Wednesday, February 02, 2005

BOORTZ ON SMOKING

This morning on CNN, Jack Cafferty was a bit exercised over reports that more and more companies are not only refusing to hire smokers, they're firing them. They're getting fired not for smoking on the job .. but for just being smokers. Bad? No ... Good!

In Michigan, Weyco, Inc. has a new policy. They won't hire smokers. They're also requiring all current employees undergo testing to see if they are currently smokers. Presumably this will be a step toward firing all smokers. Employment lawyers say this reeks of discrimination. Well, duh! Of course it's discrimination! It's discrimination against people with unhealthy lifestyles who are going to send your health insurance costs even higher. It's discrimination against people who have been shown to have poor work habits and higher absences from the job. Oh .. and it's discrimination against the stupid and ignorant ... and people who stink. Now don't you think that these are all perfectly good reasons to discriminate?

First of all, don't give me that discrimination nonsense. We all discriminate every day, and nobody thinks anything of it. The simple chore of making a decision between Mexican or Chinese food for lunch is an act of discrimination. To say that someone has "discriminating tastes" is a compliment, not a slam. Smoking isn't a race or a gender, nor is it a religious belief. It's a pathetic, sickening, stupid, self-destructive behavior. It's an act of self-hatred. Discriminate away.

Just consider health insurance. Unfortunately we have come to the point in this country where it is expected that employers will take care of most of the health care for their employees. This unfortunate situation is the primary reason health care costs are seemingly out of control in this country .. but that's another subject for another sermon from the Church of the Painful Truth. If you, as the employer, are going to be responsible for the cost of your employee's health care then you should be allowed to select employees, and get rid of employees based on any aspects of their lifestyle that would be unhealthy and, therefore, would cost you money.

Nobody would suggest that someone who hires people to drive company vehicles should not be able to discriminate against people with bad driving records. An accident could cost you money, so why not keep the accident-prone dangerous drivers off your payroll? Similarly, a smoker is going to drive up the cost of your health insurance, so why not keep that smoker off your payroll? And higher insurance premiums isn't the only cost you'll have to pay for having smokers on your payroll. Generally speaking, smokers simply aren't as productive in the workplace as are non-smokers. They take more frequent breaks (to do drugs,) and they're absent from work more often due to illness.

And ... to cap it all off ... smokers just aren't all that bright. In repeated trials smokers have scored lower on intelligence tests than non-smokers. Smoking, then, is an excellent way for you to get an immediate indication of who has common sense, and who doesn't . OK .. I know that there are exceptions, but across the board the rule holds. An employer who has a policy of simply not hiring smokers, and getting rid of employees who do smoke, is going to have a smarter, more capable workforce than will an employer who hires these pathetic drug addicts.

So there. If you're a smoker, don't direct your anger at me. I'm not your problem. YOU are your problem. You need to figure out why you hate yourself and why you're so bent on self-destruction. I don't know the answer to that question. You do. Start figuring it out.

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ANTI-AMERICANISM MASQUERADING AS "CIVIL LIBERTIES" AND "HUMANITARIANISM"

At every step in our battle to protect ourselves from jihadist terrorism these self-intoned "humanitarian" groups have done everything possible to block our efforts at protecting ourselves. Be it by railing against the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq, calling for the court-martial of our soldiers on the ground and charging them as war criminals, and setting up legal barriers to our interrogation of terrorist detainees in Guantanamo Bay, equating the present Iraqi administration with the regime of Saddam Hussein. They have been partially successful -- even frightening the Bush administration -- due to our fear of being labeled " racist" or "indifferent to international and constitutional laws". Their accusations are false and based entirely on interpretations they invent so as to stymie our anti-terrorism efforts.

These non-governmental, unelected ad hoc organizations are making it impossible for law-enforcement to uncover the murderous schemes the jihadists have planned against our citizenry. The upshot is that a handful of self-appointed "moral police" are now controlling the destiny of 300 million Americans and putting us more at risk.

One of the great themes of the Bible is to preserve life: "Therefore shall you choose life". "Choosing" Life commends to the individual and society that significant measures be taken to protect citizens. The measures used thus far by our law-enforcement and military -- even the highly publicized ones -- fall far within the standards allowed under the rubric of self-defense and protection of life. Because of our timidity and lack of understanding of concrete verities, our society has allowed itself to be brainwashed into believing that 'sensitivity" is a greater imperative than protecting life -- even our own life.

Fanaticism is defined as being so attached and involved in one point as to be blind and indifferent to other countervailing needs and concerns. When will we, the American people, put a stop to this political-correct madness that values inane, warped liberal ideology over the physical survival of ourselves and children? When will we apprehend the Leftist ethos and agenda for what it truly is: national suicide. Who are these people that we need even listen to them?

What motivates these self-important, upper-middle-class "better than thou" fanatics? It certainly is not a deeper attachment to compassion given their ruthlessly non-compassionate drive to punish as a war criminal a frightened U.S .soldier who in self-defense shot a Najaf terrorist probably playing possum. The "understanding of the mitigating circumstances" they for decades demanded for hard-core criminals and terrorists is not offered by them when dealing with embattled U.S. soldiers on the fields of hell.

It certainly is not rooted in a greater regard for international law in light of their silence regarding the Castro atrocities and those endemic to Moslem societies. Who can give credence to "legal" judgments that in the same press-release juxtaposes the non-approved antics of a few individuals at Abu Ghraib with the prolonged, deliberate wholesale torture and ethnic cleansing of 70,000 at Darfur.

By now it should be obvious that the "humanitarian" groups are driven by an inner anti-Americanism, one that dislikes its own country as now constituted. In life, we generally excuse and provide justification for that and those we love while being critical of those and that which we dislike. Being that in most circumstances -- foreign and domestic -- this crowd is always there to blame and criticize America first while defending and finding rationales for terrorist and criminals, it is obvious where their sentiments and identification lie......

The most foolish politically-correct assertion today is that if we do anything to terrorist detainees short of Club Med treatment or if we undertake procedures that CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations) calls "offensive" then "we are no better than the terrorists". To equate emotional trivialities with brutal beheadings or self-defense to ideological genocide shows how far liberal thinking has strayed from classic moral understanding. Its moral relativism is simply nouveau paganism....

If we are to survive, we must first purge ourselves from this foolish yet destructive liberal political-correctness, as it is the rope being used to hang us. The first step is to ignore these groups, especially now that we know what are their true motivations.

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