phl@drusd.UUCP (LavettePH) (12/07/84)
Newsgroups: net.politics < Stating that I have an obligation does not make it so. I repeat my < question: If I cannot afford to have children of my own, what right do < other people have to bear children and make me pay for them? Please < support your response. In a way you are correct. No one living can "give" you a duty, an obligation or a responsibility any more than they can "give" you your basic human rights. These things are already yours and are your inheritance from four hundred-or-so generations of people who have somehow managed to hold civilization together in spite of whatever obstacles were put in their path. You might well argue the definition of civilization and point out that what we wound up with works very badly, but it is all we got and I think it is amazing that it works at all. Other people have no right to expect you to support their child. The child, however, has every right to *demand* the same basic support and start in life as is available to other children in the same society. The child didn't ask to be born. Unless you are a social darwinist or a neanderthal you can't suggest that we beat its brains out with a rock or leave it on a hillside to die. You don't impress me as being either. I am not a religeous person so I cannot quote to you any specific chapter and verse describing your obligations to your fellow human beings. I doubt there is any religion on this planet that denys these duties. I imagine most atheists recognize their responsibility to mankind, but I can't recall any particularly appropriate words right now. I guess all I have is a couple of personal obser- vations to support my view of the problem. A year or two ago in Denver, an eighteen year old five months pregnant girl was raped, robbed and murdered when she was found sleeping under a bush in a city park because there was no space available for her in a shelter. That same evening an eighteen year old boy was stopped and questioned by police in a Denver suburb because he was creating a disturbance by "cruising" the city's main street in a chauffered Rolls. The boy was doing nothing wrong. He was home on vacation from his job on an oil rig. His own license was suspended and he wanted a night on the town. Both these people had rights. The boy had every right to cruise; the girl and her unborn child had a right to live. We all had an obligation to provide the girl with a safe place to spend the night and if the boy's part of the obligation meant that his share of the tax burden reduced him to riding in a Bently instead of a Rolls then that is part of the price he must pay in order to live in a civilized country. The temperature fell to forty below at night and rose to twenty below during the day for a three week period in Denver last December. During that period I listened to the Boulder County deputies on my scanner as they checked the people living under the Route 287 bridge south of Longmont for frostbite. These people were unemployed refugees from one of the eastern cities. I don't remember which one. We have about 2000 homeless in Denver this winter. These people have a right to a warm place to sleep. Their children also have a right to an education. We all have an obligation to them. If my share of the necessary taxes means I have to give up a little then that is the price I have to pay to live in a civilized society. We all have an obligation to civilization. I think it is sad you feel that you can't both contribute *and* have a child. Most families seem somehow to manage both, but I don't know (and I certainly don't think this is the place to go into) that problem. I would ask you, if we all adopted the "lifeboat" philosophy and you could afford your own children, would it be the kind of world in which you or they would enjoy living? Could they accept the price that would have had to have been paid by others for their admission? < This doesn't apply. I just don't want to have to pay a dollar for a < song I didn't want to hear in the first place! The "song" was already playing when we walked in, Bob. Nobody particularly likes the tune but it is better than silence so we keep on paying. < "Restoring the American Dream", by Robert Ringer < Available from any book store. I tried both Walden's and B.J.Dalton on my lunch hour without success. Any ideas? - Phil p.s. I always thought the whole thing was pretty much covered in "Atlas Shrug- ged." I thoroughly enjoyed it as fiction but I could never buy someone's talking on the radio for a length of time equivalent to what must be over a hundred pages of text. Not even an Adolph Hitler or Fidel Castro could keep an audience awake that long waiting for a bottom line.