[voltaires_zit]

> For the life of me I do not understand how someone could
> be so cruel or uncaring towards the sick to think that
> they have the right to withhold medicine because they, in
> their self-righteous glory, don't happen to "approve" of
> it.

The answer may lie here:

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness -- to bring him down to the miserable level of "good" men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly, and chronically unhappy men.
-- H L Mencken, Alistair Cooke, ed., The Vintage Mencken

[Wally_Kalbacken]

It's not the happiness that bothers me - it's the externalities. The HIV prevalent lifestyles offload lots of costs onto more responsible citizens (read taxpayers). If we could opt out of paying for their lifestyle I would have no problem with them smiling and rump riding into oblivion.

[RJL]

There is only one honest impulse at the bottom of Puritanism, and that is the impulse to punish the man with a superior capacity for happiness -- to bring him down to the miserable level of "good" men, i.e., of stupid, cowardly, and chronically unhappy men.

If they have a "superior capacity for happiness" what is the marijuana for?

[secretagent]

"Puritanism: The haunting idea that someone, somewhere, might be happy."

Oscar Wilde

[Old Professer]

Mencken; where parity, parody and purity collide.