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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (15506)	1/16/1998 11:20:00 PM
From: Grainne	Respond to of 108807

This is a good example of one of your posts that I usually read but don't answer. I think you are absolutely wrong about the environment, but since to some degree saving the planet involves some transfer of resources to the very poor so that they have a stake in saving the earth, it is a tad socialist. Still, no earth, and there will be no socialists or rationalists, except the ones like you rich enough to live on the moon. I think it is very short-sighted to assume the answer to global warming is for the rich to leave, but we both already know we disagree on this, so why ramble on and bore everyone else!!! Hey, there are quite a few very fundamentalist Christians who are libertarians. Ditto militia types. All sorts of people attach themselves to libertarian philosophies, as we have also discussed before. It even attracts equal number of Democrats and Republicans. The smoking issue is pretty interesting at the moment. As you probably know, the investigators have just found the "smoking gun" documents where a big tobacco company is discussing how to hook children as young as thirteen years old on cigarettes. Three thousand children under the age of eighteen start smoking in America every day! If we could simply stop children from starting, and let adult smokers smoke, but away from the "public" air, tobacco use would diminish pretty rapidly when the smokers died off. While I believe in the decriminalization of drugs, I believe that pushing them to teenagers should be absolutely illegal. Of course, I believe business should be regulated to some extent, and you do not, so we disagree here. Then there is the study which was published yesterday showing that the effect of cigarette smoking on the arterial system is permanent--that unlike the other side effects of smoking, the arterial damage remains for the rest of the smoker's life, even though smoking has stopped. This is certainly another argument for making workplaces non-smoking. There indeed IS a public health, and I believe as a libertarian that I have an unalienable right to breathe air that does not have cigarette smoke in it, and that smokers violate that right. The right to fresh air is a basic human right. As I said before here, less public smoking is the trend. I read a very long article about smoking in Bosnia recently. Even though almost everyone smokes there, even doctors and nurses in hospitals, and the entire population is under tremendous stress and cigarettes are actually a form of widely accepted payment for goods and services, the government is seriously in the middle of passing a law banning smoking in almost all public places!!! Now you can see why I don't always answer your posts. I tend to ramble! <<) 8 ^ )

To: Father Terrence who wrote (15506)	1/17/1998 10:36:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

Ha, I found something new. One can support the decriminalization of drugs AND anti smoking legislation. I am not anti smoking in terms of prohibition. I only say that first one must do no harm to others. If you do no harm to others with your actions, feel free to kill yourself on your drug of choice. Smoking, however, around people that do not smoke is an obnoxious intrusion on their freedom, and real rights. Shocking.