cannabisnews.com: Learning from Peter McWilliams 





Learning from Peter McWilliams 
Posted by FoM on June 17, 2000 at 11:39:45 PT
By Harry Browne 
Source: WorldNetDaily
Peter McWilliams, who died on June 14, was more than an author and activist for libertarian causes. He was a teacher from whom we can learn to be better salesmen of liberty -- and even better people. First some background. In March 1996, Peter was diagnosed with both AIDS and cancer. He was required to take so many pills that he vomited constantly, rendering the pills useless. Like many other people, he found that smoking marijuana relieved the nausea, kept the pills in his stomach and allowed him to stay alive. 
Always a libertarian and opposed to the Drug War, his personal afflictions prodded him to become even more an activist -- and he set to work writing a book on medical marijuana. In December 1997, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency conducted a pre-dawn raid on his home and stole his computer -- containing the only copy of the book manuscript. In July 1998, he was arrested and charged with violating the federal drug laws by smoking marijuana. The trial judge prohibited him from pointing-out that medical marijuana is legal in California. Stripped of his only defense, he plea-bargained for a sentence of five years -- which he hoped to serve under house arrest, rather than in prison. While awaiting the final determination of how he would serve his sentence, he was allowed to post bail and remain at home -- provided he stop smoking marijuana. He complied with the prohibition because his family's homes were mortgaged to provide his bail. No longer able to use marijuana to keep his medicines down, he finally died this past week -- apparently choking on his own vomit. As Steve Kubby has said, Peter died of an overdose of government. Despite his somewhat flamboyant public personality, Peter was a gentle, sensitive soul. He exhibited a tolerance toward his enemies that would have made a saint proud. Someone once asked him why, since he was living on borrowed time anyway, he didn't get a gun and take some of the Drug Warriors to the Hereafter with him. Peter replied: My enemy is ignorance, not individuals. It is winning the war of ideas -- through fact, logic, persuasion and, yes, humor -- that brings about lasting change. What we are facing today in America is not an evil dictator like Hitler, who is the head of a snake and whose removal will kill the snake -- but overgrown bureaucracies like the Drug War, which is more like an anthill. No matter how many individual ants you kill one at a time, the colony goes on. Any idiot with a gun can kill. It takes clever perseverance to make lasting change. As has been proven time and again, to alter the government in this country does not take violence, but education. My job is to get the country back into believing and living under the supreme law of the Constitution, not to kill those who are leading the country astray. I support the high road of truth, facts, debate, and education even if I'm not able to walk that road much longer and even if lies, deception, repression, and ignorance are the direct cause of my death. Peter was a wonderful example -- not just of tolerance, but of effectiveness. He taught us that the battle for a free, libertarian America is too important to indulge ourselves by being venomous, snide, patronizing or violent toward our opponents. We must keep our heads, be patient and help Americans understand how the government and the Drug War are hurting them. We gain nothing by asserting our superiority and browbeating the people we need to bring to our side. We gain everything by following Peter's example and treating everyone -- friend or foe -- as a sovereign, but perhaps misinformed, human being. Saturday, June 17, 2000© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com Inc. Related Articles & Web Sites:Harry Browne For Presidenthttp://www.harrybrowne2000.org/The Medical Marijuana Magazinehttp://www.marijuanamagazine.com/McWilliams.comhttp://www.mcwilliams.com PeterTrialhttp://www.petertrial.com/Grow Medicinehttp://www.growmedicine.com/Peter McWilliams Backed Medical Use of Marijuana http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6083.shtmlLibertarians Mourn Passing of M Marijuana Activisthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6078.shtmlPeter McWilliams Passes Away http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread6069.shtml
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Comment #4 posted by Morgan on June 19, 2000 at 13:58:56 PT
Murder
Murder
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Comment #3 posted by nl5x on June 19, 2000 at 13:47:45 PT
murder
murder
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Comment #2 posted by Doctor Dave on June 19, 2000 at 09:12:29 PT
Eulogy for Peter McWilliams
My heart goes out to the friends, family, and relatives of Peter McWilliams, as well as to the many other people whose lives he touched.He will be remembered as a martyr, a victim of wartime atrocities committed in the name of Prohibition, denial of medical rights, and more simply, the denial of liberty and justice.It is a disgrace that this has happened -- it would not have occurred in a more enlightened society. It is my hope that through his death more people will become more aware of the war crimes being committed by the government, and that that knowledge will spur people into action. I think that's what he would have wanted.Doctor Dave"A nation that makes war on huge numbers of its own people can never truly be free."Deaths from alcohol, tobacco: hundreds of thousands per yearDeaths from marijuana: 0Deaths from marijuana prohibition: +1 (at least) on June 14th
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on June 18, 2000 at 08:10:46 PT:
"***holes and Victims"
The sci-fi writer John W. Campbell used to say that a slave was a man waiting for another man to free him. Many of us are waiting for 'someone else' to free us from the nightmare of cannabis prohibition.The only person who can do that is looking back at you from the mirror.I once heard an Ocean City cop say, when he thought no regular civilians were around, that he liked his job because all he dealt with all day long were "***holes and victims". Of course, he was speaking sardonically, but it shows a dangerous attitude of law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, etc. with regards to average people. You were either one or the other, and both were *contemptible*.Why contempt for *victims*, you might ask? Weren't they just that? Victims? With no fault of their own?This goes back to a kind of pack mentality; the weak should perish, the strong survive. In the viewpoint of the antis, only someone who was stupid or weak would be a victim. And therefore deserves no sympathy. Those who have power, as an alpha male wolf does, are accorded respect. The Nazi's generally attributed such weak qualities to their Jewish victims... until the Warsaw Uprising and at Sobibor, when they got a taste of the steel that eventually went into the making of the modern Israel.  So what does this have to do with the article? Simply this: unless we get off of our duffs, and really push for political power (even if it is only 20 million out of 70 million cannabis users; get the hint, people?) we will always be seen as 'victims', easily pushed around. And in Peter McWilliams's case, *killed* by a government that smugly, unctuously says, in tones dripping with false sorrow, that it is sorry he died... without admitting they had a HUGE hand in the process.How many more of us have to die before the rest get it through their heads that the antis are making WAR upon us? And the only way to stop it is to get politically active? Yes, you might actually have to give up the weed for a while to prevent the goons from taking your stuff after you become a known activist; they *will* come calling, I assure you. Because the first thing the knuckledraggers try is intimidation... I know that from personal experience, courtesy of the Fat Boys Institute. Can you give that much up until we win?Or are you content to stay a 'victim', cowering in your closet in fear of having vindictive neighbors, or DARE-addled children, or nosy busybody "Crimestoppers" types with too much time on her elderly hands and no life of her own, taking an interest in your private affairs?The choice is yours. We *can* win. And we *will*. The question is, how soon do you want to win?
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