User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Buy MLB playoff tickets, plus 2011 World Series, 2011 ALCS tickets and NLCS game tickets. We also have Texas Rangers playoff schedule, tickets to Red Sox games and Yankees game tickets. Plus, buy Phillies baseball tickets, Tigers playoff tickets and the biggies like ALDS baseball tickets and 2011 NLDS tickets. |
Demarini, Easton and TPX Baseball Bats
|
AllianceTickets.com has cheap MLB Tickets. Get all your Colorado Rockies Tickets, Seattle Mariners Tickets, San Francisco Giants Tickets and all your favorite baseball tickets here. We also carry cheap Denver Broncos Tickets, Seattle Seahawks Tickets and Denver Nuggets Tickets. |
Page rendered in 0.6892 seconds
54 querie(s) executed
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
A whole lot like the Iraq War, as well. But at least there is genuine public debate over the Iraq War. For any serious politician of either party to even raise a mild question about the efficacy of the Drug War is instantly understood as political suicide.
Why should you be allowed to solicit general custom from the public highway?
It is. It's not publicly owned, but it's a public accommodation.
Actually, I think these are fair points. I'm not arguing that the ban is perfect, just that it's reasonable.
Why shouldn't he?
Are there cigar bars in NYC? I know Florida has a no smoking ban statewide, but there is a very popular cigar bar in town. What's the deal?
edited to ask:
If there are cigar bars, can one smoke a ciggy there?
I also wonder how many of those who would favor repeal understand the completely different consequences that such a repeal might have today, when the ideology of race supremacy has been almost completely discredited in public life, and what it would have been like if the bill had been voted down in 1964, when its tenets were being held by many people you'd never particularly think of as racists today, and when that ideology still had huge chunks of the country in its grip.
It was a once-famous conservative who wrote a seminal book called Ideas Have Consequences. I wonder how many libertarians of a certain age have ever given much thought about the practical, real life consequences of what this country would now be like if in 1964 we'd followed their ideology to its full theoretical fruition. Or is that not even a relevant question in the light of the ideology that must be perfectly applied?
We decided a few decades back that we were going to surrender our rights to the government in the hopes that the government will keep us warm, safe, and content. Considering that they probably failed to achieve I think it is about time we took back our rights we surrendered so long ago.
"Monty's a witch!!!"
Please, David. You're missing the point. We shouldn't care how much money business owners have to spend on this stuff. What we deem to be "the public good" is reason enough for any extra expenditures they have to make. Besides, the business owners are just lucky we let them do business in the first place. They could go elsewhere if they don't like it. And, oh -- lot of them are Evil anyway.
Yes, the piracy on the seas is horrible. I have to leave soon from work as once it is dark, the gangs run wild.
You made the decision to live in this society. Don't pretend that you are the last wild man living on his base instincts. Society and commmerce depend on the government to back up contracts. Society have become too large with too much information to allow shunning and other tactics that work in small groups. Some regs come with the package.
You don't like it, leave. That seems to be your answer for us.
I'm not. I just disagree what constitutes private life. I can smoke while being naked in my own house. I can do neither in a bar. Both seem reasonable.
I made the decision to live in this society? Really? I chose to be born? I can leave, really where too? I don't seem to recall immigration being a very open process nowadays around the world. Perhaps if I was born a century ago I could get up and leave. Travel across the ocean to this wonderful land that didn't feel the need to interfere with peoples private lives and they had no cats! But seriously there is no perfect world, we have to work at it to make it better. And I don't see removing peoples personal choices as making it better.
Society have become too large with too much information to allow shunning and other tactics that work in small groups. Some regs come with the package.
this is bull. Society has not become too large that are choices must be made for us. Smoking was going down before they banned it. Non-smoking areas and places were being created before they banned it outright. All the things you like to claim that won't work in this large society were working. Airlines were going non-smoking before the ban made it a law. Restaurants and bars were working towards that end and were creating environments suitable for non-smokers before the ban forced us all to choose that lifestyle.
The problem I have with this agument is that businesses has no fundamental rights at all, but everything they do is potentially regulated by the state. But how can we tell if one regulation is right or wrong? Where to draw the line?
I grant that the government has the power to regulate businesses, But I don't think that means they are a valid moral authority, just because the government does something doesn't mean it is right. Might isn't right. It just means someone pulled the threads to further their ideology.
I like non-interference, as long as it isn't too dangerous for the broader public, don't do a thing.
So many, many regulations will simply be wrong from my point of view. The fact that the government has the power to enact them doesn't matter, they would also have the power to not enact them, if they chose to, which they would if I was in power.
You don't like it, leave. That seems to be your answer for us.
No, we don't want you to leave. We'd be perfectly happy to let you sign a Personal Declaration of Acceptance Fascist Supremacy contract with the government and subject yourself and everything you do to the whims of 50.1%. The State can determine the food you eat, who your friends are, what you worship, what you do for a living, and what is to be done with your remains when you die, and we won't bat an eye.
I think public smoking bans are rather petty, but honestly I don't think it's something to get too worked up about.
Banning trans-fats is rather outrageous though.
I believe a plurality of people can be wrong.
Then run for office. What's stopping you?
Maybe I will, maybe I will.
I'm not kidding about the following. I took a philosophy course in university where the only task and only subject of discussion for 3 months and 42 class hours was what are man's inalienable rights. We talked about it for three months and we were divided into 5 groups of five and on the last day each group revealed and presented their list of man's inalienable rights. One group had one thing on their list -- the right to think. Our group had two -- the right to think and the right to take one's own life. One group had about 15 -- that was the most and some of the things on that list were demonstrably wrong, IMHO. I got an A-.
And again, slavery wasn't based on might, unless you believe this is a dictatorship, but based on the choices of legitimately elected officials. Their moral authority was derived from a valid electoral process. So was lack of women's suffrage, treatment of Amerindians, and the Iraq War. So, are you on record for the moral authority of the invasion of Iraq, then?
Yes, as it does not effect trade that much at all.
However, the problem here is that we have poker machines (slot machines) in our hotels. These things make a ridiculous amount of money for some hotels. The non smoking laws in pubs in Queensland has greatly affected the turnover here for the pokies. People gamble more when they chain smoke.
Thanks for the Twinkies answers before as well.
EDIT - Customers who smoke have to go outside. They don't seem to care, as they are used to it anyway.
If I invite you to a dinner party at my house, should you get to decide whether there's going to be smoking there, or should I?
Am I "infringing on your freedom" if you're a nonsmoker and I say that there's going to be smoking there? No, because you don't have the freedom to be in my home. Am I "infringing on your freedom" if you're a smoker and I say that there's not going to be smoking there? No, because you don't have the freedom to be in my home.
The host should decide, it is their house. If they are smokers, then it ain't really an issue.
To me it is the same as someone asking you to take your shoes off.
It's not a freedom issue in my opinion. They just want to keep the carpet clean, or not have the house stink of Malboros.
Dan, I'm with you on smoking bans, but by any decent standard there's a world of difference between the legitimacy of an electorate that was essentially restricted to white males (and in some areas property owners) and an electorate based on universal suffrage, whether or not the turnout reflects that. The best you can say about our electoral base back then was that the United States was an experimental work in progress.
And in that sense, I'd definitely see a difference between slavery / women's disenfranchisement / Indian wars and the invasion of Iraq, regardless of my low opinion of the latter.
I'm sure my index funds have plenty of exposure to the credit difficulties. oh well.
Now, Joes doesn't like black people. What then?
Then only racists will go there, and it will have very limited success; all the goodthinking people will patronize more enlightened bars with their black friends.
That's exactly the sort of hypothetical query I was trying to raise in #817, and this sort of answer evades it completely. It assumes a 2007 racial climate for a time when no such climate in fact existed. You could have fit "all the goodthinking people" in the Mississippi of 1964 into a very, very small room, at least those goodthinking white people who had to go back home every night and face their not so enlightened neighbors and explain to them why they'd been seen dining with a bunch of nlggers.
And I know all this doesn't affect your thinking on civil rights laws (we just disagree on their legitimacy, and that's fine), but I'm still curious about how some of the other libertarians address this, if it isn't beneath their dignity. If libertarians are going to wish to be taken seriously by anyone other than themselves and a few transitory allies like potheads or smokers, they can't confine themselves to repeating purely theoretical points without facing up to the often messy consequences of those theories.
And why isn't it now? I'm not saying a smoking ban is as bad as these things, just disagreeing with the "it should be because it is" argument. I guarantee you that if everybody voted in 1790, including women and blacks, that slavery would probably be the majority vote.
Not having universal suffrage was definitely signs of a work in progress. But, in my opinion, so is a government which allows some people to force their beliefs on others, essentially at gunpoint.
Definitely - 7th street between 1st and 2nd Avenue.
Er, the place ####### stinks. ;-) You can smell it from about 30 yards away.
(*) I thought Bernie Sanders might be one on the left, but nope. He favors medical marijuana, but nothing more.Can you name a prominent liberal who supports drug legalization? I won't count Milton Friedman, who's (aside from being recently deceased) more of a libertarian than a conservative. But how about William F. Buckley? George Shultz? Gary Johnson?
Again, I'm not talking about people who want to fight the drug war but do it more humanely. Those people are either fervent drug warriors or enablers thereof. As soon as one starts making the case that drugs are Evil and What About The Children, one is making the case for all the abuses of the drug war.
And why isn't it now? I'm not saying a smoking ban is as bad as these things, just disagreeing with the "it should be because it is" argument. I guarantee you that if everybody voted in 1790, including women and blacks, that slavery would probably be the majority vote.
Can't argue with that last point, but once you got much past the turn of the 18th century, several of the most hardcore slave states acquired (pun definitely intended) black majorities.
Not having universal suffrage was definitely signs of a work in progress. But, in my opinion, so is a government which allows some people to force their beliefs on others, essentially at gunpoint.
This just brings us back to the question of when and where to draw the line. Let's take a specific case, one that the first quasi-libertarian presidential candidate had to answer 43 years ago: What's your take on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, public accommodations part? Not what your take on repeal would be today, but what would have been your take in the United States of 1964? What would have been the real world consequences of leaving every private business owner to his own socially conditioned (understatement of the year) prejudices? This isn't a question that can be answered by merely invoking a theory of limited government, but I think you know that.
While it's always tricky to try to link social movements across generations for purposes of giving them a modern packaging label, it's certainly true that prohibitionism encompassed many progressive ideals and many progressive idealists, like William Jennings Bryan. And the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's would have gone absolutely nowhere without significant religious backing. I'm an agnostic, but the demonization of religion and / or religious culture by so many liberals is one of the saddest and dumbest phenomena I've witnessed in my lifetime. It's the flip side of the religious demonization of liberalism.
I can't believe you of all people buy into that horses*** argument.
What if he's not inviting the public in? What if he's inviting in only people willing to be around smokers?
Andy, to respond to your questions about segregated Mississippi, please keep in mind that Mississippi was not some libertarian situation before 1964. As you know, it was segregated both by law and by threat of government-endorsed private violence. Although I oppose private antidiscrimination laws in general, one could argue that it was justified as a temporary measure at the time to correct prior government abuses. That isn't the case now.
OK, then again, what's the deal? A special license issued by the state? Then we're to Andy's solution from about 150 posts ago. And there's no basis for complaint; there are smoking bars and non-smoking bars. Everybody wins? Or do smokers, and their defenders, want the right to smoke in every bar?
I can't believe you of all people buy into that horses*** argument.
It's not horseshlt at all, but just to clarify, I'm not saying for a moment that the religious right shouldn't be confronted and answered at every opportunity. But religion doesn't begin and end with the Pat Robertsons.
And again, even though I'm an agnostic, it's an absolute tragedy that liberals have let the right wing almost completely monopolize religious terminology. And all it's gotten them (liberals) is an increasing sense of frustration and a reputation for condescension that the right wing seizes every opportunity to showcase.
Yeaarrgghhhh, If you haven't done so already, go see Sicko. I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore's style in general, but the way he couches his argument for universal care in starkly moral terms could very well find lots of allies among religious conservatives, if only a Democratic candidate had the guts to face the "socialized medicine" boogeyman in the eye and turn the whole debate into a discussion of that specifically draws upon the sort of moral lessons contained in the Bible. It may or may not work, but it'd have a hell of a lot better chance of succeeding than a series of dryly presented position papers presented by the likes of John Kerry or Ira Magaziner. They'll never know unless they try.
I almost fainted when I read that highlighted bit, and I'm going to quit for the evening while I'm ahead.
A few months ago I was dating a girl who worked in that bar. I know she lit up cigarettes while in there, but I don't know if it was allowed.
Well, was it prohibited for employees, or everyone? They serve drinks on airplanes, but I'm pretty sure it's not allowed for the crew ; )
I agree with the statement, too. There are quite a few things that I wouldn't want in a libertarian society that I'm in favor of in our society as is currently constructed. For instance, a social safety net.
You will rarely find a reasonable position that is absolute and completely insensitive to context. And 1964 is some pretty substantial context.
It should be clear that 1964 conditions, particularly in the deep south, were sufficiently bad to require fairly drastic measures to correct. It was an uncomfortable place where the rights of individuals to act according to their desires was running sharply against the rights of other individuals to participate in society. I think the public accommodations section is a tad overbroad, but I am not so slavishly dedicated to one moral good at the expense of all others to say it was not a net good.
One can be anti-war without being a pacifist, one can be green without being a vegan, and one can be libertarian without rejecting all possible forms of government interference.
Actually, business has been regulated for centuries. Much of the time it was by governments, as in the early days of stock markets, when the right to issue stock was one granted by the monarchy. Much of the time, especially in the middle ages, business was regulated by private groups, often called guilds, that decided who could practice certain trades, and where, and what they could charge; it was far more regulated than today. In addition, the point of the regulation then was to protect existing businesspeople, whereas more of the regulation today is aimed at protecting consumers (whether that regulation is excessive or ineffective is a separate issue). In fact, many guilds were so powerful that in some towns -- especially in medieval Italy -- they served as all or part of the government. Before that, the Roman Empire had a complex system of laws that regulated such matters as the slave trade, the development of land, the lending of money, and other business issues.
Now, I'm not trying to argue in favor of guilds or the Roman Empire or in favor of today's regulatory regimes. I'm just pointing out that the idea of regulating business is not something that emerged in the last few decades, and you could go back quite aways and find *many* people who would say that government had some right to regulate business.
"The Baltimore City Council approved the indoor smoking ban in February, and the state passed its ban two months later after intense lobbying by health advocates and restaurant industry leaders. The latter argued the ban would hurt business, while smoke-free advocates argued that similar bans in other states have not harmed restaurants."
http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/stories/2007/08/13/daily44.html?ana=from_rss
You will rarely find a reasonable position that is absolute and completely insensitive to context. And 1964 is some pretty substantial context.
It should be clear that 1964 conditions, particularly in the deep south, were sufficiently bad to require fairly drastic measures to correct. It was an uncomfortable place where the rights of individuals to act according to their desires was running sharply against the rights of other individuals to participate in society. I think the public accommodations section is a tad overbroad, but I am not so slavishly dedicated to one moral good at the expense of all others to say it was not a net good.
One can be anti-war without being a pacifist, one can be green without being a vegan, and one can be libertarian without rejecting all possible forms of government interference.
Thanks for your take, c-bird. IIRC there was a provision in the 1964 PA section that exempted establishments that served five or fewer people. I believe that they called it the "Mrs. Murphy" clause, and it was put in as a way of distinguishing truly private establishments from obviously public ones.
And as I'm sure you'll agree, that 1964 law did more to bring the South into the modern world than even air conditioning. Not even the most rabid and unreconstructed southern politician is in favor of its repeal, in spite of whatever philosophical objections he might have to it even now.
I meant that more of the regulation today is aimed at protecting consumers than the regulation in Ye Olden Times, not that <u>most</u> of the regulation today is aimed at protecting consumers.
And you know, making ad hominem attacks on liberals doesn't actually help you make your case. I'd be persuaded if you you presented data showing that the majority of business regulation is aimed at protecting existing businesspeople, rather than just asserting it in a condescending manner.
Right; I should have made that more clear.
Awesome.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main