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Comment by guard-of-terra | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the names of people who put Marijuana in the strictest schedule of various laws and agreements are known.

I think someone should dig them up, so the world can know its heroes by name.

There's a lot of interesting names here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marihuana_Tax_Act_of_1937

It's interesting that it was introduced by a Dem. I think there should be a move that Dem formally apologise for this law - or all the weed smokers no longer vote for them and they become unelectable.

The nature of both parties have changed substantially since the 30s, no current legislators of either party were involved in government when that bill was passed, and both parties have had ample opportunities to correct the mistake. Holding current Democrats disproportionately responsible is myopic. Refusal to vote for politicians of any party who are on the wrong side of this issue is another matter, for anyone who views it as the most important issue ("weed smoker" or not).

I was a different person when I was twelve. Would still apologise to anyone I ever hurt back then. It's way better than stubborness.

Organizations are not people. Treating them as if they are makes for poor reasoning.

I still don't see why an organization should not apologise for its own policy.

Post-communist states did apologise for things they did decades before while being very different regimes. And that was a good thing; stubborness would be a disaster there, you can't move forward unless you repent.

If you think of it, Marujuana criminalization took a toll of human lives comparable to GULAG.

To paraphrase OED, an apology is an expression of regret for something one has done wrong. An organization cannot experience regret, so demanding an apology from the organization is guaranteed to be empty. An apology from members of the organization may well be meaningful, but the current members of the organization have not done wrong (at least, no wrong that caused the initial passing of the 1937 act).

Basing your voting on whether your politicians are improving drug policy and/or have committed to do so on the future is totally reasonable. Basing your voting on your demand for an inherently empty ritual seems... not.

edited to add: Note that a Truth & Reconciliation type process is an entirely different thing - exposing and acknowledging the truth can be important and allow healing in ways that have no particular relationship to emotions fictionally experienced by the organization.

I can regret, i.e. feel sorry for, what I didn't cause. I can also apologize in defense of someone else. You English shouldn't constantly use Greek words if you don't understand them * ;)

In that sense, speeches in senate are exactly that, even before laws are put in action. Sadly, my opinion about the credibility can't be written here in good faith.

*) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apology#Etymology

An etymology is not a word's "true meaning". Given the wink, you may well know this, though it could be that the gibe was intended in jest but the broader import was not so I felt it necessary to make it explicit. A word derived from another language can (and often does) acquire an entirely different meaning in its new environment.

You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder.

As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.

Does newspeak have different meaning to you, than it used to, too?

I'm sorry? Are you saying that unless we pretend that words actually mean what they meant in other languages centuries ago, we're redefining words to control thought and political discourse?

No, I'm hinting at the potential corruption of language, if not used properly. Sorry for the sarcasm.

>An etymology is not a word's "true meaning".

Anyway, it's still a good indicator.

>Given the wink, you may well know this

Indeed, I have no hope of convincing the MW editors here, or correcting what seems to be

>A word derived from another language can (and often does) acquire an entirely different meaning in its new environment.

It's not derived. It is the same word given a second meaning. Languages aren't separate entities, they are intertwined and defined by the speakers. In that sense you are right, a word should mean whatever it is intended to mean.

Still, it's a loanword and that implies a certain responsibility for the user, as with any loan. I don't see any argument for the necessity of transforming the meaning. I think the transformation is a mutation, coming from ignorant usage and that goes against my grain. Simplification might have merit, but I'm all for generalization.

>You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder.

What's the reverse of the euphemism treadmill? Apology is suffering it. A proper apology would explain all the reasons for the laws, which are by the way still in action. The focus shouldn't be on acknowledgment, but on correcting the understanding of the situation, to ease any confusion. To my understanding

>As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.

Exactly.

Therefore words heavily rely on context and the context here was clear. The GGGP demanded an excuse, a justification or most importantly a clear explanation as to why the law has changed.

Obviously though, that couldn't be expected, because there is no clear situation, on the federal level it's still illegal, there was no change. That, I think, really requires an explanation. That is a double standard, don't you see a new-speak reference in this?

I'm using two accounts, bare with me.

A joke really didn't work out if it has to be explained at length. Maybe, because secretly I was angry that my english isn't perfect and it's your fault ;)

This is mildly interesting, and I don't intend this as any disrespect, but I think the EV on this conversation has fallen too low to be worth the effort continuing it is seeming to require given my other responsibilities.

from the OED:
>Apology:
>A regretful acknowledgement of an offence or failure

) http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/apology

they simply don't regret it so the whole discussion is besides the point

If they do regret it, they can show that by working on fixing it. If they aren't going to do that, I don't care if they say they regret it. Even before the additional issues we've digressed into.

Didn't stop the British government from apologizing to Alan Turing....

The pardon in 2013 was granted by the Queen, who was already queen and capable of granting him pardon when he was convicted. Her apology in that context could well be meaningful (I don't know whether she gave one alongside the pardon - the pardon could possibly be interpreted as one, but it's a slightly different thing as well).

The 2009 apology by Gordon Brown made somewhat less sense. I don't have any strong opposition to well-intentioned nonsensical theatrics, but I think that it can lead to confusion and that keeping in mind that an organization is a different kind of thing than an individual is important.

Representative Doughton, who introduced the bill, was a Southerner and named after Robert E. Lee. I'm pretty sure he'd have been a Republican if he'd entered politics 40 years later (i.e. around when he retired).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Doughton

That said, Democrats are absolutely to blame, too, for the current state of our misguided drug war:

http://books.google.com/books?id=SGUJBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&ots=X6...

n.b. the author of the book linked to above is a close friend of mine.

Stalin, who caused death to hundreds of thousands of people, would probably be not be a communist if he entered politics after the fall of communism. Doesn't make communists apologising for him a bad thing; doesn't make communists being stubborn about him a good thing.

I'm sorry that the Dixiecrats were a bunch of racist assholes, and I'm glad they switched to the Republican party. Does that help?

Yes. That does.

Further, the political parties are not homogenous. My local party, a legislative district representing about 140,000 voters, has its own platform. We disagree often, strenuously with the state organization, various campaigns (which are completely separate from the parties), the caucuses. From our point of view, other state's orgs (of the nominally same party) are more or less lunatics and the national party is a complete tool of the dual party corporatist war party.

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