After reading John Balentine’s first column I expected a slightly more moderate conservatism, and maybe more than a few contortions in any future attempt to explain Trump to your readers. I looked forward to both. But “Sober Sessions …” is a reactionary piece with many significant distortions.

Balentine says, ” … the government should defend sobriety.” Prohibition anyone? By the lights of what you write, he should be in favor. And yet he does not call for it, even though all of his objections to THC might just as easily be leveled at alcohol. Further, the government needn’t spend one cent defending sobriety as it can bloody well take care of itself.

And his Lincoln argument is specious. He intervened on behalf of a people; Balentine is objecting to a plant. (States’ rights people really know when to pick a fight; perhaps he should study up on John C. Calhoun?)

Conservatives would argue that if Balentine’s buddy got bitten, it’s not the savior’s problem. Couldn’t he just as easily argue that without the drink, his buddy might be dead? And mightn’t we further speculate that at that point, had there been no savior, that if he could’ve, his buddy would’ve rolled and smoked a joint posthaste? (Certainly, at the height of the Civil War, Lincoln would’ve refused a joint, but I bet he woulda-if-he-coulda toked when he learned of his son’s death.)

Marijuana is not evil, nor is Balentine. But he should rein in his Society creds and burn one down as soon as possible.

Duncan Dunscombe
Falmouth