Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Constitutional Issues Smoking in Public and Whose Rights are they?

I beg your pardon, issodhos. I certainly did not mean to come across as being vicious. And I did not mean to take your words out of context to change their meaning, only to make it clear what I was responding to.

Of course slavery is now recognized as an affront to the concept of natural rights, but at the time it was legislated against, a significant proportion of US citizens viewed the legislation as an affront to natural rights - their natural rights. We've had several other analogies offered in this thread to make clear the fact that the concept of "what are natural rights" changes over time with the discovery of new truth. Many of those analogies offered examples of one natural right pitted against another.

In such cases, which natural right should prevail? I think that goes to the very core of the question. I have given examples where I believe the right of the person engaging in an action harmful to another person(s) prevails, and I have given examples where I believe the right of the person(s) being harmed prevail(s) over the right of the person whose action is harmful. I have done this in order to demonstrate that there is no pat answer codified in centuries-old philosophy or law. It isn't automatically right for the individual's rights to prevail over the rights of the Other and it isn't automatically right for the individual's right to be ceded to the rights of the Other.

About once a week I go the long block over to Pop's Place and get burgers and fries for our evening meal. Pop's is a classic Texas beer joint with a decent kitchen attached. All of the employees smoke, and Stan the cook smokes like a stove when he is not actually in the kitchen cooking. Probably ninety percent of the customers do as well, and there is a reasonably sized no-smoking area at the far end equipped with a positvie air blower.

I'll belly up to the bar if there's an open place and in a minute or two Jane or Shawna or Tracie will come and take my order. The smoke is thick and it makes my eyes water, but the food is worth the wait and I probably won't die from Feldspar's disease before the order is filled. Next to me is David, a guy in the "awl bidness" who is worth about 40 megabucks on the hoof; he doesn't smoke either, but five days out of six he'll ride his Harley the mile from his very large home and take a seat at the bar. Down the line about six seats is Donnie, who smokes and drinks far too much, who looks as if he could play back-up banjo in Deliverance, who shoots a fine game of 8-ball, and who is overwhelmed by the fact that his mother is being remorselessly consumed by breast cancer. There are others, all with a drink in one hand and most with a cigaret in the other. They are all here because they want to be; no one forced them to come in and get smoke cured.

While I'm waiting, others will drift in or out of Pop's; some, like me, for carry-out orders, others will find a table or friends and settle in for a spell. An older man and woman - probably "snowbirds" from the way they dress - walk in and halt in the blue-gray cloud and assess the odds of their surviving the evening. She speaks first, confirming their alien status in that nasal accent peculiar to Californians, saying "My God! Jack, lets find a place that isn't on fire!" They turn and leave, drawing little attention and less animosity.

My order will take ten minutes to prepare, so I get a beer, exchange greetings with David and Donnie, and nod to others I know slightly. The smoke and the noise continue, mingling with the cooking odors from the kitchen. It takes twelve minutes to finish today, and I'll get my Big Tree cheeseburger - a third of a pound of ground round, cooked until the pink just vanishes - and my order of skin-on french fries - cooked in a combination of animal fat and partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil.

I pay my tab and leave, having come in purely by choice. I could have gone to the Jersey Grill - a new "code" place a mile away but lacking the vulgar ambience of Pop's - or to Lanny's Turtle Bay Pub - two miles up the road but with an inferior kitchen - or across the Copano Bay bridge to town where I'd have my choice of dozens of places - some with absolutely no smoking, and some with seperate areas.

Where I went was purely my choice, and I never felt the need to force Pop's to conform to my standards; I have plenty of choices, and I feel no need to try and run the world according to my peculiar genius.

Nice writin', Ron.



Get it? "right"-in?

Thanks, Steve! All contributions are greatfully acknowledged.

No. What was presented was an army of straw men designed to avoid the actual subject of property rights and to avoid the fact that you and others were unable to provide a principled argument for your rejection of an owner's right to allow smoking on his property if he so chose. In the end it was nothing more than a routine collectivist "might makes right" claim. So don't try blowing smoke, now.;-)
Yours,
Issodhos

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I did not and do not reject an owner's right to allow smoking on his (or her - remember women are allowed to own property nowadays) property. Your post misses the whole point of the question of balancing one right against another. Your expression


is an oxymoron.

Not in the least. It is a foundation of collectivism.
Yours,
Issodhos

Source(s) please.

You want a source for the definition of collectivism? Okay here is a good example of the collective mind being exposed.

This morning on Meet the Press, Lance Armstrong talked about trying to cure cancer and of stopping it before it enters anyone's body. His first suggestion was to make America smoke free. Tim Russert picked this up and repeated it with a smile.

If the Government gets a notion to do that, where do they even begin? All smoke stacks to be removed in America? Does it even matter that most have converters making the smoke harmless. Does it mean cars must not have exhaust coming out of their pipes? Does it matter than converters also have been put in the later models of the cars?

The human American brain cannot distinguish between one kind of smoke or the other and most certainly our fire places will be banned in the USA. Will this prohibit camp fires and outdoor BBQs? When the government starts to issue prohibitions on anything, it had better build some more prisons as most Americans will not fold up to these weak-assed politicians.

I will never keep anyone from having a smoke in my home. MY HOME! that I bought and paid for and will rule supreme within its walls. This starts out with Lance Armstrong who had testicular cancer which makes me wonder where the hell he smoked?

I had a women tell me that if I continued to spend time in the sun while swimming I could get stomach cancer. Where the hell do these idiots come from? Being as dark as I am, I get a check up all the time when I knick my leg shaving and it doesn't heal fast enough. I got bitten by a spider in California and it continued to blister for several months. Yes, I had dematologist remove it and he told me it could lead to cancer. Was it cancer? no! It was a nasty spider bite. He cut out so much skin, I have to wear bangs.

I have lived outdoors all my life and managed to get to 74 without a cancer anywhere. At 40 years old I quit smoking and that was the start of my problems. I gained 40 pounds, became more of a raging bitch than I was before and felt sick all the time. Even my female parts objected and made some tumors. Not cancer just tumors and I had them removed. My kids never had a cigarette because I smoked. I was the perfect example of what not to do. My husband lived with a pipe in his mouth and everyone I know and love smokes cigarettes or cigars and so what?

It was simple for me to recognize natural rights. I simply became familiar with the laws in the state of California and followed them. Everything else in my world was legal. But I was not a member of any religious group and had to figure my moral values without the sky daddy.

Americans have lost this set of values and will need a written guide to what they must not do. That is time for me to thow up my hands and leave the values to others. I have given up fighting for the rights of Gays, unmarried mothers, prostitutes, smokers and drug users. I don't give a damn what anyone does. My only fight is to keep the government out of the end of life choices. I hear from many "I will die when Jesus tell me to." So it means nobody else can ask for help when the pain of living is too much.

This is too heavy for me to accept. I'm tired of being the voice of reason here simply because my words are boycotted by some blow hard fools. Well, that is okay because I figure my days here are numbered. I have some serious writing to do before I meet with my group in a couple of weeks. I will stay logged in because some of you bring great links here that I need for reference.

In my world, only pure Atheists think the way I do and we have learned to separate the true thinkers from the religious thinkers. This is a group of high IQ writers, scientiests and producers of our future. They don't whine and ask Big Daddy to do something for them. Most are from Europe because Americans are lax in individual interests.

Thanks Sandy, but no, what I asked for was a source to support the claim that "might makes right" is a "foundation" of collectivism.