cannabisnews.com: I Burn My Candle at Both Ends....





I Burn My Candle at Both Ends....
Posted by FoM on August 09, 1999 at 09:00:35 PT
Letter from Peter McWilliams
Source: McWilliams.com
Dear Friends, Here is an e-mail I received from a college student and my response. Take good care, Peter
 In your book "Ain't Nobody's Business..." you gave explicit advice on what media-types, legal people, and teachers should do. But it seems hard for an individual citizen to contribute to the rapid rescission of the layers of garbage that are suffocating and mocking our nation's sense of justice and life. I get very impatient when I see how slow it takes for any bit of progress - you name it - to make its way into the public world. I get frustrated when I think how hard it is for me to try to fight for any particular freedom I care to enjoy. I read most of Ayn Rand at 12 and started college that same year: the dominant theme for my life is quickness and impatience. I want to see things done. Now. I hate stupid people, liars, superstitious people, tyrants, competent bureaucracies, and all manner of evil. I thought that having personal integrity was enough to be happy, but now it's clear that without a public sense of justice, integrity does very little when people with guns - whether legal or illegal - come up to you. We still live in an age of ridiculously misdistributed power. Anyway I am glad to see that there still exist people who value life. I was happy to read your book. Dear , I couldn't agree with you more. I'm glad I'm not as intelligent as you, for I certainly would have exploded by now. What is COMPLETELY IGNORED is that in our personal choices we have a fundamental RIGHT to be WRONG. For personal incorrect choices that physically harm no one else, the government has no authority to move into our lives with criminal intervention. Period. That the government wants to put me in jail for life for GROWING PLANTS is beyond my comprehension and nearly beyond my ability to contain my rage. To remain in one piece I have to consciously think of something else, do something else, take a "legal" drug of some kind, jerk off, watch TV, go to sleep, visit the Hampster Dance http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/4157/hampdance.htmsomething, anything!If you're looking to me for a cool unemotional solution, you are looking in the wrong place. I am about as frustrated as a human being can get. The ONLY thing that keeps me intact is knowing that there are people like you out there, fellow frustrated ones who see the injustice and want to do something to change it. It is for "us" that I keep it together and fight on. To quote Stephen Sondheim: "There's a place for us...somehow, sometime, somewhere." Burn on, Peter P.S. The reasonable, logical, and practical solution, by the way, is to pick your area of injustice and fight to eliminate that one. When successful, celebrate for about an hour, then pick another. My current area is medical marijuana and the War on Drugs. If these weren't around, it would be gay rights. With some help in choosing yours, have a look at: http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/doit/ I burn my candle at both ends....
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