Peggy Noonen: "Them" [one group for whom liberals have no tolerance at all]

Wall Street Journal ^ | Nov 15, 2002 | Peggy Noonen

[The Raven]

There's a lot to think about this week--the rise of Nancy Pelosi, the meaning of the Republican triumph--but my thoughts keep tugging toward a group of people who are abused, ostracized and facing a cold winter. It's not right what we do to them, and we should pay attention.

[Madame Dufarge]

What demands have I made?

A feeble attempt at muddying the waters doesn't pass for a counter argument.

I gave my accounting of observed truths, from personal observation.

I don't recall the recounting of your presence.

[Madame Dufarge]

Once again, when have I made a single demand?

What are you, thick?

Or a 3-year old child?

Saying the same things over and over again, ignoring the response, doesn't constitute an "argument."

[VermiciousKnid]

Oh, Bravo Peggy! If you're lurking & don't have anything to do on Thanksgiving, come on over to our place. I bet we'd have a ball.

Regards,

[Not just another dumb blonde]

My son never said one word about my smoking until the communistic school he attended told him to. In the second grade he told me his father was an alcoholic because he has one or two beers....a year! And I was a drug addict because I smoke. This is some of the crap they feed our kids behind our backs. I'm truly sorry we can't all be as perfect as you. You don't have many friends, do you? Else, why would you be here conversing with us low lifes.

[Madame Dufarge]

By the way, I never made a single negative comment about smokers.

The true mark of a coward.

A simple train conductor, just doing his job on the Auschwitz run, sympathetic perhaps, maybe whispering a little in the locker room, but the public face is bureaucratically neutral.

A dyed-in-the-wool, sniveling, cowardly bureaucrat never makes "a single negative comment."

He just makes the wink and nod, and moves the line along.

[Leisler]

It is almost as if you wish something would happen, like the power grid would fail for months in the dead of winter and all these mewing little chemophobes would have their phantom fears replaced with things like frostbite, burning picture-of-wood furniture to melt snow and laying each night watching their breath freeze against the bottom of their bedroom ceiling. For starters.

Where are the Huns when we need them? Of course, I am but dreaming. These Americans (who they are but for the accident of their birth), and who would pimp their daughters for a butter stick after a week. No, two days.

Of course, the legislatures, long since turning their sworn duties over to legions of unelected thugs, now twitter like queens in the dressing room of a off-off-off Broadway play. Seriously, if all the legislatures and politicians were to disappear by some force tomorrow, would it make a difference? No, of course not.

Well, I don’t smoke. My friends do, as may anyone else. I don’t naturally believe I have enemies, but that people enter my orbit, like a Yankee on a Cracker hill farm that starts finger snapping and such. Regardless of the reason, their manners and attitudes cause me anger. This is called interaction, and since these people are so friggen dumb, it always comes as a surprise. People have to stand somewhere, with someone. In this case, I’m with the smokers. The anti’s might be right about their coughing, wheezing, nose dripping, petition signing, with their pale no skin cancer complexion and masked pudgy pit bull bait children that are bundled up like Ebola investigators……but I don’t like them. There is something sickly, repellent about them. I can’t place my finger upon it, but …I don’t care.

[Madame Dufarge]

and who would pimp their daughters for a butter stick after a week. No, two days.

Would that include the English Muffins?

After all, there are principles involved here.

[Great Dane]

I do like drinking -- a lot -- and I can already see the writing on the wall for alcohol use. I'll stand by my smoking brethren in an effort to protect my rights to tipple.

Take a number and stand in line, I think they are going after the obese next, guess you will just have to wait your turn. :-}

[Great Dane]

Because of it her life was cut short by emphysema at the tender age of 84.

ROTF......... No doubt she would have lived to 120 had she not smoked.

[CharacterCounts]

I don't smoke either. I will never understand people who have so little going for them that they can only achieve contentment by crusading to interfere with the happiness of others. I really fail to comprehend why these people find comfort at Free Republic with attitudes that are repugnant to the conservative individualism FR stands for.

Now this has got me thiking. What FR needs is a place of ever diminishing size "relegated" to these sniveling busybodies and meddlers. Perhaps they can be assigned to a place outside of the comfort and congeniality of the regular forums. A special, little, well ventilated, forum, set appart just for them to post their mental vomit. Then my tender eyes wouldn't be subjected to reading the trash I find offessive. I think I might start a crusade.

[VermiciousKnid]

And, ironically, it was ALWAYS the smoking cars on the commuter trains which would forever be barely occupied, while 80% of the rest of us riders were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the non-smoking cars of the trains, packed like sardines for the entire commuter ride to the City.

This is a lie. I was born and bred in NYC, and rode the LIRR for years. The smoking car was packed each and every day with people. We were as tightly packed as you were, I assure you. When they banished us from our one little car they claimed "the smoke SEEPS into the other cars." What a crock of BS, especially when you consider what other interesting odors were eminating all over the place.

I never liked living in NYC anyway, and have moved out to the Island. But I'm not far enough away quite yet.

Regards,

[CharacterCounts]

ROTF......... No doubt she would have lived to 120 had she not smoked.

An observed truth; You are just as dead if you die at 120 as if you died at 84. And, nobody will rememeber you even existed in 50 years.

[ladyinred]

Lovely thoughts, Peggy, but the liberals have tasted power for far too long now, and they are not apt to give it up in the name of humanity or anything else. They will however, hold the line when it comes to their own likes and dislikes. Dare to tread on their rights and see what happens.

[Great Dane]

As Steve Martin used to say: 1st person: "Do you mind if I smoke?" 2nd person: "No, do you mind if I fart?"

It wasn't funny then and it isn't funny now, I am sure you can come up with something better.

[schmelvin]

(Sorry if this any of this has already been mentioned; I'm still in the process of reading the whole thread.)

I live in Northern Virginia, where we get to view Maryland's public service announcements and saw a very unsettling commercial that aired a few months ago:

A bunch of kids are playing soccer at a park. Outdoors. A man on the sidelines lights up a cigarette. The game stops abruptly. One by one, kids on the field, the referee, people in the stands, turn to stare at him in shock and disgust as if he just murdered his mother with a hatchet. The man looks down in shame, puts out his cigarette, and the soccer game resumes with great joy. Then we hear an announcer tell us to keep Maryland's parks smoke-free.

I felt like I was living in Mao's China!

I see this more and more. It's not enough to just force smokers outside. Now, we have increasingly limited areas where people are allowed to smoke outdoors. Slowly but surely these will become more and more sparse until it's a crime to light up anywhere outside. In Maryland they tried to make it an offense to smoke in your own home if your neighbors decided it bothered them and reported you like good little socialists. Fortunately, people were rightfully outraged, and the law wasn't passed, but I'm sure it's still on a shelf somewhere just waiting to be dusted off and enacted.

I did witness a minor smokers' revolt in Virginia outside an office building. It occurred when the sniper was still on the loose. A few employees were standing outside, smoking between the office building and a couple of pillars they were using as "cover". A security guard informed them that they were supposed to smoke in the designated outdoor area (which was wide out in the open). They told him politely yet firmly to basically go to h3ll, because they weren't interested in becoming sitting duck targets. The security guard understood and agreed with them that they should be allowed to smoke behind the pillars as long as the sniper was still at large, and he left them alone.

[CharacterCounts]

Simply pathetic. Equating me with a concentration camp guard for stating a simple and indisputable fact.

First, he didn't equate you to a concentration camp guard, he equated you to the conductor on the train to the camp. The difference is significant but probably lost on you.

Second, what is the "indisputable fact" you stated. I have looked over your posts and find dispute with each. Did I miss a post?