The Nation's Borders, Now Guarded by the Net

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: May 14, 2007 2:14:14 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: The Nation's Borders, Now Guarded by the Net

I was going use “Email this article” but that failed so I’m including  
a portion here. http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/14/us/14bar.html



This is another reminder of how much we’ve become prisoners of the  
very kind of moral certainty we profess to be fighting elsewhere in  
the world. The notion that morality is absolute and unchanging and  
nothing can be forgotten dooms the country to the status of a  
declining economy and worse. For a while that will be masked by our  
ability to take advantage of the bounty of past tolerance and our  
inability to prevent all innovation. This will encourage those who  
don’t understand science and seek “proof” by example to redouble  
their efforts to punish those who disrupt the “natural order” by  
having fresh ideas.



One of the big advantages that the US has had over Europe is our  
tolerance for failure – if you can’t fail then you can take the risk  
of discovering what is possible. Yet the country is now run but a  
cabal that places its demand of adherence to arbitrary and irrational  
policies ahead of anything else. Members of scientific committees are  
vetted for political correctness first.



Once again we see modern technology, in this case the Internet, being  
used by those who are fundamentally incapable of understanding that  
the only reason we have Internet is because the design is tolerant of  
failure and encourages experimentation. Of course many of those who  
made the Net possible are the very people the country is excluding.

  The Nation’s Borders, Now Guarded by the Net

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: May 14, 2007

Andrew Feldmar, a Vancouver psychotherapist, was on his way to pick  
up a friend at the Seattle airport last summer when he ran into a  
little trouble at the border.

Adam Liptak’s column about the legal world appears on Mondays.  
Columnist Page »

A guard typed Mr. Feldmar’s name into an Internet search engine,  
which revealed that he had written about using LSD in the 1960s in an  
interdisciplinary journal. Mr. Feldmar was turned back and is no  
longer welcome in the United States, where he has been active  
professionally and where both of his children live.

Mr. Feldmar, 66, has a distinguished résumé, no criminal record and a  
candid manner. Though he has not used illegal drugs since 1974, he  
says he has no regrets.

“It was an absolutely fascinating and life-altering experience for  
me,” he said last week of his experimentation with LSD and other  
psychedelic drugs. “The insights it provided have lasted for a  
lifetime. It allowed me to feel what it would be like to live without  
habits.”

Mr. Feldmar said he had been in the United States more than 100 times  
and always without incident since he last took an illegal drug. But  
that changed in August, thanks to the happenstance of an Internet  
search, conducted for unexplained reasons, at the Peace Arch border  
station in Blaine, Wash.

The search turned up an article in a 2001 issue of the journal Janus  
Head devoted to the legacy of R. D. Laing, with whom Mr. Feldmar had  
studied in London about 30 years before.

“I traveled to many regions many times with the help of many  
different substances,” Mr. Feldmar wrote of his experiences with Dr.  
Laing and other psychiatrists and therapists. “I took peyote,  
psilocybin mushrooms, cannabis” and other drugs, he added, “but I  
kept coming back to LSD.”

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