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The arrogance of clergy - 6 Translation(s) | dotSUB
January 12th, 2010Heroes and Villains
January 10th, 2010In 2009 Americans witnessed the year of statism. 2010 is the year of religion. And what’s the difference. Both hold the same premise: sacrifice. Sacrifice to the State. Or sacrifice to a God.
“In an extraordinary breach of congressional decorum, a Republican lawmaker shouted ‘You lie’ at President Barack Obama during his speech to Congress [Jan. 21, 2009].
“‘You lie!’ Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted from his seat on the Republican side of the chamber.
“Wilson’s shout drew immediate condemnation from both sides of the aisle….”
-FOXNews
Now why would a Republican be condemned—for speaking the truth—by fellow Republicans? Could it be because it’s now the year of the great Republican lie? A kind of self-flagellation, a projection of what the Republicans have been preparing to foist on the American people when it came their turn? What is the Republican solution? Religion. What’s the difference between faith in a supernatural being, God, and the Democrats’ solution of faith in a supernatural entity, society? For “…there is no such entity as ’society,’ since society is only a number of individual men….”
-The Virtue Of Selfishness, Man’s Rights, by Ayn Rand (April, 1963). p. 92 (PB).
Auguste Comte, the founder of Positivism, the champion of science, advocated a “rational,” “scientific” social system based on the total subjugation of the individual to the collective, including a “Religion of Humanity” which substituted Society for the Gods or gods who collect the blood of sacrificial victims. It is not astonishing that Comte was the coiner of the term Altruism, which means: the placing of others above self, of their interests above one’s own.
-For The New Intellectual, by Ayn Rand (1961). p. 36 (SC).
Villains
“Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn’t they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven’t they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, self-denial? Look at the moral atmosphere of today. Everything enjoyable, from cigarettes to sex to ambition to the profit motive, is considered depraved or sinful. Just prove that a thing makes men happy—and you’ve damned it…go into the desert to mortify the flesh—don’t dance—don’t go to the movies on Sunday—don’t try to get rich—don’t smoke—don’t drink…Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men. Of course, you must dress it up. You must tell people that they’ll achieve a superior kind of happiness by giving up everything that makes them happy. You don’t have to be too clear about it. Use big vague words. ‘Universal Harmony’—’Eternal Spirit’—’Divine Purpose’—’Nirvana’—’Paradise’. It stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there’s someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master…But here you might have noticed something. I said, ‘It stands to reason.’ Do you see? Men have a weapon against you. Reason. So you must be very sure to take it away from them. Cut the props from under it. But be careful. Don’t deny outright…Don’t say reason is evil—though some have gone that far and with astonishing success. Just say that reason is limited. That there’s something above it. What? You don’t have to be too clear about it either. The field’s inexhaustible. ‘Instinct’—’Feeling’—’Revelation’—’Divine Intuition.’ If you get caught at some crucial point and somebody tells you that your doctrine doesn’t make sense…You tell him that there’s something above sense. That here he must not try to think, he must feel. He must believe.
“…you’ve heard all this…You see it being practiced all over the world. Why are you disgusted?…You’re in on it…You’re afraid to see where it’s leading. I’m not. I’ll tell you. The world of the future. A world of obedience and of unity. A world where the thought of each man will not be his own, but an attempt to guess the thought of the brain of his neighbor who’ll have no thought of his own but an attempt to guess the thought of the next neighbor who’ll have no thought—and so on…around the globe. Since all must agree with all. A world where no man will hold a desire for himself, but will direct all his efforts to satisfy the desires of his neighbor who’ll have no desires except to satisfy the desires of the next neighbor who’ll have no desires….Since all must serve all. A world in which man will not work for so innocent an incentive as money, but for…[t]he approval of his fellows—their good opinion—the opinion of men who’ll be allowed to hold no opinion…Judgment….! Not judgment, but public polls. An average drawn upon zeroes—since no individuality will be permitted…Let all live for all. Let all sacrifice and none profit. Let all suffer and none enjoy. Let progress stop. Let all stagnate. There’s equality in stagnation. All subjugated to the will of all. Universal slavery…The world of the future.
“Insane? Look around you. Pick up any newspaper and read the headlines. Isn’t it coming? Isn’t it here? Isn’t Europe swallowed already and we’re stumbling on to follow? Everything…contained in a single word—collectivism. And isn’t that the god of [2009]? To act together. To think—together. To feel—together. To unite, to agree, to obey. To obey, to serve, to sacrifice. Divide and conquer—first. But then—unite and rule…Collectivism…man has no rights,…the collective is all. The individual held as—evil, the mass—as God. No motive and no virtue permitted—except that of service…Watch the pincer movement. If you’re sick of [the 2009] version, we push you into the other. We get you coming and going. We’ve closed the doors. We’ve fixed the coin. Heads—collectivism, and tails—collectivism. Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give up your soul to a [religion]—or give it up to a leader…Offer poison as food and poison as antidote.”
-The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand (1943). p. 637-40 (SC)
It’s irritating to hear commentators suggest that Obama’s stupid, or intelligent but without wisdom, thereby dismissing the fact that he knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s going to be disgusting with religion coming at us from right and left. And when I see the likes of Glenn Beck practically falling on his knees in prayer as our last hope, it’s all rather frightening. And Brit Hume urging Tiger Woods to become a Christian. And on an on everywhere you go. It’s like a criminal finding the Lord as a possible means of getting a reduced sentence.
Heroes
“The founders of the American Republic built into its polity a fundamental tension. The nation state would have no responsibility to promote religion even though, most of the founders believed, the survival of the new nation depended in part upon its citizens’ morality, which most saw as deriving from religion. In the Northwest Ordinance, Congress proclaimed unequivocally that “Religion, Morality and knowledge” were “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” Yet in it Congress provided financial support for schools but not churches.
“The Constitution, written the same year, contained no appeal to God for sanction or guidance, not even to the vague “Nature’s God” or “Creator” of the Declaration of Independence. It did include “in the Year of our Lord” in the date and prohibited counting Sunday in the ten days allowed the president to veto a bill, but neither provision undermined the inescapable conclusion that the writers of the Constitution purposefully left God out, that they intended to create a secular national government, one with no responsibility for religion or morality. The Constitution left both religion and morality to the states. The First Amendment, with its troubling tension between a ban on establishing religion and “prohibiting” its “free exercise” (a confusion that has kept courts occupied into a third century) did nothing to undermine the secular nature of the new federal government. Rather, the Bill of Rights, of which it was a part, affirmed and codified the Revolution’s emphasis on individual liberty. The First Amendment did not apply to the states, of course. Most provided some acknowledgment of God’s guidance in their constitutions, and in all, regulating public morality remained…a “crucial obligation.” Even the states, though, disestablished religion. Starting in Virginia in 1785 and ending in Massachusetts in 1833, all of the states that had once had established churches separated church and state.”
-Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865-1920, by Gaines M. Foster (2002). p. 10
“The post office had transported mail on Sunday since the beginning of the Republic, but in 1810, Congress passed a law requiring postmasters to open their offices every day on which mail arrived and to deliver any item requested by a patron on any day of the week. Even though the postmaster general interpreted the law to minimize the time post offices would be open and to avoid conflicts with worship services, ministers and churches protested the new law.”
Ibid., p. 9
By 1815 over a hundred petitions, from churches in virtually every state, had been filed with Congress urging the repeal of the 1810 law.
-The Godless Constitution, The Case Against Religious Correctness, by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore (1996). p. 133 (HB).
However, [t]he legislatures of three states filed petitions with Congress in 1830 opposing repeal of the 1810 law. Indiana’s included a ringing endorsement of the godless Constitution. Passing laws “to regulate or enforce the observance of religious duties” infringed on the freedom of religion. “Any legislative interference in matters of religion” constituted “a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.” The Indiana petition sternly concluded, in words as meaningful today as in 1830, “There are no doctrines or observances inculcated by the Christian religion which require the arm of civil power either to enforce or sustain them: we consider every connection between church and state at all times dangerous to civil and religious liberty.”
Ibid., p. 137-8.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear,” On the frieze below the dome of the Jefferson Memorial is a metaphorical quote by Jefferson: “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” This is above all a reverence for America as the sublime man-made creation it is.
Civil War
December 10th, 2009I have three relatives who voted the America-hating, America-destroying bastard in. At least one of them donated over $200.00 to his campaign. Two do not speak to me. These two have brilliant minds, so they have to know it is the enemy they were helping to infiltrate into my America. The other one is plain stupid. This one gave me a lecture on why I’m wrong. It stood there spewing out every platitude ever uttered by any slimy leftist. My response to that was, “Did you say something? I didn’t hear it.” It gets information from the films of Michael Moore and who knows what modern rap “music” and other junk. I count these relatives as evil people – enemies whom I cannot relate to. Because:
“Today, we live in the Age of Envy.
‘”Envy” is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify….
“Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semihuman cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves . . . . That emotion is: hatred of the good for being the good.”
–Ayn Rand, “The Age of Envy”, Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, 152.
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Where did this evil originate? How does it manifest itself? These answers can be found in an article “Villainy: An Analysis of the Nature of Evil” by Andrew Bernstein.
The following are some passages from this rather long important article. He says there are three variations on it, all contributing but only one the source of the evil in today’s world. The other two share many components, but are simply derivatives. They are the common criminals, the religionists and the collectivists.
Bernstein writes:
But where does this view originate? How did truth become a matter of what the group believes? What about an individual discovering reality as it is and on his own, regardless of the group he belongs to? How did truth become social?
The answer lies in the theories of the German philosopher who dominated the thinking of the nineteenth century in general and of Karl Marx in particular. That philosopher is G.W.F. Hegel.
Hegel applies [Immanuel Kant's] social primacy of consciousness view to politics. If the collective creates the world, Hegel argues, then it is logical to conclude that the collective must be the source of right and wrong and that it must be all-powerful regarding social issues. The group as a whole, and its emissary, the state, gives orders and the individual obeys. This is the birth of state-worship in modern Western culture.
This is the essence of Kant. This represents an all-out attack on the mind and on man. What logically follows, and what historically does follow, is a culture of destruction; an orgy of hatred, a full-scale war on every requirement of man’s survival. Kant and his heirs attack the mind, the root cause of all human values. His contemporary followers necessarily attack every consequence of that cause. The statists attack freedom; the socialists attack the profit motive; the ethnicity-worshippers and racists attack individualism; the multiculturalists attack Western Civilization; the modern artists attack objectivity; the feminists attack masculinity; the environmentalists attack science, technology, progress and prosperity.
The modern collectivists are nihilists. Nazis and Communists slaughter millions and lay waste to continents. Their purpose is neither to steal money nor to exalt God. Their purpose is to destroy the mind and to rain destruction. In The Ominous Parallels, Leonard Peikoff gives an eloquent description of the modernist mentality:
The term that captures twentieth-century culture – the term that names the modern soul is: nihilism.
“Nihilism” in this context means hatred, the hatred of values and of their root, reason. Hatred is not the same as disapproval, contempt or anger. Hatred is loathing combined with fear, and with the desire to lash out at the hated object, to wound, to disfigure, to destroy it.
The essence and impelling premise of the nihilist-modern is the quest for destruction, the destruction of all values, of values as such, and of the mind. It is a destruction he seeks for the sake of destruction, not as a means, but as an end.
The essence of the struggle between good and evil is summed up in Hank Rearden’s words from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged:
He was seeing the enormity of the smallness of the enemy who was destroying the world.
Little Men
Robert Tracy
Watercolor
11½ x 14¼”
1991
Collection: National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Chicago.
“Little Men” was slang for Vietcong or North Vietnamese Soldiers.
He felt as if, after a journey of years through a landscape of devastation, past the ruins of great factories, the wrecks of powerful engines, the bodies of invincible men, he had come upon the despoiler, expecting to find a giant – and had a rat eager to scurry for cover at the first sound of a human step. If this is what has beaten us, he thought, the guilt is ours.
This is the deepest reason why the modernists are, without exception, collectivists in their politics – because these are the politics of enslaving and destroying the good.
Villainy: An Analysis of the Nature of Evil
By Andrew Bernstein
Be sure to read Bernstein’s last paragraph first, because his article is non-fiction. Then read the article and see if he’s made his case.
Submission
November 7th, 2009We’re living economically in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged“. Her “The Virtue of Selfishness” needs to be read too.
But the one book I’d recommend as most pertinent in today’s world is Rand’s “Anthem“.
She writes:
“Perhaps, in those days, there were a few among men, a few of clear sight and clean soul, who refused to surrender….What agony must have been theirs before that which they saw coming and could not stop! Perhaps they cried out in protest and in warning. But men paid no heed to their warning. And they, these few, fought a hopeless battle, and they perished with their banners smeared with their own blood. And they chose to perish, for they knew.”
The Connection: Sacrifice is Sacrifice
October 16th, 2009Glenn Beck does not see the connections among Anita Dunn, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa.
Anita Dunn is the interim White House Communications Director.
From the October 15 edition of Fox News’ Glenn Beck:
DUNN [video clip]: Two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa — not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most.
BECK: Mao Zedong, one of the worst murderers in mankind’s history, probably the worst.
BECK: Two people — I can understand Mother Teresa.
What does that mean, Mr. Beck? “I can understand Mother Teresa.”
“I think it’s a travisty that she used Mother Theresa and Chairman Mao in the same tone.”
–quote from a comment on MEDIAMATTERS forum.
I have to believe this is what Beck means. One can only presume that Beck approves of Mother Teresa. Let us explore this raisin-faced saint.
Does a Mother Teresa have any redeeming values?
NP: No. Mother Teresa was a distributor of the wealth of others–she didn’t create anything and she damned the very people who’s wealth she distributed. Most of the support for her mission came from well-heeled donors in America, a country she condemned as being ‘morally *impoverished’* because of its great wealth. Now realize, Mother Teresa was condemning the very source of the wealth she relied upon to fund her mission. Why? Because Mother Teresa had no respect for people who are mere producers and even less for those who made their own lives their standard of value. According to her, these individualists are the very people who are the ‘most poor’ and the ones most in need of abandoning whatever selfish activity they are engaged in so they can “give until it hurts”.
Politically, such a view of ultimately must lead to some form of statism, be it communism, socialism or some sort of “third way”…”.
(emphasis mine)
From personal email correspondence:
The writer: “He’s religious, but his faith is very compartmentalized, and I haven’t heard him talk about abortion, although I know he must be “pro-life” (if ever there was a misnomer). I do strongly disagree with him on immigration (he wants to build a fence, and says illegal immigrants are stealing “American jobs”). However, I enjoy listening to him on just about everything else, and he uses humor to ridicule our enemies at a time when humor is so needed. His motto, which he paraphrased from Jefferson is, “Question with boldness. Speak without fear”, and he does so in the face of enormous opposition from both the rest of the media and the government. I understand that many others in Objectivism do not share my opinion of him, but I have great respect for what he’s doing and I think he’s about as good as the culture will get as a prominent popular voice until it becomes more rational.”
My answer: “Glenn Beck is courageous and a hero. For that I love the man. Early I heard him state the full Jefferson quote including “…even the existence of God.” I don’t recall him repudiating that part and was shocked that he quoted it. His current three quotes including the Washington is just what America needs for a great start. A “popular voice”? Precisely what Objectivism needs. What a feat that would be! Popularize Objectivist morality at the least. I understand that ethics cannot be isolated from the totality of the philosophy. So it looks like a pipe dream.
“To clarify my bringing in my combat experience. It comes down to this: fear mounts before the mission begins and escalates once on the ground. When hit (in my unit, Reconnaissance, we were never to initiate a battle, so it was always an ambush by the enemy) our training (in today’s battle–Objectivist philosophy as best as each of us grasps it) kicked in. Fear turned to courage and honor for our brother warriors. Mentally and physiologically I’ve never been so alive! If Yaron Brook was in battle while serving in the IDF he knows. I have Objectivist friends who were in Vietnam, but never in combat. Yet they too know.
Read or re-read “Just War Theory” vs. American Self-Defense
The Artist as Vietnam Veteran
Robert Tracy
Oils on canvas
20 x 16″
1991
Collection, National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum, Chicago
“The two major parts of the American Revolution involved the power of philosophy and military force. We are involved in a second American Revolution brought to us in large part and most immediately by the bastard in the White House. The mostly silent, or rather unheard outside of Objectivists, is the power of Objectivist philosophy. If there is a single Objectivist in the military today who can expose this “Just War Theory” and silently prepare for a mutiny against the bastard when the time is right, the military could be the vehicle that brings Objectivist philosophy to America. Another pipe-dream. A fantasy. Maybe. I remember hearing that Ronald Reagan had no chance of winning election. I was reading at the time Alan Drury’s “Advise and Consent” and gave my wife a prediction that Reagan would win by a landslide which of course did happen.
“Sounds like a novel, a thriller. We’ll see….”
Have You Lost Your Marbles?
September 26th, 2009A very old friend of mine, a fundamentalist Christian who seems fiercely opposed to Obama, said this to me:
“I see selfishness and greed as something so very ugly. I have seen a lot of it in my day and I must say I do hate it.”
I replied:
“Have you not heard our communist/fascist/socialist/racist VERMIN festering in that cesspool of the nation, that axis of evil, the White House? Have you not heard him agree with you? And you with him? Look at this: Obama: Redistribution Must Replace “Era Of Selfishness & Greed”
“As I said, I won’t argue. My mission is to expose. To expose the evil of the bastard’s ideas. And to try with my dying breath to show those who don’t know that they hold the same fundamental philosophy, be it religion or Communism, that they do!”
I offered a quote by Ayn Rand, “The Anatomy of Compromise” in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, p.145 (SC):
“In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins.”
I’ve found that one cannot reach even an intelligent person when she “hold[s] the same basic principles” as her professed enemy. I feel like yelling, as Bogart did in The African Queen: “Well I ain’t sorry for you no more, ya crazy, psalm-singing, skinny old maid!” (Except she’s not an old maid. She’s a mother and grandmother.)
However, I shall try with two more quotes from Ayn Rand, in what I suspect is an exercise in futility, to try to reach a single active mind out there in the blogosphere. Anyone who might be persuaded to stop unknowingly collaborating with the enemy.
Have You Lost Your Marbles?
Robert Tracy
Oils on canvas
10 x 8″
1985
“I saw the labor unions who won every claim against me, by reason of my ability to make their livelihood possible-I saw that any man’s desire for money he could not earn was regarded as a righteous wish, but if he earned it, it was damned as greed….”
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, p.766 (HC)
The meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word “selfishness” is not merely wrong: it represents a devastating intellectual “package-deal,” which is responsible, more than any other single factor, for the arrested moral development of mankind.
In popular usage, the word “selfishness” is a synonym of evil; the image it conjures is of a murderous brute who tramples over piles of corpses to achieve his own ends, who cares for no living being and pursues nothing but the gratification of the mindless whims of any immediate moment.
Yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word “selfishness” is: concern with one’s own interests.
Ayn Rand, “Introduction,” The Virtue of Selfishness, vii.
Don’t Let It Go
September 14th, 2009Indianapolis Star
Schools cut back time to teach handwriting
August 29, 2009
Brownsburg — Third-graders can expect a scaled-down cursive lesson this year, leaving more time to hone their keyboarding skills.
A letter distributed to parents this week said some of the instructional time previously dedicated to cursive writing will be used to teach computer keyboarding.
“It is clear to us that cursive is becoming more obsolete,” said Donna Petraits, the district’s director of communications. “We are hearing equal amounts of praise and criticism on this decision, which we fully expected.”
The district will not completely cut cursive out of the curriculum. They plan to curb it back, teaching students only how to write their name and how to read it.
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In grade school, there were two subjects this writer received grades of A in. And only two: Penmanship and Art. I believe it was in second grade that we learned to write in Cursive. It was faster than first-grade Print writing, and overwhelmingly lovelier. [As an aside: as a Sophomore in Catholic high school I was the only boy in Typing class. I miss that Remington Rand typewriter with it's resistance against pressing the keys and the loud clicking sound. By the way by the end of the course, I was the fastest typist in class at 80 words per minute. Today's computer keyboard is too quiet along with so weak a pressure against the fingers, I find myself down to maybe 40 WPA.]
Below is an example of my own penmanship, written some 25 years ago when I was around 35 years old. At that time I did not even own a typewriter, so anything I wrote had to be written the way I still write today — in Cursive. My print writing is, although excellent in first grade, now difficult for me the few times I’m made to write that way on a form, etc.
I truly hate to see Cursive writing go the way of the “dead language”, Latin.
From America: to “The American”
September 6th, 2009A week after the 9/11 attacks, a young Muslim at the University of South Alabama told the school’s newspaper it was “difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.”
Now, eight years later, he is professing to launch attacks himself and calling on others to join the fight, as terror-related charges await him at home in Alabama….
Abu Mansour al-Amriki — or “The American” — has become one of the most recognizable and outspoken voices of terrorist propaganda.
He has been in war-torn Somalia for several years, fighting the secular government there with a group known as al-Shabaab, which has ties to Al Qaeda and was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government last year. Only recently has he taken on a starring — and jarring — role in al-Shabaab’s outreach efforts.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into him for several years. In fact, a grand jury in Mobile, Ala., has already indicted him on charges of providing material support to terrorists….
Full story HERE.
American soldiers and Marines have a tradition of painting on their artillery shell canisters and aircraft bombs the name of the target for their strike.
Here’s one for the so-called “The American”.
Photoshop
I scanned a 7.62 mm cartridge.
Scanned a photo of the American flag.
Used the Displace filter to “wrap” the flag around the cartridge.
Found a photo of “The American”, cut this treasonable bastard out of his background, and put him on a new layer.
I placed the round squarely between his eyes. And added the text on a new layer.
Just a Thought
September 1st, 2009Is it true what various far Left people and other crazies claim: that it was President Bush, and America itself who brought terrorism to the U.S.?
No!
But there is looking to be some merit to that idea now. I’m referring to the current America-hating resident of the White House, and his supporters.
Obama’s Vision
Robert Tracy
Pastels
11¾ x 9″
2009
“Die Of Poverty As Well?”
August 21st, 2009DIY cigarettes? Some smokers start growing tobacco
By STEVE SZKOTAK (AP)
RICHMOND, Va. — Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars’ vegetable garden — the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants.
Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he’s among a growing number of smokers who have turned to their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew. Byars normally pays $5 for a five-pack of cigars and $3 for a tin of snuff; the seed cost him $9.
“I want to get to where I don’t have to go to the store and buy tobacco, but I’ll just be able to supply my own from one year to the next,” Byars said.
“Cigarette smokers say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to die of cancer, but do we have to die of poverty as well?’ said Jack Basharan, who operates The Tobacco Seed Co. Ltd. in Essex, England. Virtually all of his increased tobacco seed sales have been in the U.S., he said.
Myself in Vietnam. May, 1968.
Probably repeating myself, but I do enjoy a cigarette. As many as 5 to 9 a day. On a stressful day up to 12. So far the docs see no damage from the choice of this pleasure. I did quit from 1969 to 1988. And again for two years in the 1990’s.
Full story HERE.
