Cannabis Culture Interviews Lindy "No-Knock Raid" Vopnfjord

Over at Cannabis Culture, Peter Jaworski interviews Lindy about his politics and his problem with SWAT teams. Excerpt:

Peter Jaworski: What motivated you to sing about no-knock raids?

Lindy Vopnfjord: I stumbled upon Radley Balko's raid map one day and I was astonished. Also impressed how much work he had done on his own trying to expose what he called an epidemic of isolated incidents. The more the stories came to life in real time I was compelled to write a song about it. It just came out one day. The loss of life under this failed policy is nothing short of catastrophic both in terms of civilian and law enforcement casualties. […]

PJ: How would you describe your political views?

LV: Libertarian […]

PJ: Being libertarian makes you fairly rare amongst indie musicians in Canada and, I guess, artists in general. Do you get any flak for your libertarian views? What's it like being a libertarian in the music scene?

LV: I usually try to avoid talking about certain topics with other artists. Opinionated people don't like having their views challenged. It can spoil a dinner party.

I find it equally surprising how conservatives ignore all the facts about prohibition and that left-liberals ignore the facts about economic liberty and free markets.

PJ: Can you be more specific about left-liberals? What significant fact or facts do they ignore when it comes to economic liberty and free markets?

LV: They forget that socialism was an utter failure. That hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty because of economic freedom and trade liberalization. Those numbers don't lie.

PJ: If you had to rank them, what are the three most important liberty-related issues in Canada? Put differently, if you could change just three policies in Canada, which ones would you change?

LV: 1. End the drug war. 2. I'd make government monopolies on goods and services illegal and end all tariffs and barriers to trade between provinces. 3. I'd shut down extra-judicial entities like "human rights commissions" because they are actually injurious to human rights.

Whole thing here. Song and video below: