Facebook has a limit on comment length, so I couldn’t adequately respond to a question there. I’ll do it here, and zomg content.

I can’t, for the record, adequately respond here either (not enough time, today’s a work day, excuse number three), but I can at least be more verbose. Verbosity ahoy:

More ground to cover than I adequately can in a facebook post [hah, I wrote that before I knew about the limit], but I expected someone among my diverse group of friends to present a counter-position (which is why it’s always good to surround yourself with people who will disagree with you on one issue or another).

[TANGENT ALERT: I highly recommend John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, especially the bits about honing your argument on opposing viewpoints, or more importantly perhaps discovering your viewpoint is busted as fuck, son. It also serves to winnow out the crap in arguments, because as Mill said, "it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied."]

Prior to the lifting of Apartheid, there were two industrialized nations that didn’t offer some form of free nationalized healthcare: the US and South Africa. Now, it’s just us. Not addressing your points [addressed to the post on facebook, you'll have to go there to read it, but the position should be clear without doing so], but it’s an indicator.

Absent a cultural change that promotes (or hell, at least embraces) health and wellness, I think it’s a civilized society’s obligation to care for its members, regardless of their issues or how they came to exist. Until we have some sort of societal value system in place that enables people to pursue more healthy lifestyles and educates them on proper nutrition and exercise, we have to care for the fallout of the system we’ve had until now.

Tobacco and junk food, as industries, enjoyed de facto government subsidies in this country until comparatively recent times (and some would argue still do). In the wake of a governing system that allowed these industries to glamorize an often lethal habit and placed “fast food” as the easiest and quickest alternative to harried citizens (and the families they are charged with providing for), we’re bound by decency to care for those suffering from the unhealthy lifestyles our government (and by extension our own lack of vigilance) essentially foisted upon them.

I don’t use the word fallout accidentally: we allowed our society to basically blow itself the fuck up with all kinds of unhealthy predilections and necessities (how many hours does the average home owner work in a week?) while simultaneously allowing it to shove cigarettes and french fries in our hungry, stressed out faces (and I write this as someone guilty of the consumption of both, at least in the past).

I’m getting (ha) long-winded, but essentially my position is: we made the mess, we have to clean it up.

In a world where we’re educated on proper nutrition, encouraged to be healthy and given the means to achieve lifelong health and well-being from cradle to grave, my feeling (care for your sick, regardless) wouldn’t change, but my argument would have to, and its defense would become much more difficult. Thankfully, we ain’t there yet (I mean that ironically: I don’t have to defend my position in that world, yet).

I think a generational cultural change would have to take place before we could really consider smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or eating junk to be squarely in the realm of personal responsibility. It’s no more our “fault” than the various neuroses and occupational ailments we suffer because of our fucked up “richest guy wins” system.

Bear in mind that I fucking hate government. I’m basically an anarcho-capitalist in the vein of Mad Max by way of the Molly Maguires. I wouldn’t want Uncle Sam to come cuddle me out of my addiction to nicotine and fried food; I’m much more likely to favor hiring a mercenary organization to torch every tobacco field and McDonald’s in the country (or, you know, doing it myself). But we’re stuck with the hand we dealt each other, and letting our sick (and our fat and our alcoholic) die, or go broke not dying, is no more just than allowing the insurance companies to grow more and more wealthy on the tide of our suffering (and don’t even get me started on those cocksuckers).

I still believe in the right to eat, drink, smoke, snort, shoot and suppository (omg I used that as a verb) any animal, vegetable, or mineral you want to, even if it’s lit dynamite. I still think society ought to care for someone who has made himself sick by sticking lit dynamite up his own ass. It’s a difficult and dichotomous position, and one that sidles right up to the logical conclusion that a responsible society punishes those whose actions impoverish that society, which is a position I disagree with in principle (cf. eat, drink, smoke, snort, shoot, stick in ass).

I don’t have a facile argument to support that position, or time enough to develop the idea further today, but for now? Health care is an inalienable right in a society wealthy enough to provide it, as far as I’m concerned, regardless of what ails you.

<obvious><cliche>Overdue for an update.</obvious></cliche>

Recently updated server software with the help of a couple of awesome shadowy men behind the scenes (as a member of the Shadowy Men Guild, it is an honor to serve alongside fellow members like them). As a result, I’m crawling out of a malaise of ennui (that’s enough French for one sentence) and I’m finally managing to reassert my dominance on that which surrounds me daily.

I’m optimistic about being able to get more done—things that are more important to me, like keeping in touch with people, updating this site more often, getting back to my writing (and maybe even my photography and general mad scientist projects, I dunno).

In the mean time, if any of the mystery people (do you guys have a guild, too?) who drop by to read this site wish they had access to more of my uplifting and inspirational writing (see the entry just preceding this one) on a regular basis, you can follow me on twitter.