Feb 6th, 2013 - Letter to the President - The Cigarette Argument
To the President and other members of Government,
The cigarette argument
It goes something like this.
“Yes people have rights. You have the right to smoke, but what about my right to clean air?”
It sounds convincing. For it makes a claim that one persons ‘right’ is in fact causing harm to another person’s ‘right’, that is, the act of an individual smoking creates unclean air that the non-smoker must inhale.
Unfortunately, it’s absolutely incorrect.
It does two specific things that nullify its authority as an argument:
1. It makes a claim that ONLY cigarette smoke is harmful to a non-smokers lungs. It forgets to take into account that everything we do as living beings damage the air around us. Bottled water plastic uses fossil fuels to turn the petroleum into plastic, even recycled plastic requires the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, everything you purchase from pots to automobiles, food to ways to dispose of food require the expulsion of products into the air. This is the nature of being alive, it requires the extraction and pollution of the system. I should not have to explain this, being that every one of us ingests food and then expels a byproduct that is poisonous to us. Until the day we can, ourselves, create a clean being, how can we expect the whole of society to do it?
2. It villainizes a particular form of ideas without logical concern to the whole process of all possible ideals. The first point should make this second one at least visible. For by assuming cigarette smoke is evil, while considering, say automobile exhaust ‘acceptable’ is a villanization of a particular product for no other reason that simply because one can. It is the social equivalent of a scarlet letter. Which means something even more devastating, for it represents a repressive and un-enlighten viewpoint of the nature of the universe, where one thing is labeled wrong or evil, but its many other sister views are still considered valid if not down beneficial. This breaks with logic! It requires, instead the notion of compromise and thus, is tied in emotionalism to the particular entity to be made the villain.
Therefore, if a cigarette is left to the notion of evil, simply because society has thus deemed it so, but, this same society is incapable of also putting all possible air pollution into the same category; then is it really safe to say that society has the authority to make such inaccurate and biased claims or is it more accurate to call a spade a spade and demand that they look at the whole as it is? When one demands that I stop smoking for their clean air, they are merely pointing out their own hypocrisy and worse, their plain elitist authoritarianism, expecting me to give up a small portion of my air pollution freedoms while they continue to participate in their own. Yes, that is correct, you're expulsion as a living this part of your 'life, liberty, and property' and you entitled to have it. Your right to pollute is part of your nature.
This is the very reason why the founding fathers did not believe that a bill of rights was necessary, because to them, they would never have believed that people could become so selfish that they would be unable to see their own influences on society and people and themselves. But, they did manage to save of few of our God given rights and stuffed them into the constitution as Jefferson said:
Let us guarantee the rights we can. Better half a loaf then no bread.
Yet, now, over two hundred years later, we are still fighting over the premise of ‘gun’ or ‘no-gun’. The cigarette argument makes the whole point moot. For the right to defend oneself is the Right we are discussing and as it stands today, firearms are the best, most equalizing tools available. If all of society were to lay down the rest of its hypocrisy (if for example Law Enforcement wanted to give up its guns first) then perhaps we could have an honest discussion about the nature of defense of oneself. But until that moment, the rest is a media circus lie, bent on invoking fear and hatred.
I oppose any item, that would deem an individual unable to choose their own lives. I therefore oppose all controls over firearms.
The cigarette argument
It goes something like this.
“Yes people have rights. You have the right to smoke, but what about my right to clean air?”
It sounds convincing. For it makes a claim that one persons ‘right’ is in fact causing harm to another person’s ‘right’, that is, the act of an individual smoking creates unclean air that the non-smoker must inhale.
Unfortunately, it’s absolutely incorrect.
It does two specific things that nullify its authority as an argument:
1. It makes a claim that ONLY cigarette smoke is harmful to a non-smokers lungs. It forgets to take into account that everything we do as living beings damage the air around us. Bottled water plastic uses fossil fuels to turn the petroleum into plastic, even recycled plastic requires the burning of fossil fuels. In fact, everything you purchase from pots to automobiles, food to ways to dispose of food require the expulsion of products into the air. This is the nature of being alive, it requires the extraction and pollution of the system. I should not have to explain this, being that every one of us ingests food and then expels a byproduct that is poisonous to us. Until the day we can, ourselves, create a clean being, how can we expect the whole of society to do it?
2. It villainizes a particular form of ideas without logical concern to the whole process of all possible ideals. The first point should make this second one at least visible. For by assuming cigarette smoke is evil, while considering, say automobile exhaust ‘acceptable’ is a villanization of a particular product for no other reason that simply because one can. It is the social equivalent of a scarlet letter. Which means something even more devastating, for it represents a repressive and un-enlighten viewpoint of the nature of the universe, where one thing is labeled wrong or evil, but its many other sister views are still considered valid if not down beneficial. This breaks with logic! It requires, instead the notion of compromise and thus, is tied in emotionalism to the particular entity to be made the villain.
Therefore, if a cigarette is left to the notion of evil, simply because society has thus deemed it so, but, this same society is incapable of also putting all possible air pollution into the same category; then is it really safe to say that society has the authority to make such inaccurate and biased claims or is it more accurate to call a spade a spade and demand that they look at the whole as it is? When one demands that I stop smoking for their clean air, they are merely pointing out their own hypocrisy and worse, their plain elitist authoritarianism, expecting me to give up a small portion of my air pollution freedoms while they continue to participate in their own. Yes, that is correct, you're expulsion as a living this part of your 'life, liberty, and property' and you entitled to have it. Your right to pollute is part of your nature.
This is the very reason why the founding fathers did not believe that a bill of rights was necessary, because to them, they would never have believed that people could become so selfish that they would be unable to see their own influences on society and people and themselves. But, they did manage to save of few of our God given rights and stuffed them into the constitution as Jefferson said:
Let us guarantee the rights we can. Better half a loaf then no bread.
Yet, now, over two hundred years later, we are still fighting over the premise of ‘gun’ or ‘no-gun’. The cigarette argument makes the whole point moot. For the right to defend oneself is the Right we are discussing and as it stands today, firearms are the best, most equalizing tools available. If all of society were to lay down the rest of its hypocrisy (if for example Law Enforcement wanted to give up its guns first) then perhaps we could have an honest discussion about the nature of defense of oneself. But until that moment, the rest is a media circus lie, bent on invoking fear and hatred.
I oppose any item, that would deem an individual unable to choose their own lives. I therefore oppose all controls over firearms.
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