One ethical difficulty in exercising personal choice is that it almost always implicates a wider circle of people. Gordin's post is a good example of how a conscientious person chooses to respond to the situation upon recognizing their personal implication. And it's a matter of supposition to discuss what might have been had Gordin decided to exercise his own personal choice to ignore their ignorant behavior and let them deal with it themselves. One of the difficulties of having this sort of discussion on line is that anecdotal testimony and evidence almost always proves the exception to the rule: we can always come up with a witty, pithy, experiential narrative to show how or why our choices have merit. Still, I'm struck by the irony of the post's subject title: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death. My sense is that when you dilute this advocacy to the issue of PFD's, vs. its origins in revolutionary nationalism, then you raise an interesting and somewhat simplistic possibility: Skip prudent PFD/Immersion gear and you can have both liberty and death. Some cold comfort in that bargain. -Will *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 16:34:44 PDT
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