In Response to: Growing Like a Weed

In a capitalist country I guess we cannot object to someone trying to make money in a legal way. But should it be legal? Prostitution is legal in a number of places in Nevada, but we don't usually consider owners of brothels to be what the Germans call "salonsfaehig," the kind of people you invite to your home. I feel the same way about marijuana growers.

Too many Americans are undereducated, overmedicated, abusive with alcohol, prescriptions, legal and illegal drugs, violent recreational activities, vulgar television programs, and all the rest. Too many guns and too many guns used by people who should not have them. Too many people on the loose who should be in mental wards, if we had any left. Too many on the streets living everywhere and nowhere, sometimes owing to high housing costs, sometimes owing to vice.

Anyway, I prefer my expensive Kentucky bourbon and will not buy or indulge in the weed. Thank you very much.

Yes, I am being a judgmental bourgois! The most awful thing about our bourgeoisie is that it no longer believes in the bourgeois values it was once considered hypocritical for recommending. But as La Rochefoucauld wrote, hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.

Norman Ravitch *62
Savannah, Ga.