the weed that ate human brains
no timmy dont get too close to that strange plant
aieee
crunch munch smack swallow buurpp
Posted on 03/04/2012 4:08:27 AM PST by iloveamerica1980
Opinion piece:
So do we have the right to put into our bodies whatever we want?
Ron Paul fans have attempted to rebuke me in my response to Dr. Paul's recent statement "Why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?" in my previous post here
I suggested that not everything available to put in our bodies is beneficial nor wise to ingest. The Bible says: With freedom comes great responsibility. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
To which a commenter named Paul responded: "Of course what Paul might ask is where in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 does the text say we are responsible for what *someone else* puts into their bodies? Does mandated good behavior bring people closer to God? Does Jesus teach us that we gain righteousness by behaving well? By believing in laws to make us good? Christianity is based on our own good behavior no matter what others do around us or to us. There is no command that we make others behave well."
I answered: "The Christian has the responsibility to live out God's Word as written and tell others the truth within it. Dr. Paul used the word "we" including himself. Isn't he also a Christian? We cannot command others to behave well, but the Christian should certainly not encourage people to put in their bodies whatever they want!"
In fact, Dr. Ron Paul is a self ascribed Baptist. Taking Dr. Paul's comment to it's logical and eventual conclusion, those who continue to put "whatever they want" into their bodies will have an affect on the rest of society. Just take a look at the unrestrained society of Sodom and Gomorrah if you doubt this. Many lifestyle choices lead to serious health issues, death of self as well as the unintentional deaths of others who "got in the way". Everyone should agree that the Government has the right and responsibility to "interfere" with the rights of individuals for the common good at a certain point. At which point, we will never entirely agree. Hence, the purpose of democracy.
Politically, I agree with Dr. Paul on quite a bit and admit that even he would be a better alternative as President than out current leader who I believe is governing against the will of the people. (My current favorite is Rick Santorum.) But like any politician, Paul must be held accountable for his ideas and values when they extend beyond the perimeter of public safety and the greater common welfare.
What do you think?
James R. via Dittos Rush 2-18-12
[So do we have the right to put into our bodies whatever we want?]
Barney Fwank thinks so.
Within the confines of the Constitution they can, but I don't see anything in the there that says that the Feds can regulate drugs or social behaviors. Even the temperance union that gave us the Prohibition disaster had the decency to pas a Constitutional Amendment. Now they just ban things by fiat.
The Drug War is a failure and we need to try something else. Ron Paul is right.
So we’ll bring back alcohol prohibition too and take tabacco off the market?
if you wanted to prohibit the two most deadly controlled substances, that's exactly what you would do
Originally America was truly a social conservative nation, created by true social conservatives, they would be disgusted at how anti-social conservative and liberal, and libertarian America has become in the last 90 years.
And let all Hell break loose. Lets take Sara Lee Frozen Pound cake off the market too, all that cholestorol . Next we can go after bass fishing too....
As of 10 a.m. PST there are over 85 comments here - too many to wade through, so this might be a repeat.
My take on this “it’s my body” B/S is that, yeah, you can put whatever you want into your body, but when something goes wrong, you’re the first one to dial 911.
If there was an understanding that, yes Virginia, you CAN put anything you want into your body, but when “something” goes wrong, you are left to die on your own or lie in your waste in a coma-like state until you do die.
Since “that ain’t gonna happen”, you can bet there will be some constraints.
Which point of view are you talking about, specifically?
“I would rather live in a nation filled with people who have the courage and gumption to change their lives for the better than a nation full of cowardly, stupid and lazy illegal drug users and their greedy dealers and enablers.” (blueunicorn6)
As would I!
Finally and thank you.
There is a fine balance between the complete autonomy of the individual and the effects of individual autonomy on others. As many have observed, the choices made by individuals about what they put in their bodies or their private behavior often impose costs on others, sometimes very high costs. Examples abound: health care for poor eating behaviors, smoking, drug use, reckless driving, unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, etc. We try to fashion rules to maintain this balance but the goal is elusive. For one thing, the calculus is immeasurably complex. Not every exercise of risky behavior results in a societal cost. A single cigarette, cheeseburger or romantic assignation does not necessarily produce cancer, heart disease or aids. Likewise, one can often engage promiscuously in risky behavior without consequence or at least without objectively apparent consequence.
Where to draw the line? Zero tolerance? Infinite tolerance? Left to the government, new agencies would pop up, teeming with bureaucrats spewing impenetrable clouds of regulatory gas, making a bigger mess of things and devouring the wealth of yet more unborn generations.
The answer is, there is no answer and there are many answers. There is no answer because the question as a whole is as irreducibly complex as all human interaction. Only G-d can sort this out. But man is left to try to perfect what he can and the political charter between the state and the governed is the laboratory. So there are many answers taking individual cases on one at a time. Reasonably good examples already exist and we need only the courage to apply the same logic to larger categories. In many states, a drunk driver injured in a car accident is denied certain recoveries. While they may be able to receive basic medical care, they will be prohibited from bringing suit for pain and suffering. The choice of what the driver put in his body comes with a consequence which shields the rest of us from bearing part of the cost of the behavior.
Very well. Let’s apply this to the current notorious case of Sandra Fluke and her demand that we all pay for her sexual appetite. It is no fluke that Fluke wants to camouflage the conversation in “health” rhetoric. After all, don’t we all have more sympathy for protecting health than for promoting promiscuity? (I can also use polemical language, but that’s the point). Moreover, aren’t we all invested in “preventative care” in the form of birth control to avoid the steeper costs of pregnancy complications, unwanted children, including pre- and post-natal care and public education? Well, yes and no. It is certainly desirable to avoid these costs. But why should the entire society shoulder these burdens resulting from entirely volitional activity. The injured drunk driver, chooses to drink alcohol, which carries certain risks, such as heart disease, sclerosis of the liver and impaired function. Then, he chooses to get behind the wheel. We penalize him for his choices by erecting barriers to certain forms of compensation for his injuries.
Ms. Fluke chooses to engage in intercourse, which carries the risk of pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and heartbreak. Her choice not to take measures to protect herself from these consequences, save heartbreak, is the same as the choice of driving drunk. She says the taxpayers must support her choice and protect her from its consequences. If she is right, then all drunks should have the right to taxpayer provided prophylactic measures against his drunk driving: a guardian paid to be with him at all times to take away the keys, or, more seriously, a breathalyzer interlock should be installed on all vehicles, because we can’t take the chance that he will only attempt to drive his own vehicle. Why is the tippler’s recreation worthy of less consideration than the libertine? (I did not say slut) He needs preventative “health” care just as much as she does, if not more, although much sexual recreation results in human wreckage and much more seriously, the killing of millions of babies in utero.
Alas, I don’t think the intellectual satisfaction of the argument really pays off. After all, whether we choose, as citizens to pay for contraception and disease prevention or not, the behavior will continue. Irrefutably, we all will suffer. One only need look at the wages of the last 40 to 50 years of “sexual liberation” to know this: single motherhood and the resulting tsunami of social pathologies, sexually transmitted diseases and the enormous tragedy and costs of AIDS and the untold spiritual devastation of 50 million aborted children.
In the end, the only true remedies lie in a restoration of a moral culture. I don’t mean religious zealotry or imposition. What I do mean is an effort to reassert the idea that America, and even other nations, once had standards and, for all their shortcomings in the eyes of today’s hipsters, the standards were a public good.
The task is daunting. Academia, Hollywood, mass media and activists have been chipping away at societal standards for at least 50 years. Their labor has produced two or three generations of Americans who are completely sold on the idea of moral relativism. So sold, in fact that it goes beyond moral relativism to moral inversion: it is now bad to be good. If you are a Rick Santorum and there is a whiff of morality in your political message, you must be demonized. Rush Limbaugh tagged Sandra Fluke with an apt moral label and he is vilified. No degenerate behavior of the left ever receives comparable treatment: Elliot Spitzer caught with a hooker-he gets a show on MSNBC; Bill Clinton staining dresses in the oval office dresses is hailed the wise man of the Democrat party. A complete inversion of values. Good is bad and bad is good.
Until and unless America can restore a moral culture to some degree, where personal behavior matters and people again sense shame when they behave badly, no amount of tinkering will reverse the current direction. When society itself feels a collective sense of responsibility to maintain standards of personal behavior, the behavior of individuals easily rises to those standards. I pray that such an awakening takes place because the future of the country hangs in the balance. G-d Bless and Save America.
OK, after 90+ comments here’s my unresolved beef:
This great discussion started with Dr. Paul’s statement: “If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we’re allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?”
The problem I have as a Christian is that Dr. Paul is supposedly a self ascribed Baptist which is why I quoted 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. His is directly disobeying his Master’s command and encouraging others to do so. Big contradiction there.....huge!
The problem I have a member of the voting electorate is that as a physician, Dr. Paul should know better than to make a totally illogical blanket statement like this. Everyone here knows he’s really just trying to pick up the ‘marijuana’ vote.
The inescapable truth, as some have noted, is that eventually everyone’s behavior (good and bad) WILL effect someone else. Few might be able to pull it off for a short period of time but no society can or will survive where simply “anything goes”. If you know of one, name it.
This is where LIMITED (I said limited) government steps in based on our Constitution and Bill of Rights. We have freedom in America to an extent. So long as your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness doesn’t infringe on my rights, then go for it. Protecting my rights as a private citizen trumps the free exercise of yours in SPECIFIC, CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES.
So no, you can’t put into your body whatever you want in America simply for freedom’s sake. Here’s a crazy example: Should anyone have the right to overdose on radioactive material in the privacy of their own home......especially if they haven’t told the person who finds them dead and highly radiactive?
Why or why not?
the weed that ate human brains
no timmy dont get too close to that strange plant
aieee
crunch munch smack swallow buurpp
Its a simple idea.
It is more powerful for someone to choose to do right instead of forcing them to do right by a rule.
If someone has the liberty to do whatever they want with their bodies, and instead chooses to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, than that choice has power. It is an expression of free will.
If, however, a powerful force such as the government forces someone to live a certain way, whether they force people to do right or do wrong, there is no free will. There is tyranny. Even if a government forced everyone to live by a Christian code according to Corinthians which you quoted, the choice has no power. There is no free will.
It comes down to this point. Is free will a God given right? And if it is, then isn’t it immoral for government or anyone else to take away that right from people?
If you want to live in a country without a functioning government, move to Mexico. You might like it. However, as long as you live in America, you are undercutting your own arguement about the necessity of eliminating government.
Informing people and letting them live their lives is not the same as being in a dictatorship or undercommunism. I`m a big believer in allowing people to live the lives they want, but I`m not a big believer in letting them die in ditches, because they honestly cannot take care of themselves as, supposedly anyway, a Ron Paul believer would.
“If you want to live in a country without a functioning government, move to Mexico. You might like it. However, as long as you live in America, you are undercutting your own arguement about the necessity of eliminating government.”
Consider your above statement with your original:
“Everyone should agree that the Government has the right and responsibility to “interfere” with the rights of individuals for the common good at a certain point.”
We live in a nation of laws. Government is recognized as a necessary evil only and is therefore a LIMITED government under the Constitution. Who decides what extra-Constitutional interference the government may make for the common good? Obama???? I hope you enjoy casting your ballot for him again because he is doing exactly what you advise. After all, he is looking out for (in his mind and yours) the common good.
Your arguments are shallow and without merit and are, therefore, your typical Democrat’s understanding of the Constitution and the proper role of government in society.
Did you read my response #92 per chance?
“Did you read my response #92 per chance?”
Yes, I did.
My response:
Using the Bible to discuss and support your arguments is folly because 1) not everyone is Christian and 2) the Bible is not a controlling legal document in the United States. Obey it to your heart’s content but it has no legal standing in a discussion about the laws of the land.
You then said:
“So no, you can’t put into your body whatever you want in America simply for freedom’s sake. Here’s a crazy example: Should anyone have the right to overdose on radioactive material in the privacy of their own home......especially if they haven’t told the person who finds them dead and highly radiactive?”
How will you stop them and what punishment will you suggest be delivered to the corpse?
Let us suppose for a moment that I am as high as a Kite right now, in the privacy of my own home. I am smoking the buds of an intoxicating weed that I grew on my own property for my own, personal use.
Is it your business? No.
Is it the federal government’s business? No.
Am I harming anyone else? No.
Good. Then leave me alone.
If I attempt to sell this product to anyone, make it available to minors, or cause harm to anyne through its use (such as a DUI) or endanger a child through neglect or some such thing then I should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and be left to rot in jail.
If none of those harmful and illegal conditions occur then it is no one’s business, especially the federal government’s.
>>...What do you think?...<<
I think the bulk of the *YOUTH* supporting Ron Paul are only behind him hoping for legal weed.
And one might also think that if you want to use man’s laws to enforce a particular theology and/or religious doctrine upon a society, then that point of view might be fairly compared to mooselimbs and sharia. I’m not saying that’s your intent, but a rastafarian sure might think so.
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