Gun hypocrite

[Southern Capitalist]

California Senator Leland Lee was arrested for possibly running guns. (AK47s) The irony is he proposed two anti gun bills, which are currently the toughest gun legislations in the country. Definition of hypocrite.

[Reidy]

This is good news for gun rights, but it won't help California Republicans as the state is irretrievably Democratic.

The best strategy for gun-rights people would be to take the high road and let the incident speak for itself and not look vindictive by leaning too hard on it.

Lee also wants to ban violent video games.

[Peter]

Violent video games, originally developed to teach the infantry's ground soldiers to kill the enemy, should not be used by kids. I am not arguing for censorship but I am for parental controls on purchasing and viewing. Until we live in a perfect society, state or federal laws requiring a minimum age for purchase are simply 'INNOCENT' extensions of parental rights. I don't want my grandkids watching them. Or Zombie movies. Even "Noah" could scare the crap out of a four year old.

[jts]

California Senator Leland Lee was arrested for possibly running guns. (AK47s) The irony is he proposed two anti gun bills, which are currently the toughest gun legislations in the country. Definition of hypocrite.

Unclear from the information given above. Exactly what was the anti gun legislation that he proposed? Banning guns to children? Banning machine guns? Requiring a license to have a gun? Was his specific activity with guns contrary to his specific proposed legislation?

Also, he was arrested. But was he found guilty of the thing he was arrested for?

[Peter]

Some clarification. I am a proponent of individual rights and of the basic tenets of Objectivism. I advocate limited constitutional government but the overwhelming majority of Objectivists I have known have accepted government benefits. Our actions are “mixed,” and that is not non-integration of Rand’s Philosophy. I advocate changing our Constitution but I do not advocate that which cannot be obtained without a Constitutional Convention, such as a completely Laissez-Faire economy. How far off is that Candidate Ron Paul? Do it now! I do NOT think we should do away with beneficial government programs until they no longer provide a benefit. It is not logical to say, “Well, if your rights are infringed upon, you can always sue the son’s of a bitches.” Instead I think we should keep The Food and Drug Administration regulations, as one example, concerning the use of the metal lead in paint or in toys.

The “essence” of Objectivism does not adequately explain or finesse some importantly debatable issues such as:

The Death Penalty.

Open border immigration.

No taxation, even with representation.

Smoking in public places.

No gun control.

1000 year leases (which many of us view as are fine, but some don’t. And isn’t that what corporations do anyway?)

no inheritance laws (too much like Monarchies.)

non-intervention in the affairs of other countries.

no restrictions on abortion.

All are debatable and not explained by the non-contextual writings of Aristotle or Rand. Jose, can you see . . . reification, in the following quote to denounce reification?

OPAR pages 356-357

Collective rights' means rights belonging to a group qua group, rights allegedly independent of those possessed by the individual. Thus we hear of the special rights of businessmen, workers, farmers, consumers, the young, the old, the students, the females, the race, the class, the nation, the public . . .

‘A group,' Miss Rand observes, ‘can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the ‘rights' of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary, individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking...

A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations."

end quote

Here’s a good quote I found while looking for the above. It’s funny.

OPAR, PAGE 405

As a rule, the defenders of capitalism have been worse - more openly irrational - than its attackers. The man who spread the notion that Capitalism means death for the weak was the system's leading 19th century champion, Herbert Spencer; Capitalism, he held, permits only the "survival of the fittest." This is the conclusion Spencer reached by attempting to deduce Capitalism from the intellectual fad of the period, Darwin's theory of Evolution. Since animals survive by fighting over a limited food supply, Spencer argued in essence, so does man. This "defense" of laissez-faire has been incomparably more harmful than anything uttered by Marx. The wrong arguments for a position are always more costly than plain silence, which at least allows a better voice to be heard if such should ever speak out.

end quote.

[BaalChatzaf]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Southern Capitalist]

Gun control Bill was SB249. Banning any semi automatic weapon that has a conversion kit to make the rifle a fixed magazine rifle. He also proposed bills SB108 and SB 47. 108 deals with storage of the weapon and 47 is a ban on "assault rifles" detachable magazines.

[Peter]

Bob wrote:

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

end quote

Agreed. I remember debating smoking on Atlantis and it was a slow battle. Barbara Branden finally wrote that I convinced her that it was wrong to sell a product that caused addiction, early death, and pollution.

Peter

From: BBfromM@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: ATL: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 11:05:03 EDT

To Ellen Moore:

To date, you never have said -- and have denied it when an instance was raised -- that Ayn Rand made a mistake. I want to ask you about the following:

Ayn Rand smoked a great deal, and for many years. And she announced often, publicly as well as privately, that there was insufficient evidence to prove that smoking caused cancer or any other disease. Many Objectivist students across the country felt safe in continuing to smoke because of her convincing arguments against statistical "proof." Then, when she was diagnosed with lung cancer, she stopped smoking at once, finally convinced that the evidence was sufficient. Her doctor did not have to tell her to stop; she did it before he could raise the subject.

When she was well, and back at work, friends said to her that she really should tell people that she had changed her mind, that now she was convinced that smoking was indeed dangerous to life. She flatly refused to do so. The reasons is not relevant; I can think of no reason good enough to warrant her silence when the results could be the death of some of the people who had accepted her original arguments and therefore had continued smoking.

For those of you who wish to know her so-called reason, it was her horror of announcing that she had cancer, because she believed that any serious illness resulted at least in part from "wrong premises." She could not bring herself to inform her students that she had any wrong premises, since she had so often told them and countless others that she had none, and had believed it herself. No matter how long and how hard her friends tried to persuade her, she refused. And she spent months, probably years, trying to discover the wrong premises that had resulted in her cancer.

Ellen, my question is: Do you think Ayn Rand was wrong not to tell her students her new conclusion about smoking?

Barbara

From: BBfromM@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 14:41:02 EDT

Tim Hopkins wrote: << So I do think that the reason for not telling her [Ayn Rand's] students and admirers that she had changed her mind on the smoking issue is important, since it is possible (again, correct me if I am wrong, since I did not know her) she was *not* convinced of a causal relation between smoking and cancer, and stopped smoking on the basis that such a relationship was probable, not proven. >>

Even if it is the case that she considered that the relationship between smoking and cancer was probable, not proven -- I believe that she had the moral obligation to tell her students and admirers that much. It would have stopped many of them from continuing to smoke.

Ba

From: BBfromM@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: Re: Was Ayn Rand ever wrong? To Ellen Moore

Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 18:16:56 EDT

You are quite right, Jeff, but this was not Ayn Rand's position. She did think that her smoking had been at least a partial cause of her lung cancer. And she should have told this to NBI's students.

Barbara

"The Left: Old and New" in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, [p. 89] Rand wrote:

As far as the issue of actual pollution is concerned, it is primarily a scientific, not a political, problem. In regard to the political principle involved: if a man creates a physical danger or harm to others, which extends beyond the line of his own property, such as unsanitary conditions or even loud noise, and if this is _proved_, the law can and does hold him responsible. If the condition is collective,such as in an overcrowded city, appropriate and _objective_ laws can be defined, protecting the rights of all those involved -- as was done in the case of oil rights, air-space rights, etc.

[Brant Gaede]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

But air pollution can be beneficial. This does not lead to the positive right of insisting on the kind of air pollution that is beneficial. It's up to you to go seek it out. I suggest Los Angeles. You have to estalish that second-hand cigarette smoke is harmful and to whom. We can assume it's harmful to children and they are not to be smoked around, but there is no real evidence it is hamful to adults. All the evidence is extrapolation from suppositions like the idea that all radiation must be bad for you. In fact, a certain level of radiation is good for you, maybe up to several times natural background or more.

--Brant

you have the right to avoid cigarette smoke for whatever reason, but not to force people who want to smoke into sealed chambers to contain it, for if it were that bad cigarettes might be/should be outlawed altogether

you believe in real science, I actually think it

[BaalChatzaf]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

Ba'al Chatzaf

But air pollution can be beneficial. This does not lead to the positive right of insisting on the kind of air pollution that is beneficial. It's up to you to go seek it out. I suggest Los Angeles. You have to estalish that second-hand cigarette smoke is harmful and to whom. We can assume it's harmful to children and they are not to be smoked around, but there is no real evidence it is hamful to adults. All the evidence is extrapolation from suppositions like the idea that all radiation must be bad for you. In fact, a certain level of radiation is good for you, maybe up to several times natural background or more.

--Brant

you have the right to avoid cigarette smoke for whatever reason, but not to force people who want to smoke into sealed chambers to contain it, for if it were that bad cigarettes might be/should be outlawed altogether

you believe in real science, I actually think it

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

No one has any right to inflict or impose hazard on another. Any such imposition must be a privilege, not a right.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

But air pollution can be beneficial. This does not lead to the positive right of insisting on the kind of air pollution that is beneficial. It's up to you to go seek it out. I suggest Los Angeles. You have to estalish that second-hand cigarette smoke is harmful and to whom. We can assume it's harmful to children and they are not to be smoked around, but there is no real evidence it is hamful to adults. All the evidence is extrapolation from suppositions like the idea that all radiation must be bad for you. In fact, a certain level of radiation is good for you, maybe up to several times natural background or more.

--Brant

you have the right to avoid cigarette smoke for whatever reason, but not to force people who want to smoke into sealed chambers to contain it, for if it were that bad cigarettes might be/should be outlawed altogether

you believe in real science, I actually think it

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

No one has any right to inflict or impose hazard on another. Any such imposition must be a privilege, not a right.

And there are people who get run over by automobiles. Therefore . . . ? And where were the asthmatics when they got hit by other people's smoke? Inside? Inside what and why? You don't see much smoking in confined public spaces any longer, which I'm inclined to applaud. You did get me about asthmatics being harmed, however, but it's not cancer, the big and false bugaboo about second-hand cigarette smoke.

--Brant

does anyone have the right to wear perfume or cologne or is that also a privilege?--do we live in a society defined by rights or priviledge?--not that there cannot be an operating mixture sans the definition, which there is, but your formulation takes away the right to smoke as such

[BaalChatzaf]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

But air pollution can be beneficial. This does not lead to the positive right of insisting on the kind of air pollution that is beneficial. It's up to you to go seek it out. I suggest Los Angeles. You have to estalish that second-hand cigarette smoke is harmful and to whom. We can assume it's harmful to children and they are not to be smoked around, but there is no real evidence it is hamful to adults. All the evidence is extrapolation from suppositions like the idea that all radiation must be bad for you. In fact, a certain level of radiation is good for you, maybe up to several times natural background or more.

--Brant

you have the right to avoid cigarette smoke for whatever reason, but not to force people who want to smoke into sealed chambers to contain it, for if it were that bad cigarettes might be/should be outlawed altogether

you believe in real science, I actually think it

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

No one has any right to inflict or impose hazard on another. Any such imposition must be a privilege, not a right.

And where were the asthmatics when they got hit by other people's smoke? Inside? Inside what and why? You don't see much smoking in confined public spaces any longer, which I'm inclined to applaud. You did get me about asthmatics being harmed, however, but it's not cancer, the big and false bugaboo about second-hand cigarette smoke.

Two in a restaurant and one in the great outdoors. She intersected a cloud of cigar smoke from a passer by.

Smoking should be prohibited in closed spaces open to the public. Period.

If tobacco shops want to provide ventilated smoking rooms where the smoke is properly absorbed into an air cleaner that is fine.

People should be free to destroy themselves. They should not be free to take innocent other parties to perdition.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

I will answer the smoking issue very bluntly. No one has the right to pollute anyone else's air. If you want to smoke you smoke in a sealed chamber wherein the smoke is disposed of safely and not dispersed into the air other people breath.

You health is your own business. If you want to indulge in a self destructive habit, go ahead and do it. Just do not take other people down with you.

But air pollution can be beneficial. This does not lead to the positive right of insisting on the kind of air pollution that is beneficial. It's up to you to go seek it out. I suggest Los Angeles. You have to estalish that second-hand cigarette smoke is harmful and to whom. We can assume it's harmful to children and they are not to be smoked around, but there is no real evidence it is hamful to adults. All the evidence is extrapolation from suppositions like the idea that all radiation must be bad for you. In fact, a certain level of radiation is good for you, maybe up to several times natural background or more.

--Brant

you have the right to avoid cigarette smoke for whatever reason, but not to force people who want to smoke into sealed chambers to contain it, for if it were that bad cigarettes might be/should be outlawed altogether

you believe in real science, I actually think it

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

No one has any right to inflict or impose hazard on another. Any such imposition must be a privilege, not a right.

And where were the asthmatics when they got hit by other people's smoke? Inside? Inside what and why? You don't see much smoking in confined public spaces any longer, which I'm inclined to applaud. You did get me about asthmatics being harmed, however, but it's not cancer, the big and false bugaboo about second-hand cigarette smoke.

Two in a restaurant and one in the great outdoors. She intersected a cloud of cigar smoke from a passer by.

Smoking should be prohibited in closed spaces open to the public. Period.

If tobacco shops want to provide ventilated smoking rooms where the smoke is properly absorbed into an air cleaner that is fine.

People should be free to destroy themselves. They should not be free to take innocent other parties to perdition.

Restaurant smoking is now quite rare. The outdoor cigar smoke--well, life is hazardous for asthmatics. My best friend watched his wife die in 1970 from an asthmatic attack. I don't know what triggered it. My nephew has asthma, worse than as a child, I think, than as an adult, but I don't really know except he almost died from it at least once years ago. I had severe hay fever as a child and in 1965 bronical spasms when running in army training. I probably could have used that to get out of military service, but the thought never crossed my mind. I was a smoker then, allergic apparenly to cigarette smoke. The high relative humiity in San Antonio during the summer might have been a trigger. I kept smoking until 1969, my 25th birthday. A year and a half after the army and Vietnam, and no longer thinking I might be killed in that war, I stopped. I knew it would kill or severely incapacitate me eventually.

--Brant

[Peter]

Brant wrote:

And there are people who get run over by automobiles. Therefore . . . ?

end quote

I don’t see the “sameness.” Personal vehicles and driving are a benefit to civilization at this time in our development. It aids communication and commerce in rural areas. So, not just our cities are hubs for humanity, and dispersal is a survival benefit.

A self perpetuated addiction that harms others is not in the same class. I urge all tobacco smokers to start smoking E cigarettes even if you never go to the next step and stop the addiction as doctors and epidemiologist recommend. It may not be good for you, but it is better than the tar and other substances you will get from burning vegetation, which is barbaric and violates the NIOF principle.

Though I can’t say for sure that E cigarettes should be tolerated indoors either, or that E cigarettes will not be proved to be somewhat less harmful to the smoker in the longer run, but they are better for everyone over the alternative, which is similar to burning garbage.

“But I don’t want to!” is a childish excuse to stop doing harm. We don’t tolerate it in children so adults should be stopped from polluting. And that would be classified as the retaliatory use of . . . persuasion.

Remember those night club scenes in 1930's movies? It was like a fog indoors. Let's be honest. The only reason cigarette smoking is a special case is because it is an addiction.

[jts]

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

Those are just anecdotal stories, not real evidence. To be real evidence it must be published in a peer reviewed medical journal.

[Brant Gaede]

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

Those are just anecdotal stories, not real evidence. To be real evidence it must be published in a peer reviewed medical journal.

This is not true for if it wasn't "real evidence" it would not be published in such a journal. Publishing doesn't make it real.

--Brant

you mean--I think--a theory supported by studies and/or facts and worthy of further evaluation--i.e., attempted falsification

[jts]

I know several asthmatics who were taken to hospital after getting an ueberwheeze from breathing other people's smoke.

Similar things have happened to asthmatics when sniffing perfume also.

Those are just anecdotal stories, not real evidence. To be real evidence it must be published in a peer reviewed medical journal.

This is not true for if it wasn't "real evidence" it would not be published in such a journal. Publishing doesn't make it real.

That's Bob Kolker's rule, not my rule. But I suspect that he applies it selectively.

[Selene]

As an asthmatic who almost died twice [2X].

The first was when I was approximately five (5) and is testimonial, since I have no direct sense memory of it.

The second I remember with spotty perceptions. Thankfully, the EMT disregarded what he was told and I am, potentially, able to type this because he exercised his own judgment.

Now that might make some folks in the past on OL unhappy, however, here I am.

I was in intensive care for two days, in terms of the hospital record. The day after I was admitted from the emergenct room, I was sitting cross legged in my bed, with files that were brought to me conducting business.

My highly competent doctor, was raised in her island community and was phenomenal. She worked with me and I was out late the next day...some NY State rule that you cannot be transferred from a certain level of intensive care to release withing twenty four [24] hours.

Every medical fact pattern is quite specific.

A...

[Brant Gaede]

Would you say you are less vulnerable to asthmatic attacks because you are older? My hay fever is nothing like it was growing up in Tucson. I don't know if I grew out of most of it or people simply stopped growing Bermuda grass in this burg. I tested as allergic to cigarette smoke so I finally decided to stop smoking in 1969 after several years of it as I was afraid of emphysema most of all, especially because of my medical training. I had other reasons, all medical. Financial cost was no factor at all in those days. I still remember PX cigarettes at $2.50 a carton.

--Brant

[BaalChatzaf]

Brant wrote:

And there are people who get run over by automobiles. Therefore . . . ?

end quote

I don’t see the “sameness.” Personal vehicles and driving are a benefit to civilization at this time in our development. It aids communication and commerce in rural areas. So, not just our cities are hubs for humanity, and dispersal is a survival benefit.

A self perpetuated addiction that harms others is not in the same class. I urge all tobacco smokers to start smoking E cigarettes even if you never go to the next step and stop the addiction as doctors and epidemiologist recommend. It may not be good for you, but it is better than the tar and other substances you will get from burning vegetation, which is barbaric and violates the NIOF principle.

Though I can’t say for sure that E cigarettes should be tolerated indoors either, or that E cigarettes will not be proved to be somewhat less harmful to the smoker in the longer run, but they are better for everyone over the alternative, which is similar to burning garbage.

“But I don’t want to!” is a childish excuse to stop doing harm. We don’t tolerate it in children so adults should be stopped from polluting. And that would be classified as the retaliatory use of . . . persuasion.

Remember those night club scenes in 1930's movies? It was like a fog indoors. Let's be honest. The only reason cigarette smoking is a special case is because it is an addiction.

Let the imbibers of Vapors have all the fun they want in a properly isolated environment.

People have a perfect right to destroy themselves. They do not have a right to take other unwilling parties with them

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Would you say you are less vulnerable to asthmatic attacks because you are older?

Much worst with age.

Asthma, COPD and emphasema progress with age as I understand the disease.

A...