atrahasis

I am with primal 100% on his recent post

Monkeybot

But you can choose to leave a restaurant, whereas noise pollution in your own home his more difficult to avoid.

Jamie_L

Primal,

Well, it's a circular arguement. You're complaining that your offense at seeing breastfeeding in public means women should feed their kids in the bathroom.

Everybody wants everyone to do what they want, and no one wants to do what the don't want, even if other people want it.

Some people don't want to eat in a restaurant with black people. Maybe they think that's pollution too.

There's a balance somewhere.

Jamie

Glory

The problem lies in collateral damage. How do you stop people from annoying you without giving them the opportunity to stop you from annoying them? What happens in your home is your perrogative. Once you go outside you have to deal with other people doing all sorts of things. You can't outlaw singing Happy Birthday without stomping all over everyone's right to free speech. You can't make them go outside without violating their right to free assembly. These are your rights as well. Are you prepared to give them up in order to be spared the spectacle of public birthday celebrations? If the answer is yes, do you really expect anyone else in this country to agree with you?

Glory

Primal

The problem I think lies in personal preference and a matter of degree. If women would die had they not immediately breast fed their kids, I would for example be for breast feeding in public. As I see life as more valuable then my aesthetic preference in this case.

In any event I am now somewhat undecided on the breast feeding issue. Though I don't see how my arguments are circular, I have always admitted my position was a matter of preference, and argued for it since I didn't believe it hurt anything or inconvenianced anyone too severely. I still don't see bathrooms as that bad now for breastfeeding, however I am considering that maybe we should create special rooms for it, or allow it in public if conditions in bathrooms are really that severe.



Yes, and you can choose to leave a movie theater. Or a neighborhood. What if a restaurant allowed people to poo where they sat, you could simply choose to leave it, though I bet you'd be more likely to get complaints. You can likewise put on ear plugs. Like I said it's a matter of severity and preference, I am not saying all positions are equal, purely subjective or relative as there are obviously some preferences more strongly entrenched then others. I am saying that the argument "they can just leave" is a poor argument, and that saying "they should be hermits if they disagree" is unfair.

Glory

More unfair examples. A restaurant that allowed people to deficate in their seats would be closed by the health department. Wearing earplugs in a movie theater would inhibit one's ability to experience the movie. Both the behaviours you cite are already adressed by the law. People do get arrested for disturbing the peace.

Courts often apply a standard of reasonability. Would a reasonable person behave in a certain way or object to certain behaviours? One can always point out extremes. It doesn't get us any where.

Glory

Jamie_L

Okay, I admit I was on a rant with the hermit thing. And "circular" may have been the wrong term. What I was really getting at (poorly) was that I felt your statement "they can breastfeed in the bathroom" was virtually no different from my statement about people who didn't like birthday singing: "they can just leave".

At any rate, it's a bit of a quagmire we're entering into now. My real point was that living in a populous society means you have to deal with people, and people will always do things that annoy us or that we dislike. There is a threshold somewhere that we have to just tolerate. Where we get into disagreements, I suppose, is the drawing of that line.

Jamie

DarkDruid

Acctually, there are several limitations to rights. That's why we can have Klan rallies in certain places, but not in the middle of a black neighborhood at noon. These restrictions happen all the time whenever parades or demonstrations are held. You're idea of free assembly also contracicts the idea of personal property. You could very well boot some loud drunken birthday boy out of the establishment without violating his right to free assembly.

Glory

Your birthday boy isn't being booted for singing, being sung to or celebrating. He is not booted for disturbing one person. He is being booted for disturbing sveral people and possibly for behaving dangerously. Thus his rights are not being violated. If, however, it were illegal to sing Happy Birthday to someone because someone might get annoyed, that violates his rights.

Of course there are of limitations on our rights and freedoms. There are quite a few of them, in fact. These limitations are about preserving the rights and safety of the maximum number of people in a given situation. What the law does not do is allow an individual to put his preferences ahead of the freedoms of others. That's the ideal at any rate. I'm sure there is an example out there somewhere of a contradiction to this ideal.

The point is that if an individual doesn't want to hear someone singing happy birthday then it is his responsibility to avoid places where birthdays are celebrated. What makes more sense? For one person to change his behaviour or for the rest of the world to change their's?

Glory

Primal

Pretty much, yeah. I never said otherwise or that no one could criticize this statement though, as another seemed to.