change it back?

If one opposes legal cannabis, is that not tantamount to saying that God made a mistake by creating cannabis for human use, and that humans know better than God by making it illegal instead? From an Abrahamic perspective, this surely constitutes a grave sin. It’s blasphemy to elevate the laws of men above the laws of God.

Christians must surely believe that cannabis ought to be legal for the reason that God put it here. Cannabis is part of the natural world, and if Christians believe that God created the natural world and saw that it was good, so it must be God’s will for humans to use cannabis as needed to avoid suffering.

A reader might object here, and say that this argument is just an example of the naturalistic fallacy. This objection argues that, even if one concedes that God created cannabis, this doesn’t mean that we should be using it. After all, we don’t eat nightshade berries either, and those are just as much a part of the natural world as cannabis is.

A logical person would agree. Just because cannabis is natural doesn’t mean that everyone should necessarily be using it. However – no-one is arguing for this. No-one is arguing that anyone should be forced to use cannabis, or even exposed to it in cases where this exposure would cause suffering. To the contrary, cannabis law reformers would argue that legalisation is better for keeping it out of the hands of the wrong people.

All that cannabis law reformers want is for the Government to stand back and allow them to use a natural plant, something that appears to be just as much a part of creation as the sunlight and the rain, as well as the wheat, apples, kiwifruit, potatoes and all the other plants.

Cannabis ought to be legal because it’s a moral obscenity for humans to arrogate to themselves the power to make parts of Nature, elements of God’s creation, illegal. There is a scriptural basis for believing that God put cannabis here for the benefit of humans, and anyone who believes in those scriptures surely must also believe that God did not do so in error.

This article is an excerpt from The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Empire vs. The Nations

All throughout history, there has been a neverending struggle between two implacably opposed forces. Much like good and evil themselves, human history has been characterised by an eternal struggle between an Empire that sought to conquer the world and the Nations that sought to resist. This essay elucidates.

Much as the Sun beats down from above, its rays bringing order to the Earth that receives them, so too does the Empire impose itself from above, onto the Nations that form from below.

On the world stage, the Empire is the force that seeks to subjugate all the nations. It is based around the idea of central rule, where a single leader imposes a code of laws on its subjects. The Nations are those who rise up from the soil and who self-organise based on natural similarities between members of a wider kin group.

On one level, the words democracy and republic means the same thing. But they reflect different perceptions. Democracy means rule of the masses, deriving from demos, which means people, and -cracy, which means form of rule. Republic also means rule of the masses. The difference is that democracy is a national concept, whereas republicanism is an imperial one.

The concept of democracy, in a Greek sense, is easy to understand if one if familiar with Aristotle’s Politics. In the same way that the head of a family makes decisions of behalf of their family, who gives them power, so does a chieftain make decisions on behalf of their village, a baron on behalf of his county, and a king on behalf of his nation. This is all good and well, but the bottom-up structure of every nation clashes with the top-down system imposed by the Empire.

This conflict between top-down and bottom-up systems can be seen all throughout history. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter what or where the Empire is, or whether it’s Roman, Mongol, British or American. At the centre of the Empire is the one who wields the Spear of Destiny, for they are the one who directs the course of this Empire, and the course of Empire reflects them and their will.

The two are fated to clash because the morals of the two systems are entirely different.

The moral virtues of the Empire are all about expedience. The Empire cares about control and profit. Its basic inclination is to expand. Enjoyment of life comes from glory and domination. The Empire believes that it has a moral blueprint that can serve for all human life, and therefore they’re doing the Nations (i.e. the barbarians) a favour by subjugating them. The Empire has no problem with the Big Lie.

By contrast, the moral virtues of the Nations are the same moral virtues that allow one to thrive in a state of Nature. The Nations care about the physical and mental health and strength of their peoples. Their basic inclination is to remain the same, and to enjoy life, which comes from interaction with people and places that they love, and from being at peace with God.

Alchemically speaking, it could be said that the Empire was of iron and silver while the Nations were of clay and gold. The Empire values cheap labour, willing mercenaries and the kind of science that builds artillery, battleships and railroads. The Nations value good sex, good food, being healthy and a direct spiritual connection to God and the Great Fractal.

In most cases, the desires of the Empire and the Nations are the same. Both want peace. Both want order. In most cases, they also agree on how to achieve this. Both the Empire and the Nations strive to keep their citizens fed and entertained. Their approach is, however, entirely different.

The Empire believes the state of Nature to be a state of war, and consequently declares it a good thing that the Empire imposes order. The greatest motivation of the Nations is to resist the impositions of Empire and to live a life in accordance with Nature, which they believe to be a state of peace until disturbed by Empire.

Because of this difference in approach, certain political issues cause great tensions.

Open borders seems like a great idea for the Empire, because it allows them to import cheap labour en masse to any territory they desire. If a Caribbean island starts a sugar plantation, the Empire can’t wait to import 10,000 Africans to work it. The Nations, however, hate open borders, because open borders means the destruction of all national, regional and local solidarity and culture.

The question of open borders has divided our societies into imperialists who want to import capital and workers as fast as possible, and who are pro-immigration, and nationalists who want to emphasise bonds of solidarity between kin and neighbours, and who are anti-immigration. Both sides declare the other evil, accusing one of being soulless money-worshippers and the other of being narrow-minded bigots.

The matter of religion and spirituality also causes great conflict. The desire of the Empire is to have a “Holy Land” that all of its children look to, and a single religious template into which all spiritual inquiry must be forced. The Nations, however, tend to resist this centralisation. The spirituality of the Nations tends to revolve around great local men who have achieved gnosis by discovering or developing a particular methodology.

The religion of the Empire is that which inspires them to conquer and to impose their order; the spirituality of the Nations is what which inspires them to resist and to tell the truth in the face of expedient lies. In our iteration of the world, societies are split between imperialists who usually support some form of Abrahamism, and nationalists who are more interested in direct gnosis and local traditions.

In many of the great issues of today, it’s possible to see that, fundamentally, these issues have arisen because of the conflict between the Empire and the Nations. Where it really gets tricky is that this conflict, much as the conflict between good and evil, runs through every human heart.

There are two types of people, therefore: children of the Empire, and children of the Nations. If you are a child of the Empire you probably speak English as a native language. You probably feel most at home in universities and airports. If you are a child of the Nations you might speak anything as a native language. You don’t feel home in places but in one particular place.

New Zealanders, like all children of the Empire, have a unique dilemma. The vast majority of us are raised speaking English, the Empire’s language. As such, we have a very weak national identity. Many New Zealanders are perfectly happy moving to Sydney or London and working there. There is almost no culture shock when one moves from one part of the Empire to another, but the economic opportunities may be many times greater, and so the pull is extremely strong.

Over the past century, however, a nationalist sentiment has slowly risen. This was first inspired as a reaction to the indifference with which Empire administrators treated the well-being of our soldiers in World War One. After Gallipoli and Passchendaele we came to understand that being children of the Empire was to be so much cannon fodder. Self-rule was the only way to have the requisite dignity.

Therefore, many of us suffer from divided loyalties. A line runs through the hearts of many New Zealanders: do they choose the Empire side, and emphasise the great wealth and economic opportunity that comes with being a native English speaker with an Anglosphere passport, or do they choose the Kiwi side, and emphasise loyalty with their neighbours and region?

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 is also available.

The Case For Cannabis: Legalisation Would Not Increase Drugged Driving Deaths

The resistance that many people have towards cannabis law reform is fear based. Like a panicky chicken, the prospect of any change at all is met with terror. One of the fears that people have at the thought of cannabis legalisation is that it will lead to carnage on our roads. As this article will examine, these fears are misguided.

As with many of the misgivings that people have about cannabis law reform, the fear of an increase in drugged driving deaths is based on a misconception about how dangerous cannabis is. This is partially based on ignorance, and partially based on the idea that being high on cannabis is like being drunk on alcohol.

The idea seems to be that perfectly otherwise normal people will smoke some cannabis and, because cannabis makes you go crazy, they will get in a car and drive like a crazy person. This perception has been stoked by sensationalist media reporting involving headlines such as “Stoned driver faces jail” when the driver in question had also been smoking methamphetamine.

The idea that cannabis legalisation will lead to more road deaths is not accurate for three major reasons.

The first is that it ignores the substitution effect (for the sake of argument, let’s agree here with the lazy assumption that legal cannabis will lead to more use). An individual driving under the influence of cannabis might not be as safe as a sober person. But evidence from elsewhere shows that, if cannabis was legalised, a proportion of incidents of drunk driving will be replaced with incidents of stoned driving, which are safer.

Research has shown that rates of alcohol use fall in places where recreational cannabis is made legal. This is because cannabis and alcohol serve as substitutes to a large extent. Because rates of alcohol use fall after cannabis legalisation, rates of drunk driving also fall, and this means that traffic fatalities also fall – significantly.

It’s better for a driver to be sober, but if they aren’t going to be sober, it’s better for them to be stoned than to be drunk. It’s a grim calculus, but if legalising cannabis would lead to twenty extra drugged driving deaths but would prevent fifty drunk driving deaths, it would be a worthwhile move.

The second is that the actual science is inconclusive as to whether being stoned impairs driving safety. Various studies have provided contradictory results. The lazy assumption is that being under the influence of any psychoactive drug, including cannabis, will make a person worse at driving. The reality is that stoned drivers take a variety of measures to reduce their risk of crashing.

Part of the problem is that unregulated cannabis contains a great variety of various cannabinoids, and these cannabinoids can be present at a great variety of frequencies. Studies appear to be clear that high doses of THC impair driver safety, which follows logically from the fact that THC is known to have a psychotogenic effect, but there is no such evidence suggesting the same about high doses of CBD.

It also appears to be true that, unlike alcohol, cannabis tolerance has an effect on whether it impairs driving performance. For many cannabis users, cannabis is merely a background substance that quietens distracting thoughts. All these reasons mean that, although no responsible person would advocate driving after using cannabis, a person who has just smoked it is not necessarily unsafe to drive.

The third is that it is irrelevant. Like with many arguments against cannabis law reform, focus on the specifics misses the bigger picture.

Not everyone trusts the Government when it says that cannabis is a substance that isn’t safe to drive on. As the linked articles above demonstrate, there are indeed instances when a person who has consumed cannabis is not safe to drive. But why would a person trust a Government public safety notice on the subject, when they have previously lied about cannabis full stop?

Over recent decades, governments all over the world have denied that cannabis was medicinal. But because people all over the world knew that it was medicinal, the end result has been decreased trust of governmental pronouncements, particularly when they relate to cannabis. So if the a government would give the perfectly reasonable advice to avoid driving within two hours of smoking, it might well be ignored.

If cannabis was legal, and if the Government spoke to the public honestly about it instead of lying, users might trust them when giving intelligent and prudent advice about smoking cannabis and driving. This would save many more lives in the long run than could possibly be saved by putting cannabis growers and users in prison.

The idea that cannabis legalisation will lead to a spate of fatal traffic accidents is fearmongering. It’s the same kind of fearmongering that claimed that legalising homosexuality would lead to everyone dying of AIDS. The experience of overseas territories that have legalised cannabis shows that these fears are little more than hysteria.

This article is an excerpt from The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, compiled by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.