Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Ban Smoking In The Military?
The nanny state is expanding by leaps and bounds. It is obvious that most of the real juicy issues must've already been resolved since banning smoking in the military has now taken center stage.
Our troops are threatened with death from training accidents, from friendly fire, from hostile fire and roadside bombs. The death rate from smoking in the military has to be close to zero given the age of our active duty military personnel. Some 20% smoke now and that is down significantly from my era where I suspect that 50% of us smoked.
Ours is an all volunteer force today. These men and women have volunteered to put themselves at risk for us and now we think, at least some of us think, that we need to protect them from themselves?
There must be something more important than this. Isn't there some creature somewhere that needs saving?
Can we not simply let the troops have a small pleasure if they choose?
Finally, there is so much hypocrisy present in this whole arena that one retches to think about it.
Tobacco is a government-subsidized product that is legal for use in our country. If the nanny state do-gooders must have some "cause", let them try to get tobacco made illegal and end all the subsidies that are now being paid. And, let them figure out how we will replace all the taxes that flow from the sale of tobacco to fund this great social program and that great social program.
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The Curmudgeon Blog today is titled Spend More, Tax More.
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