Cigar smokers’ rights
From the Yale Daily News we get this article from reporter Michael Knowles on the ongoing infringement on the rights of cigar smokers in this country. Mr. Knowles foresees a grim future as his civil liberties continue being eroded.
The future appears grim for us cigar enthusiasts, who have in recent years seen our civil liberties erode like the wrapper on a hot, fast-burning Java wafe. Our new president has voted to increase the cap on cigar taxes through SCHIP legislation and advocates increased nationwide smoking bans.
But there is still some hope for cigar smokers in this country according to Knowles, and the hope comes in the form of Cuban cigars. The US government might be curbing his right to smoke in certain places and increasing the taxes imposed on tobacco, but that would all be okay if the government would just allow him to enjoy some Cuban cigars!
Yet in this era of change and supposed hope, how can we allow an antiquated and unnecessarily cruel vestige of the Cold War to persist? How can we continue to smoke disgusting Honduran cigars when a bounty of delicious Cubans lie a mere 90 miles away?
I speak on behalf of all downtrodden cigar smokers when I say this: Mr. President, if you seek prosperity, if you seek liberalization, hear our raspy, smoky cries! Mr. President, tear down this embargo!
Yes, Mr. President, tear down that embargo wall and allow those quaint, hip-shaking, black bean eating slaves in Cuba to send us some cigars. Who cares if Cubans have no rights, Mr. President, it's not like they're like us.
You're too harsh on Knowles, and your premise is wrong. "Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom." What about the peasants in France during the reign of terror whose heads were being chopped off in the name of liberty? What about the Haitian freedmen who found themselves within decades at the hands of warlords in the name of a full exercise of freedom. Liberty has its costs.
I fail to see what the examples you cited have to do with my point. You are correct, however, that only oppression needs fear freedom, but Knowles seems only concerned with his freedom and not the freedom of those rolling his cigars. As hard as you think I was on Knowles, he is much harder on the Cuban people with his insensitive disregard for their wellbeing.
No one has yet been able to explain why the isolation of South Africa's apartheid government was the right and noble thing to do, yet find doing the same with Cuba's apartheid and murderous regime offensive.
Burke76 is an agent provocateur.
If that's the case, he's not a very good one.
Actually Burke76, is Knowles himself. I didn't see his email address when I first read the comment. His comment about "Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom" was a shot at us because that's what's on the watermark of this blog.
Let me ask Michael Knowles something. If you're a cigar aficionado then you know that many of the cigars you smoke are grown by Cuban who have resettled in central America and the Dominican Republic. And perhaps you are even aware that the reason they had to do so was because the castro regime expropriated (stole) their land. So my question is this, don't you feel that you are stabbing those Cigar makers in the back when you smoke Cuban cigars with stolen brand names that are grown on stolen land? How do you justify that? How would you like it if I stole your car and then decided to sell it for a profit, all in front of your eyes without any legal recourse.
Knowles it's safe to say you haven't thought this through. And if you have and still think that way, you're an idiot.
I think, Mr. Gomez, it is you who has not thought this through. There is an old protest song which traces the train of responsibility from the dropper of the bomb to the engineer, to the bureaucrat, and to the citizen who's taxes paid for its construction. At what point does this responsibility stop? I might be my brother's keeper, but am I my seventh-cousin-seventeen-times-removed's? You would force companies to print on their products the exact number of third world country citizens who were oppressed in the product's making. I don't know about Mr. Knowles, but I justify it this way:
I happen to enjoy smoking delicious Cuban cigars, just as I happen to enjoy wearing jeans that may or may not be made in some sweatshop somewhere. I happen to like clean parks, I happen to like inexpensive cars, civilization is rather good, and in my travels, I have come across no country greater than America. All of these are things which certainly oppress very many people, those who get paid minimum wage to pick up trash in the park, for example, and yet we all partake in them. I'm not sure what your ideal society would look like, but it probably wouldn't be all that enjoyable.
And was the purpose of the Cuban embargo really to help these slaves? No, the Cuban Democracy Act, as it is called, states that its purpose is to bring democracy to the Cuban people. I don't see it as America's responsibility to fix the world's problems, maybe you do, in that case, we should completely change the outlook on foreign policy we have had for the past few centuries, and we should get rid of Barack Obama, because he hasn't talked about invading Darfur, as far as I know.
Oh I've this through plenty my friend. It's you who is out of his league. Why don't you take a stroll across the Yale campus and visit Professor Carlos Eire who will set you straight. The Cuban embargo was put in place in the early 60s by JFK as a punitive measure in response to the largest ever expropriation of U.S. business assets. No attempt at restitution has ever been made. I never mentioned sweatshops or workers but the fact is that in countries where your jeans are made people have choices. In Cuba there are none. Everyone works for the state and companies that do business with Cuba do it with the state. Very different. But my appeal to Mr. Knowles was based on the fact that he's a cigar smoker. When you smoke a Cuban Partagas or Romeo y Julieta you are enabling the people that stole the property of the great cigar families that created those brands. If you have no conscience, fine what do I care. There's a lot of douchebags out there.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of liberal professors who would be happy to have me subscribe to their formalized abridgements of the supposed substratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition. But it confuses me that you refer me to Professor Eire, an expert in the religious practices of Reformation-era Europe. And calling me a bag of vaginal irrigation fluid does not answer my question. It is a slippery slope. Where do we stop? The plight of those in Darfur is, I am sure, as bad as if not worse than the plight of today's Cubans who are beginning to have full access to cell phones, televisions, etc. So do we invade them? When one submits to an ideology, one necessarily falls into the trap you have fallen into - ideologies are not compatible with human nature.
Don't even waste your time, Henry. How can you have a discussion about morals and what is right with someone who does not possess any morals and cares little about what is right? He just wants his Cuban cigars and hey, if a few million Cubans have to suffer because of it, so what? It is indeed a slippery slope, once you start caring about your neighbor, then you have to care about the one two doors down, and before you know it, you're out trying to save the world.
There's a name for people like this, Henry.
Yes, Mr. de la Cruz, we're called conservative realists. And there's a name for people like you: liberal idealists. I actually do care about what's right, and, if you are like most of your fellow liberals, unlike you, I believe in absolute right and wrong. There are much better ways to help the people of Cuba then to prevent the US from purchasing their cigars. Need I remind you that Kennedy had 1200 Cubans purchased for him the day before he signed the bill, and that he tried to exempt cigars but the Florida cigar manufacturing companies got mad? Also, my question as to in what situations our government should stop interfering has not been answered. Is it the role of the US government to save the world?
If you consider me a "liberal idealist," sir, then you really have no idea what a conservative is. You call yourself a conservative realist, but what you really are is an amoral elitist. You've got yours, so the hell with everyone else. You conveniently forget the fact that the reason you have yours is because millions of others have given their lives in battle to secure it. But then again, there I go referencing the suffering of others to provide you with comfort. You don't really care and that is fine, it is your prerogative, but don't come in here preaching pure conservatism when in reality you are no different from the elitist liberals.
Okay, then how would a conservative such as yourself answer the question I've asked about seven times?
I don't know where the fuck you think you are but this is not a liberal blog. Professor Eire is not a liberal. He's a Cuban exile who won a National Book Award but your google search should have yielded that answer for you. Who said anything about invading? We have a commercial embargo on Cuba because that nation is run by crooks who stole American property. I happened to mention that they also stole property from Cubans, the same Cubans you probably buy cigars from if you're a cigar smoker. And if you don't have a moral problem with the fact that you enjoy consuming what is ostensibly stolen property then you are no conservative. You're just a scumbag. And you're persona non grata around here.
The old Ron Paul argument, how original.
By the way Michael, “Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom" is a quote from the Cuban patriot Jose Marti. If you don't agree with it, take it up with him.
Unless Jose Marti were a brand of Cuban cigar, he has no idea who you are referring to, Henry. Remember, once you start acknowledging the existence of other human beings, it's a slippery slope.
Doesn't calling me heartless and pointing out the fact that yes, my arguments have been used before get old after a while? Is this blog a forum for open discussion or a place to sling names like "douchebag" and "scumbag" around? All I'm doing is pointing out the problems I have with your concepts of foreign policy, eagerly anticipating what I'm sure will be a thoughtful and interesting answer, but instead I am used as target practice for your rather boring name calling. Insults are an area where originality should be highly valued, questions as to the role of government which political philosophers and leaders have grappled with since the beginning of civilization are interesting despite the fact that you may have heard them before.
Hello, all. This is the real Michael Knowles. Just like to clear the air a bit: I am not Alberto de la Cruz, Edmund Burke, Henry Gomez, or Maximilien Robespierre.
Glad to see my article has generated such a lengthy discussion. Please feel free to also leave comments on the Yale Daily News website, http://www.yaledailynews.com
Cheers
That's interesting because Burke76 registered with the following email address: michael@michaelknowles.net
A whois search of the domain michaelknowles.net reveals an administrative contact of Michael Knowles from Bedford Hills, NY. Are you saying that someone registered michaelknowles.net using your name and who goes around defending the stuff that you, the real Michael Knowles writes?
Burke76, the fake Michael Knowles also has a Yale University IP address. Maybe you have a stalker Michael.
Please. I didn't go to Yale but I'm not that stupid.
Oh and cheers!
Hello, Mr. Gomez. All I can say is that this is untrue. This is in fact an email address of mine. I do not know where you came across my personal information, but I would feel much more comfortable if you and your website kept your discussion focused around the ideas in my column rather than an exposition of its author's personal information.
Thank you.
Robbie,
This blog is a forum for its authors to express their point of view. Your half thought out point of view can be found everywhere. Your arguments are inane and unoriginal. I don't have the time or inclination to respond to such things. We have economic sanctions and have had them on many other countries over the 2+ centuries of our country. Regardless of what you think the Federal government is in fact responsible for negotiating trade with foreign governments. The courts have upheld the travel restrictions and the commercial embargo on Cuba as legitimate foreign policy and economic policy tools. Tools that I agree with. You don't agree, fine. Like I said your free to be a douchebag if you prefer. If you're bored, change the channel, it's a free country. Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. We won't miss you.
Actually, Mr. Knowles, if we start caring about you and the exposition of your personal information, where does it end? What other restraints are you going to put on our fun? Why should we care about you? That's a slippery slope, my friend. One day we're protecting your personal information and the next day--BAM--we're invading Darfur.
Michael,
When you register for a user name with this blog you must use an active email address. burke76 registered with the email address I have mentioned. Then you registered using a different email address claiming that you are not burke76 or rather Edmund Burke (a bit of clintonian genius that technically makes what you said correct).
Are you saying that you did not in fact register as a user on this blog as burke76?
We normally don't make a habit of exposing registered users personal data but you are arousing suspicion with your multiple postings under different user names.
Henry, I leave you to toy with Michael, or Burke, or whoever he is. I am off to bed because I have to work tomorrow. I want to feel bad leaving so rudely in the middle of the conversation, but I have stopped myself. If I start feeling bad because of that, then I'll start feeling bad about other things and before you can say "Ron Paul," I'm collecting canned goods for the starving refugees in Darfur. It's a slippery slope I tell you, a slippery slope.
Thought the editros might enjoy this.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29332919/from/ET/
Cheers,
Michael
Oh my, Michael, I didn't see that one coming. I guess we should all change our minds now.