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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (17372)	6/26/2001 9:00:18 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Reading this column, I couldn't help thinking of the thread. Cellular Thinking By E. J. Dionne Jr. Tuesday, June 26, 2001; Page A17 No issue now under discussion offers a better opportunity for profound philosophical debate than the question of whether drivers should be barred from using hand-held cell phones. I kid you not. This issue has everything. You can ponder risk vs. security. You can think about whether individual rights trump the common good. You can argue about whether government is some horrible, meddlesome creature, or whether one of its primary tasks is to protect human beings from human failure. As an individual, you can wonder whether your own personal convenience is worth the possibility that some distracted driver on his cell phone might smash into your car, and perhaps even kill you. There is a purity about the cell phone argument because it does not entail the profoundly difficult moral and religious principles raised by an issue such as abortion. Wherever you stand on abortion, you can't deny that the moral status of the fetus is a huge deal. Nobody has to have comparable worries about the cell phone, a marvelous invention but also an inert object that has no moral standing of its own. Because the cell phone issue is never likely to be a wedge issue, conservatives and liberals, libertarians and communitarians can argue peaceably and even come down on unexpected sides. The core principle of libertarians, for example, is that government shouldn't legislate except to protect your life and your property. But the case against yakking on cell phones in cars is precisely that doing so threatens the life and property of other drivers. As someone who regularly calls attention to the inconsistencies of politicians, I welcome this issue as a chance to face up to my own contradictions. I confess: I am a big-time user of my cell phone while driving. Hard as I may try, I regularly fall behind in returning phone calls. Being able to put myself right with friends during drive time is a wonderful gift. It's also great to be able to set up interviews, confirm appointments and do a million other things during commuting hours that would otherwise be lost. But, cell phone users of the world, admit it: We all know that it's hard to dial someone up and maintain full and complete concentration on the road. We've all been angry at the driver who blows a red light while shooting the breeze. No matter how much we like our cell phones, we cannot for an instant pretend they are not a distraction. Thus, even avid vehicular cell users chuckle and occasionally cheer at the bumper sticker that declares: "HANG UP AND DRIVE." Politicians know this, which is why an anti-cell phone movement is building around the nation. The New York Senate last week approved a bill that would ban the state's drivers from using hand-held cell phones. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that 39 other states are considering such laws, according to the Associated Press. Many municipalities already have them. "Finally, we will get the bird back in the cage," New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz told the AP. Ortiz noted that when he started campaigning for the ban five years ago, "people were making a lot of fun of me." No more. "It eventually became not only an issue at the state level but on the national level," he said proudly. The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found that 87 percent of New York voters favored the ban. That number has to include not only those who never, ever use cell phones in their cars but also guilt-ridden users such as myself. So where should we end up? My own contradictions on this are already obvious. Personally, I would hate it if big government told me I could no longer use my cell phone in my car. But also personally, I would hate it even more if my wife or my children were hurt by a driver who was so engaged in making phone calls that he forgot to remember he was driving. And, not to pretend to too much altruism, I wouldn't want that guy to hit me, either. Thus a hunch: If enough studies show that cell phone users are indeed dangerous characters on the road, laws against them will pass all over the country. Assemblyman Ortiz will be able to claim prophetic powers. And we automotive cell users may, simultaneously, feel annoyed and relieved. © 2001 The Washington Post Company

To: Lane3 who wrote (17372)	6/26/2001 12:22:02 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Once upon a time we had pro-abortion and anti-abortion. Now we have pro-choice and pro-life. The change was more than finding more attractive labels. The pro-abortion types co-opted the middle and took on the pro-choice label as their umbrella label. We forget now that, within the pro-choice camp we have everything from Chinese one-child types to abortion agnostics. There are lots and lots of people in the pro-choice camp who hate abortion but who don't think that we have enough certainty or consensus to call a fetus a human and, therefore, call abortion murder. You can argue about what the middle is. Everyone who it at all close the the middle will probably think of themselves as being in the middle and those to either side as being the extremists. A peaceful pro-life person is "in the middle" between a pro-choice person and a terrorist blowing up abortion clinics. But compromise amounts to coming to an agreement between the contending sides. In the abortion issue the contending sides are the pro-life and the pro-choice side. The pro-abortion (i.e. not just "abortion should be legal", but people who would actively promote or even require abortions) and the anti birthcontrol (and maybe anti anything but missionary position sex for the purposes of procreation between a married man and woman) groups both exist but the question is should abortion be legal. The only thing that would strike me as a possible compromise is that some abortions would be illegal and some would not, but this compromise would probably not be acceptable to either side and doesn't seem to have a solid rational behind it except that it would somehow be in the middle. Some people have proposed the idea that abortions after 12 weeks (or any other specific time period) be illegal, but how many people would really get behind such an idea? The pro-life people would still see it as allowing millions of murders to occur and the pro-choice people would still see it as taking away women's freedom and control over their own bodies. That's not unlike the continuum of thinking on the global warming issue. For many, while they have some concerns about the prospect of global warming, they don't think we have enough certainty to jump into Kyoto with both feet given the cost and disruption that would cause. Similarly, we have those who look at making abortion illegal much as you look at Kyoto. We just don't know enough or have enough of a consensus to take such a drastic step. Maybe later, but not now. My analogy with global warming and Kyoto would be that you are trying to consider Kyoto as the compromise because there are some people who would want to ban the burning of fossil fuels so the people who only want the limitations of Kyoto would be in the middle. However there are also people who think global warming would help, or who think we might be cooling so adding CO2 is a good idea. The real question is Kyoto restrictions (or something similar) or no. Both sides would obviously like to consider their position to be the middle or a compromise but a real compromise would be to either allow a watered down Kyoto treaty or come up with some new plan that is less controversial. It would be difficult to do this in the global warming area but it is still easier to find a compromise here then when dealing with abortion. Tim