Elizabeth Greenbaum wrote: > So I filled in the blanks and this is what I came up with: > > To paraphrase Michael Atherton paraphrasing Barbara Lickness: > I have been reluctant to weigh in on this issue because I > myself am a former athlete. One of the many > good reasons I decided to give it up was that I found fewer > and fewer places where I felt comfortable > working out. Thanks to the constant nagging of my husband and > son, I finally didn't feel comfortable > exercising at home any longer. > > I can no longer exercise in my favorite bar or restaurant. > When I do my workouts and run around the place they say I am being > disruptive and am endangering staff and patrons. When I do it right > outside I get looks of disgust and people mumbling under their breath. > How dare them encroach on my rights as an athlete! I like running among > the chairs and doing pushups on the tables, it heightens the enjoyment > of my night out. As of March I will be forced to sit quietly (I'm not > supposed to yell, be abusive of staff or other patrons, or even physically > threaten anyone either). I am not effecting anyone by doing this, even though > one place wanted to sue me when I made a wait person fall and break > their arm. A beer glass shattered and a shard flew into a customer's eye. > So, why should I care? They both had health insurance - the patron > still has one good eye, and even though the wait person is still getting > physical therapy two years later - what's the big deal???
Sure you can ridicule a person's perspective by misapplying an analogy and attributing arguments to them that they never made. To speak for myself: my example said nothing about behavior in restaurants. The example above would actually be analogous to a smoker walking into a non-smoking restaurant and smoking... or a non-smoker walking into a smoking restaurant and asking everyone to stop smoking. The point is that a person generally knows or can find out whether business is smoking or non-smoking and make a decision. Employee can make the same decisions. There is already a workable solution in Vancouver that allows smokers and non-smokers to share the same restaurants and bars. Why do we need to ban smoking? > I think Barb Lickness had an excellent point that smokers are unaware > how much their smoking truly effects others. The sad thing is > that the ones yelling foul refuse to understand this. I suppose > fascism is putting up a stop light, allowing pedestrians to have the > right of way, and demanding dog owners to pick-up and properly dispose of > dog doo... Maybe I should have used dog doo as my example - I now have > to clean up. How dare them! I feel I should have the right to leave the > several dumps my dog makes a day. I've been told it sticks to high heaven > and is bad for the health of the community, especially children, with worms > and other parasites, but why should I care ... Need I say more??? No fascism is forcing your morality on others in situations where their behavior has no effect on you. You can continue to cloud the issue by giving examples of situations where behavior does impact others, but doing so is fallacious. Michael Atherton Prospect Park REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
