On 5/31/2010 12:45 PM, Bob W wrote:
broadly speaking it is the parents' responsibility to make sure that
their children grow up. However the rest of us as individuals and the
state itself have a duty to intervene in certain cases where any person,
not just a child, is in clear and present danger. For example, if we see
a child suffering in the back of a car or a swimmer being swept away by
the current.
Good. So, there is a minimal or may be even certain degree of mutual
help and cooperation.
But that's a long way from saying the state should have an influence on
such things. Once you let the state, or other people, make your
decisions for you, you have effectively given up your freedom, and
responsibility, as an adult to make your own decisions. You might think
that because the state in this case would make the same decision as you
that nothing is lost. However, you would have established the principle
and they will soon make decisions that you do not agree with, and where
does that leave you?
Well, Bob, you and I are not sitting in the pub drinking each a glass of
our favorite drink (which in itself is a big drawback), so that I don't
think we have the bandwidth to make all the steps from A to B, so to say.
What you say is theoretically right. However I fail to see how seat belt
or that device that we are discussing in this specific thread take away
my freedoms or make me less adult. In fact, cell phone makes me less
adult by a good measure and take great deal of my freedoms away, but not
the seat belt. Or at least I don't see how it may do so.
Furthermore, once you have decided that someone else can make your
decisions for you about the upbringing of your child, who is that
someone going to be? Who are you going to trust to make your decisions
for you?
Bob, not leaving my child in a car has nothing to do with their
upbringing. Or may be I miss a logical connection/step here?
The government, medical profession etc. should provide information
about the effects of these activities on our health and let us decide
what we want to do about it, provided we're only affecting
ourselves.
So, you say, injecting heroin (provided it is injected) is fine as
long as it is done behind doors alone? Isn't it a bit shallow
perspective?
I didn't say it should be done alone and behind closed doors, or that it
should necessarily be injected. I see no reason at all why it shouldn't
be done on public licensed premises (opium dens, effectively) as well,
just as we drink at home and in pubs and just as in some places people
go to coffee shops to smoke grass.
Leper hospitals for leprous?!
Boris
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