Mark wrote: snip > Just boat > operators, and just (mainly) for their own protection. I promised myself that I was going to stay out of this one, I really did. I rarely get too fired up about subjects like this and usually try to let them slide by like water off a duck's back, but Mark's line about licensing people for their own protection finally jerked the wrong string. (no offense to Mark - say, what's that line from Henry VI? (Part 2 I believe...) <rant on> I don't need anybody to protect me when I'm in my kayak or in other craft (or anywhere else for that matter). I'm quite capable of that myself, thank-you. And I'm intelligent enough to know that there are certain things that I need to learn, and skills to develop, in order to protect myself. I don't want or need some nameless, faceless bureaucrat making regulations about what I need to do in order to be safe. What's the deal here? What's responsible for this attitude that responsibility for ensuring that its citizens are responsible for themselves is the duty of government - doesn't this strike you as just a bit ludicrous? Isn't responsibility what the whole issue is really about anyway? Let me toss out a little thought here - you cannot write legislation which will ensure that citizens behave in an ordered, responsible fashion. You can write legislation which makes it illegal for citizens to not comply and you can write legislation which will tax those citizens who comply with its requirements, but you cannot write legislation which will prohibit stupidity or ignorance. You can write legislation requiring education, but you cannot force people to employ that which they have been required to learn by rote in order to acquire "authority" from the state. What's the purpose of this (theoretically) proposed licensing? Along with canoeing and kayaking what else should we license? Bicycling to be certain - after all it's quite dangerous on the roads, oh, and rock-climbers should definitely be licensed - those folks have all kinds of opportunities to hurt themselves, how about skateboarders and roller-bladers - they're always ending up in hospital emergency rooms....(ad infinitum, ad absurdum) Government has a place in society, in that I'm a firm believer (check my email address if you don't believe me<grin>, but I'm also a firm believer in guarding very carefully our rights as individuals. It's a good thing this kind of licensing isn't a reality yet... <rant off> Dave Seng Juneau, Alaska (almost feeling the need for a little gratuitous law-breaking just to break free from the very idea of such stifling oppression) *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jul 27 2000 - 15:03:48 PDT
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