Supposedly, Colorado parents have a ‘unique challenge’ this Halloween. You see, because enough Colorado voters were bamboozled into legalizing pot for recreational purposes in 2012 (in addition to the already legal for medicinal purposes), now parents have to worry about cannabis laced candy in their trick-or-treat bags. There have even been products made available to test questionable candy of the presence of THC. It really makes you wonder if Canada will have the same issue, since it was rumored that the country was going to legalize recreational cannabis. According to rumors, Canadian citizens will even be allowed to buy concentrates online canada dispensaries will also be able to offer this type of service. However, only time will tell if this rumor is true or not; as for Colorado, it seems that they may have their work cut out for them.
[T]his year should be no different for parents, who should always employ common sense on Halloween. Throw out any unwrapped candy and inspect all packaging before letting your kids gorge on treats.
If the package looks suspicious, tampered with, torn, unwrapped or in unfamiliar packaging, throw out the candy. That should be the same message every year.
Wow, how hard was that? The board also points out that these ‘edibles’ aren’t cheap. The example they use: a package of 10 pot laced gummy bears retails for about $27 before taxes, that doesn’t include the price for weed delivery washington DC, Colorado, and other states provide. Who is really going to be that motivated to spend that much money to get strange children high? I suppose it only takes one to start a new wave of ‘Reefer Madness’ circa 2014*.
My bold prediction: there won’t be even one reported case of a child receiving pot-laced candy in Colorado. Do you know what I’m starting to think this all is? A marketing scheme for people to realize that marijuana is now legalized in Colorado, after all, it’s apparent that cannabis brands thrive with creative talent, so maybe there is no alarm that a child will receive THC-infused goods after all. Instead, maybe it was just someone’s bright idea to advertise legal cannabis to the potential consumers of Colorado?
*Maybe a bit conspiratorial on my part but who would be more motivated to give children pot-laced candy, those who are in favor of its legalization or those opposed?
I saw popping up in my Facebook feed a discussion on Kevin’s Facebook regarding the comments that Fox News’ Kimberly Guilfoyle made during a forum on what Democrats offer young women, a typically liberal voting bloc. Her controversial comments noted that she believed “millennial” women (and men, as she later clarified on Twitter) should stay out of the voting box and “go back to Tinder and Match.com”.
I was left with a pressing question… what the hell is “Tinder”? After doing some research, I found it was like a GPS-based Hot or Not. Kind of creepy if you ask me, but I wish it was this easy to get laid when I was in my 20s. There were no free sex dating sites or apps like Tinder back then! After my research, I instantly dismissed the initial comments. After all, if I wanted to get emotional any time a Fox host said something stupid, I’d be writing for Media Matters instead of The Liberty Papers. But the discussion on Kevin’s page – largely involving younger conservative women, many of whom were critical of the remarks themselves – gave me an epiphany regarding “millennials”.
I remember when I was a teenager – I’m 34 – everyone was making a big deal out of Generation X. We were these new breed of teenagers, and we were Everything Wrong With Americaâ„¢: we were uncouth, undisciplined, and uncontrollable. We were, in short, animals who were going to destroy America, said a generation of Americans who, before we were born, engaged in free love, did LSD by the bucket, and wore bell-bottom pants. The new generation isn’t so different, they just have the technology, like these hook-up apps (click here), that means they can do free lovin’ better than we ever could!
All I’m saying is, anyone who willingly puts on these clothes probably shouldn’t be yelling too hard because they found a pack of cigarettes in their kids’ dresser.
That generation of children that slammed my own generation – the Woodstock generation – was rebelling against their own conservative parents, who… wait, wasn’t Rock and Roll music going to destroy America, too? That Elvis Presley and his gyrating hips and oh my goodness are those black singers on my radio!? Help a young buck out. This is a conservative site, I know my readers here are old enough to remember.
I don’t know if their parents had anything that was Destroying Americaâ„¢ – between the Great Depression and World War II, they seem like they were too busy not dying to worry about how Jazz music was affecting our future – but there’s a history, through multiple generations of kids being dumb, getting older, becoming comparatively less dumb, and then railing at the dumbness of their own children. Add in a few hack journalists – old people, what did we call “clickbait” in the 80s? – and it’s always a case of The Youth Destroying America.
We’re no different. Many of my associates from my youth, possessed with a combination of strong libido, poor impulse control and even poorer sex education, have had children who are now either in or approaching their teens, and many of these people naturally rail against what children and millennials have become, forgetting that in many cases, they were even dumber when they were that age.
Where this ties into Guilfoyle’s comments is that I don’t necessarily think this is a consequence of ageing. I don’t think people just automatically go from being dumb to being smart as they get older. The only difference is how their vapid, narrow-minded worldview affects arbitrary political views, and who that happens to align with at the time. Voters aren’t absent-minded because they’re young, or because they vote for one side or the other; it’s an issue that stretches across all ages.
Poorly educated younger voters – who don’t read the news, don’t consider alternative worldviews, and generally only care whose bed they’re going to spend the night in – tend to vote liberal for many narrow reasons, but for simplicity’s sake, we’ll boil it down to “screw the man”. They support Operation Wall Street, favour income redistribution, are against the drug war and support higher property taxes because it boils down to more for them, less for everyone else. Forget nuance. Forget learning the issues. Damnit, the world is burning, and they don’t have time for that shit!
Eventually, those kids will get older, and get married and have kids of their own. Now, with the burden of that higher tax on their shoulders, and scared for their children, they slam into the other extreme. Ban all drugs! Put away criminals! Lower taxes! End social safety nets! Lock up potential predators (even if guilty of nothing more than thought crimes)! All because If It Only Saves One Child!â„¢ Forget nuance. Forget learning the issues. Damnit, Timmy has to get to football practice, and they don’t have time for that shit!
Soon, my generation, like those behind us, will get old. Now, the same people who railed for school spending in their 20s will want to pull it back. What do they care? Their kids are graduated. Instead, it will be about protecting their social security, their Medicare, and their freedom, no matter how poor their understanding of that word is. People who couldn’t stop putting drugs into their bodies as youths will continue to rail against those that do so now, because it’s their property that could be TP’d as some youth’s prank. Forget nuance. Forget learning the issues. Damnit, they’re old, they’re running out of time for that shit!
Low information voters go across generations, and across virtually any boundary one can think of, be it race, gender, age, income, etc., and despite the protests from people who usually are older, the margins are far thinner than people think. The difference is that we’re willing to tolerate the idiots who happen to align their views with our own. When Kim Guilfoyle slams millennial women, she’s not slamming a generation – young Republican voters are surely her equivalent to how a racist refers to his Black Friend – she’s slamming people who vote Democrat. Likewise, young people are more willing to tolerate Occupy, no matter how noxious it gets, because old people don’t get it, despite the many, many of them that actually do, if anyone took the time to talk to someone instead of yelling at them.
The kind of voters who don’t read, don’t learn, and ultimately just fumble their way through life, and still vote in who gets to run the country, are an issue and a problem that needs to be dealt with, no matter the political persuasion. Our democracy is a chain, and that chain is as strong as its weakest link. Whether that link is concerned about getting laid on… uh, that get laid app thingy… or is foolishly buying gold coins because someone on TV told them the economy was going to crash, is irrelevant.
Christopher Bowen covered the video games industry for eight years before moving onto politics and general interest. He is the Editor in Chief of Gaming Bus, and has worked for Diehard GameFan, Daily Games News, TalkingAboutGames.com and has freelanced elsewhere. He is a “liberaltarian” – a liberal libertarian. A network engineer by trade, he lives in Derby CT.
If you thought modern progressive feminists couldn’t be any more childish, you haven’t seen FCKH8’s latest viral video entitled: “F-Bombs for Feminism: Potty-Mouthed Princesses Use Bad Word for Good Cause.”
In the video (below), girls aged six to thirteen repeat progressive feminist bromides and talking points along with some F-bombs (as advertised) in an attempt to get this message to go viral (mission accomplished). As expected, the response by many is to be offended by having these ‘princesses’ use such foul language for any reason.
Personally, I think the whole thing is awful. I don’t like it when children are used for any cause foisted on children by adults, regardless of how noble the cause might be. It even turns my stomach a little when I see politicians use their own children in their campaign ads. It’s even more tacky to hear children speak about such things they most likely have no clue about. My daughter is pretty intelligent and the same age as some of these girls but I’m fairly sure she doesn’t even think about the ‘equal pay’ or ‘rape culture.’ Why should she? She’s nine years-old for crying out loud!*
More important than the shock value of elementary shool girls cursing like sailors…are the things these girls saying true? For the most part, no, these are the same old progressive feminist myths repackaged yet again. I’ve already dealt with the ‘equal pay for equal work’ nonsense here and here. You can also read this article 5 Feminist Myths that Will Not Die. I’ll let Julie Borowski take care of the rest as only Julie Borowski can – dropping her own F-bombs (Fact bombs, I should say) without actually cursing.
I have a few other F-bombs about gender disparities progressive feminists almost never bring up (and I’ll do so without exploiting any elementary age children to make my points):
A young man is required by law to sign up for Selective Service by his 18th birthday. In the event Congress decides to reinstate the draft, men exclusively are conscripted to risk life or limb for ‘his country.’ Also, of those who have died in all the U.S. wars (declared and undeclared) since the American Revolution, 99.99% were men. When men’s rights activists say that society has long decided that men are the ‘disposable gender’ this is one example of what they are talking about.
When young girls are circumcised we call it ‘genital mutilation’ and we are rightly scandalized by this barbaric practice. When baby boys have their genitals mutilated, we call it circumcision because either the boy should ‘look like his father’ or because some women prefer their partner to be circumcised. So much for ‘my body, my choice.’ And imagine the outrage if even one man said that because he preferred the look of a woman’s vagina without a clitorous, baby girls should have it removed?
When it comes to parenting and divorce, mothers get custody of the children roughly 84% of the time.
Since 1976, 15 women (2.9% of the executions) have been executed even though women are responsible for 10% of murders. While I am unapologetically opposed to the death penalty, as long as this barbaric practice is part of the system, this punishment should be an equal opportunity punishment without regard to sex, race, religion, economic or political status, or creed.
I could go on but I think I have made my point. There is inequality between the genders and both have their challenges. Personally, I would like to look at the individual rather than who is on ‘team penis’ or ‘team vagina.’ But first, we need to elevate the debate above the elementary school playground.
*This isn’t to suggest she isn’t already very opinionated or doesn’t care about important issues. That’s right, my daughter already has an issue she cares deeply about. Her issue: the alarming decline of the ‘big cat’ populations. According to National Geographic, there are as few as 3,000 tigers, 7,500 snow leopards, 10,000 cheetahs, and 30,000 lions left in the wild. I had no idea about this until my daughter started writing out a script she wanted to read over the intercom at her elementary school to collect money to help ‘save the big cats.’ I suggested that she should ask for donations to the local big cat sanctuary for her birthday instead of presents. Would you believe she was actually thrilled with this idea and followed through? I couldn’t be more proud of her. If she wanted to make a viral video about saving the big cats, I might make an exception to my ‘no kids’ rule because this is an issue that she actually cares about.
A reader commented that the problem with what you might call “strict Randites” is that they “seem to have a lack of compassion”.
An APPARENT lack of compassion.
Some do yes.
Others simply recognize that it isn’t compassion, when one is being “compassionate” with other peoples time, money, and resources.
Not a Randian by any stretch of the imagination… but there IS a point there.
The larger point with Rand, and with Neitzsche, and other individualist philosophers; is that the assumed obligation to sacrifice oneself in favor of others, and the assumed moral superiority of it, are both not only false, but in fact harmful.
Voluntary self sacrifice for good cause, and to good effect (or at least with a realistic attempt at good effect), is a noble thing. In all other cases, it is not.
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.
Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra
This makes sense, as soon as gays do things such as lynching Christians or vandalizing their property. Although usually, the violence is the other way around and gays are often the targets.
I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
