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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (215574)	1/30/2007 12:21:46 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

"...why do some Americans feel empowered to judge what's "right" for everyone else?" I don't know, I can't speak for some people who do that. I know an old woman who has been near death a few times due to respiratory failure. She has been a chain smoker all her life but had to stop or accept her own imminent death. She stopped a couple of years ago. She is blind and doesn't enjoy listening to anything in the media. She gets very depressed from being shut in most of the time. She has a half cigarette or so a day and if I am around she hides when she smokes. I feel bad about that hiding stuff, so I told her that I want her to be happy and if she can get any comfort in life I would not want to be in the way of that. However, I also couldn't stand to see her suffer from respiratory ailments; so it honestly bothers me to know that she is smoking. Hiding it bothers me more, so we have an agreement that it is my problem if her smoking bothers me, she wont hide it, and I wont make an issue of it. "clandestine affairs" etc. have a similar effect on me. They are hidden because there are significant other people who would be hurt if or when they know about them, and ultimately that has a back draft harmful effect on the primary participants. Often times things spiral out of control with illigitimate offspring, communicable disease, broken families and damage to other trust based relations, etc. I'd prefer not to know about them and hate to see the suffering that frequently ensues after the fact. I don't believe such things belong in the legal system except perhaps where material harm is done.