How Does It Feel To Be On the Losing Side of History?

I don't normally blog about my own TV appearances, but Thursday night on CNBC, debating medical marijuana with former prosecutor and Drug Watch International board member Terrence Farley, I found myself almost feeling sorry for him. Not because I'm such a hotshot debater -- watching the encounter later, I could easily spot a dozen things I could have done better -- but because I suddenly saw what it was like to be on the losing end of history.

Now I think I know what it must have been like to be, say, the last premier of East Germany, standing guard over the fading embers of an empire in irreversible decline. It's a little sad. Like them, the Terrence Farleys of this world no longer have a real case to make or a reason to justify their existence. They just cling to what they do because, well, it's what they do and they don't know anything else.

Still, those last rulers of East Germany hurt -- and sometimes killed -- an awful lot of people whose only crime was to seek freedom. The Terrence Farleys of the world hurt a lot of people too, so I won't shed too many tears when they end up on the ash heap of history next to those who ruled the last remnants of the old Soviet empire.