Posted on 03/14/2013 7:49:47 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
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But puritans haven't vanished. They've merely changed the subject. The expansion of freedom in matters of sex has coincided with a shrinkage in matters of health. New Yorkers would laugh at laws policing sex, but they elected a mayor who has no problem trying to control other physical indulgences.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg brought forth a ban on large sugar-laden beverages, which this week was struck down by a state court. But the idea won't go away that easily: The city will appeal the ruling, and other cities are considering similar laws.
Nor is this approach out of character for Bloomberg, whose attitude is: "Let my conscience be your guide." He prohibited restaurants from using transfats, banned smoking in bars and restaurants as well as most outdoor spaces, compelled fast-food chains to post calorie counts on their menus, proposed limits on sodium and even stopped hospitals from giving bottles of infant formula to new mothers. When it comes to what you put in your body, nothing is off-limits to the city.
The sugary drink measure has been controversial, but if experience is any guide, it will someday be as common and accepted as smoke-free taverns. Individuals could be allowed to make their own choices without coercing others, but that doesn't satisfy the public health zealots.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
~ C.S. Lewis
Sorry but there is no inherent virture, one way or the other, in the size of your soda pop. This is more like the tyranny of the self-righteous.
In to defend the Puritans, as usual. They keep using that word. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
Puritans had feasts. They smoked. They sang. They played games. They worked hard. The rested well.
They were called “Puritans” because they wanted purity in the worship of God. Anything that they believed had no biblical warrant in the worship (incense, special clothes for pastors, prayer books. . .) they opposed. They were adamant that worship of God be strictly by the book.
They were not anti-soda, nor were they philosophically nanny-staters.
In to join you....
...the Puritans had "a more elevated and complete view" of our social duties than the Europeans of that time. They took care of the poor, maintained their highways, kept careful records and registries, secured law and order, and, most of all, provided education for everyone — through high school. The purpose of universal education was that everyone should be able to read the Bible to know what's most important — his or her duties to their Creator — for themselves. Everyone must read in order that no one be deceived or suckered by others. This noncondescending egalitarianism was the first source of the American popular enlightenment that had so many practical benefits. "Puritan civilization in North American," our outstanding novelist/essayist Marilynne Robinson observes, "quickly achieved unprecedented levels of literacy, longevity, and mass prosperity, or happiness, as it was called in those days"........In Robinson's Calvinist view, generosity, liberality, and nobility are all synonyms in the Bible, and they express even better than charity the virtue that distinguishes who we are. What's left our culture, with our surrender of the common celebration of Sunday — what impressed Tocqueville as our most precious inheritance from the Puritans — is the respect, and so the time, for the disciplined reading and reflection required for us to practice the social, civilized virtues that are the truest source of our happiness.
-- from the thread Thanking the Puritans on Thanksgiving: Pilgrims' politics and American virtue
Socialism devolves into totalitarianism. Witness current events. Two steps forward, one step back.
DEPOPULATE socialists/totalitarians from the body politic.
FUMB
live - free - republic
Bloomberg rants about Type 2 diabetes causing huge financial burdens. Both my aunt and uncle dealt with type 2. They took metaformin once a day, tested their sugar, watched their diet and saw their MD 4 times a year. People who have great consequences from Type 2 which cost big dollars in insurance or medicare/caid are people who never see a doctor and don’t follow simple guidelines of diet. Limiting the amount of coke these folks can order in a restaurant when they’re younger will have zero effect on preventing Type 2 in them, and have little effect on the amount of dollars spent on healthcare.
Limiting the amount of coke these folks can order in a restaurant when they’re younger will have zero effect on preventing Type 2 in them, and have little effect on the amount of dollars spent on healthcare.
There's another "useful" effect: laws such as New York's anti-large soda measure accustom the serfs to the principle government has both the power and authority to meddle in each least, last detail of their lives. Think of it as a training program for people who've abandoned citizenship.
> Puritans had feasts. They smoked. They sang. They played
> games. They worked hard. The rested well.
They also brewed and drank beer.
Not to any excess, mind you.
:)
Noo....as Shakespeare quips in ”Twelfth Night”:
”Because you are a Puritan shall there be no cakes and ale?”
Noo....as Shakespeare quips in ”Twelfth Night”: ”Because you are a Puritan shall there be no cakes and ale?”
“Noo....as Shakespeare quips in ”Twelfth Night”:
”Because you are a Puritan shall there be no cakes and ale?”
Yes, Shakespeare was going with the caricature that Puritans ate no cake and drank no ale.
Neither of which is true. Puritans were perfectly happy people filled with us much zest for life as anybody. They just wanted church worship “pure.” For this they were lampooned.
They are often confused with Quakers, and the Amish, who have an interest in extremely simple lives in general. Not so the Puritans, however.
No, he was not going with a caricature, he lived at a time when they were prevalent. He was making a double-entendre, with a very profound meaning. Isn’t it obvious?
“No, he was not going with a caricature, he lived at a time when they were prevalent. He was making a double-entendre, with a very profound meaning. Isn’t it obvious?”
No, history teaches otherwise.
Puritans advocated for purity in worship. They were not against modernity, feasting, play, drinking, innovation, scientific advancement, or smoking. These are facts, not play references.
Because they opposed the Church of England’s and the Roman Catholic’s elaborate worship services, they were taunted. But it was not because of any anti-fun attitudes in their daily lives.
Didn't he order hospitals to stop giving out painkillers too?
You seem not to understand what Shakespeare is actually saying.
“You seem not to understand what Shakespeare is actually saying.”
Perhaps not. It seems from a cursory reading that he is saying that since someone is a Puritan, he is worried there shall be no cakes and ale.
Of course in context he may be saying the opposite, or just asking if that is the case.
No, that is not the complete meaning. It’s sad, because you don’t need more than a cursory reading to understand the meaning of a simple sentence. You just need to have more than a cursory e d u c a t i o n and the capacity to understand symbolism and metaphor. The supetficisl, literal mindedness that you seem to bring to reading misses the whole point of why great literature exists and what it conveys.
My dear Kabumpo, I can read just fine. I didn’t read the entire play just to respond to your short comment.
My statements on the Puritans stand. Shakespeare is open to interpretation, and if you take away one thing, and I take away another, it is of no consequence. If, in fact, Shakespeare was saying Puritans disapprove of cakes and ale, then he was wrong. Or joking. Or making a simile or a metaphor or using symbolism. Or perhaps he was making the opposite point - that to say whatever was going on in the play at the time was similar to alleging that Puritans disapprove of cakes and ale. Or perhaps it was a statement as a form of question. Literature can be seen from a wide variety of angles. Hence the book club.
I am sure I can always improve on my appreciation of great literature but I assure you I already appreciate it pretty well.
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