Politics exists because we are selfish. Recognition of the fact that we are selfish and that the political civil order need not necessarily be a part of every facet of everyday life is how we ended up with such ideas like “Separation of Church and State”.
Otherwise we would be picking state religions, giving tax advantages to the favored religion, and maybe even burning heretics at the stake depending on the current political mood. Probably Jewish people would have gotten killed or exiled for one reason or another from the United States as well.
Somehow on matters of theology, while debates and biases still exist, even atheists can live life surrounded by Catholics without fear of persecution. On the time scale of history, that’s a pretty neat feat. Whatever politics exist in various churches, are by and large outside the scope of the national government.
The reason our politics is so vicious these days is because we have such a large Federal State that is substantially more than a mere national government. A government which was founded more or less to ensure the common defense, provide for bankruptcy courts and keep the the United States a free trade area back before they even had the term for it. The more functions you want to graft onto the State, Federal or your home State, the more you are inviting the political preferences of your neighbors and fellow citizens into your own life, and the more you have at stake come the next elections because the next President can always undo the entire regulatory legacy of the previous one. This is why laws originate in Congress where it takes a law to undo a law. If your rights only exist by Executive fiat that the next administration can undo with the stroke of a pen, then you don’t really have them.
Would demonizing and banning psychedelics not count as advancing one religious or spiritual tradition over another?
This is getting way off topic, but does it stand to reason that new emerging spirituality that uses substances that are not tax-advantaged/legal counts as favoring the traditional over the new? (setting aside the history of psychedelics that's older than Judaism or Christianity)
I think demonizing and banning psychedelics was part of a larger scheme to find reasons to lock more black people up. Because that’s ultimately what the drug war was and is about. Best thing we could do is wash our hands of the whole thing, and try to revert our criminal justice system back to the state it was in prior to prosecuting the Drug War. Based of today’s political atmosphere, I don’t have a whole lot of hope for it, but at least as far as weed and psychedelics go, we’re starting to see something of a correction that will remove them from the scope of the drug war in time.
I think you could make a good case, I don’t know if it would be a winning case today, but I think you could make a good case along those lines in the courts. That said, I am incredibly unfamiliar with psychedelics and either their history or culture so I don’t want to say more than that.
I will say that if a substance were banned for blatantly religious reasons, I don’t think SCOTUS in any age would have upheld the ban as Constitutional. There would have to be a non-religious reason for the substance controls.
I for one would like to get the government out of the Drug War business though. It’s done, it’s a drain on the Treasury, it’s explicitly racist, and it actively distorts our civil and political institutions.
Otherwise we would be picking state religions, giving tax advantages to the favored religion, and maybe even burning heretics at the stake depending on the current political mood. Probably Jewish people would have gotten killed or exiled for one reason or another from the United States as well.
Somehow on matters of theology, while debates and biases still exist, even atheists can live life surrounded by Catholics without fear of persecution. On the time scale of history, that’s a pretty neat feat. Whatever politics exist in various churches, are by and large outside the scope of the national government.
The reason our politics is so vicious these days is because we have such a large Federal State that is substantially more than a mere national government. A government which was founded more or less to ensure the common defense, provide for bankruptcy courts and keep the the United States a free trade area back before they even had the term for it. The more functions you want to graft onto the State, Federal or your home State, the more you are inviting the political preferences of your neighbors and fellow citizens into your own life, and the more you have at stake come the next elections because the next President can always undo the entire regulatory legacy of the previous one. This is why laws originate in Congress where it takes a law to undo a law. If your rights only exist by Executive fiat that the next administration can undo with the stroke of a pen, then you don’t really have them.