Bob Barr and "Bong Hits 4...": A Conservative Dilemma

The Religious Right/Social Censervatives have been known for their adamant stand on absolute principles and refusal to compromise on any legislative or constitutional approaches to issues that they believe have moral bases. However, two situations have recently arisen that have presented them with a true dilemma: do they insist on an absolute anti-drug position or do they recognize the reciprocal nature of rights to individual freedoms.

In short, do they recognize the principle that the policeman in my enemy's living room casts a dark shadow over my own house?

The more ironic of the two situations is the announcement that ex-Congresscritter Bob Barr has been retained as a lobbist for a medical marijuana group. Barr, a far-right Republican, was a consistently hard line Drug Warrior. He is best known for sponsorship of the Barr Amendment that prevented the District of Columbia from even conducting a referendum on the issue of medical marijuana. He now states that the danger of governmental intrusion into personal lives is a greater threat to American life than is a less intrusive drug policy. A social conservative has now become a more libertarian small-government conservative.

The "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" Supreme Court case concerning the speech rights of an Alsakan high school student has created an even deeper rift in the Religious Right.

Kenneth Starr, darling of the Right, Special Prosecutor ( or is that Persecutor?) of Bill Clinton, who eased out of government service into the position of Dean of the Law School of Pepperdine University, a right-wing religiously base college in California, is representing the school principal and arguing the school's right to supress drug activity.

Filing amicus briefs in support of the student's right to display his banner are several organisations of religious fundamentalists. The recognize that suppression of this silly banner will jeopardize several of their cherished programs, including such humbugs as abstinence-only sex education, intelligent (sic!)-design biology courses, and the plastering of school walls with Ten Commandment plaques.

And, you know what, they're right! Either the Bill of Rights protects all of us or it protects no one. Unless they can become a veto-proof 70% majority, the American Taliban cannot establish their cherished theocracy; and unless they do, they run the risk of being suppressed.

The rule of a pluralistic society is that we all must, if not respect, rcognize the rights of each other; for, in the words of Ben Franklin, if we do not hang to gather, we shall all hang separately. For the more theologically inclined, I leave it as a research project to look at the strikingly parallel defences of their martyrdoms by St. Thomas More and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.