Reply #26: Libraries [View All]

[Orrex]

And, with public libraries, which I support, we can still check out whatever books we like. Would you like our public libraries to censor books and only include the ones that you approve of?

If I go to the "medical books" nonfiction section of my library, I want all the books therein to contain actual medical information, rather than the feel-good nonsense penned by Andrew Weil, Deepak Chopra, and Kevin Trudeau. Put their books in the fiction section, or maybe in the "shameless, unmitigated bullshit" section.

Is it censorship to combat printed/broadcast falsehoods? I think not, just as freedom of speech doesn't protect a slanderer.

We have to collectively make decisions on things like roads and national defense. And, where does that get us? Our current administration and the Halliburtons of the world!! Is that what you want in health care? Bribes and huge companies where all of us are locked into one mold? The pharmaceutical companies would like that. If national defense is our model for health care then heaven help us!!

Oh, not to mention highways where toll roads administered by foreign companies seem to be the latest fraud that is being attempted so many places.

That's a lovely, rambling rant, but it's wholly irrelevant to our discussion. Are we, or are we not, consumers of these services? Are we consumers of national defense? Of public highways? Is the beneficiary of a trust a consumer of that trust? Or do you suggest that one's consumer/non-consumer status is predicated on the mismanagement of the service/commodity in question?

Frankly, we are not consumers of healthcare, unless you buy into the fiction that we are always-consumers-in-all-things. We are beneficiaries of the healthcare system. Were it not for the efforts of Republicans and big business, I grant you, we would be more direct beneficiaries of the system. However, the mismanagement of Halliburton does not make