No moral or legal harm shall befall a user of cannabis again. The moral war against the incorporation of joy and open-mindedness into one’s spiritual journey has been defeated, cast aside for the colonial tyranny it was, Anglo-Saxon in its origin and Puritan in its fears. Nevermore shall proud Vermonters feel the imaginary sting and lash of an outdated moral condemnation that sees debauchery in every glowing joint or escape in every vaporizer, forcing those of us who seek wisdom in an altered state to draw our curtains against our neighbors or whisper shibboleths in the street. Now our freedom has come, and the wisdoms of our religion may find their unfettered expression in our words, in our music, and in our dance.
Prohibition is over. Freedom has come this day.
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I recently finished re-watching the HBO miniseries, John Adams. I wish there was a way to give applause to a performer for a perfomance long past. A tweet (or a blog post) may serve as some version of that, but I wish there was a way (YouTube, I guess) for its principals — Paul Giamatti, Laura Linney, and Tom Hooper — to see me stand and hear my applause, for I was touched not only by the technical aspects of the series, but also by its presence, the way it brought a revolutionary life to my living room and put me inside the human emotions that must have commanded those days.
The miniseries ends with a narrated letter written by John Adams to his wife in April, 1777. The whole letter (not narrated in the episode) focuses on Adams’ disappointment with his Massachusetts countrymen: “With the noblest Prize in View, that ever Mortals contended for, and with the fairest Prospect of obtaining it upon easy Terms, The People of the Massachusetts Bay, are dead.”
After critiquing his Massachusetts brethren for not sending troops, Adams transitions into a disquisition on his ill humour “from Indisposition of Body…a Cold, as usual.” He explains to his wife how sickly he has become, and how dark his outlook, for he “moap[s] about and drudge[s] as usual, like a Galley Slave.”
He concludes the letter with the following, which in the miniseries is read aloud by Paul Giamatti: “Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
The incredible nature of this miniseries is how it demonstrates those pains, not least the pain that comes from being away from the persons and country you love. John Adams, literally, dedicated his life to defending the idea that every man (yes, “man”; his mistakes would be corrected later, by others) has the right to be free, and it asks us to be thankful for his labor.
He was not perfect. Among many other flaws, Adams would misinterpret the radical nature of freedom by resting atop of it the restricting hand he inherited from his Puritan forebears, one that looked to secure itself “against all Adversities of Fortune, against all the Malice of men, against all the Operations of Nature.” As with all desires for security, the desire for a restricting hand arrives out of fear, and it was this fear, more than anything, that drove our prohibition on pot.
This is not the place to recount that history, and now is not the time. Instead, let us “Rejoice Evermore!” at our fellow countryperson’s (yes, “person’s”) recognition of yet one more freedom to be enjoyed by those of us who count ourselves alive in John Adams’ posterity.
Prohibition is over. “Rejoice Evermore!“