“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life …
“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80 and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.…
“We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”
— Brown Chapel, AME Church, Selma, Alabama, March 8, 1965
News stories about death- and illness-by-vaping keep hitting us. But in most of these stories it is what is left out that is most alarming.
From Washington State’s King County we learn of another case of severe lung disease “associated with vaping.” But the reportage doesn’t mention how the maladies relate to vaping. “KING-TV reports there have been 15 cases of severe lung disease associated with vaping in Washington state since April 2019.…” Interesting as far as that goes, but.…
In addition to no discussion of causality, the most obvious thing not mentioned in this and similar reports? The numbers diagnosed with severe lung disease caused by smoking — which is the relevant vaping alternative.
The U.S. Government’s agency devoted to diagnosing potentially widespread pathogens and practices is, thankfully, a bit more useful. In a recently published study, scientists have narrowed down the real culprit: “Vitamin E acetate was detected in all 29 patient” samples taken from those under study.
Most had been vaping THC.
There are organizations worse than sloppy news outlets, however. In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives has passed a bill not merely to ban flavored e‑cigarettes, but also to levy 75 percent tax on all e‑liquids and vaping devices.
Typical government overkill.
But not overkill enough, for the bill doesn’t stop there. Whopping fines against those caught with unlicensed vaping products are also in the bill, as is — aaargh! — civil asset forfeiture.
The “representatives” of Massachusetts’ citizens want to take away their automobiles, boats and airplanes if they cannot prove, on the spot, their vaping products’ legality.
President Donald Trump responded to the weekend’s two shooting atrocities by decrying hatred and making five substantive proposals.
“They include tools to identify early warning signs in mass shooters, reducing the glorification of violence, reforming mental health laws, enacting ‘red flag’ laws to stop dangerous individuals from gaining access to firearms, and enacting the death penalty for mass murderers,” the Epoch Times summarizes.
But how useful are these?
The “early warning signs” of a criminal are often identical to grumpiness and even righteous indignation in others — “tools to identify” could easily serve as excuses for unwarranted meddling and worse.
Who would enforce lessening the “glorification of violence”? The federal government that is always at war?
Is it mental health laws that should be reformed, or the practice of putting whole generations of boys on Ritalin and worse … made especially ominous by the percentage of shooters on such drugs?
Denying “dangerous individuals … access to firearms” remains problematic under any semblance of due process and the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ principle.
Since “death by cop” is often one of the apparent goals of many would-be shooters, how much of a deterrent could death by sterile procedure actually be?
But if you are looking for even worse reactions, look beyond Trump. The Democrats took the occasion to raise funds.
And complain to the New York Times, which“changed a headline on its front page because it presented Trump in a neutral light,” reports independent journalist Tim Poole. “This was in response to far left activists and Democrats expressing shock and outrage and demanding everyone cancel their subscriptions to NYT over it.”
Ideological bias or old-fashioned market pressure?
If it is in tragedy that we find our greatest tests of courage and wisdom, the weekend’s shootings show a lot of political and media failure.
“If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. ”
