In a message dated 8/10/01 1:21:27 AM !!!First Boot!!!, [log in to unmask] writes:

<< 
 If, however, you mean that it would be a "paradise" if people could be 
*forced* to do these things, then I'm appalled.  My objection isn't just that 
any govt. with sufficient power to do this would abuse it (though that's 
certainly true.) >>

Exactly.  Mother Theresa lives her life like she does because it makes her 
happy to do so.  Bill Clinton lives his life the way he does because it 
obviously makes him extremely extremely happy (and since Monica is not among 
the missing, that's fine); a vice president of  GE in Boston who worships his 
beautiful mansion by the sea in Marblehead, his well dressed wife, his 
ignorant, drug addicted kids and who gives only 1% of his significant salary 
to charity (the Jimmy Fund, being an ardent Red Sox fan) is living his life 
as he sees fit.  As long as no violence is involved, everybody should be free 
to live life as he or she sees fit and to read whatever poetry he or she 
likes, whether that be Jewel, Rod McKuen, interviews with Tom Hanks . . . .

or Eliot, Stevens, Pound, Yeats, Bones Williams - we all know only too well 
that we are a minuscule minority (college professor excluded; I guess they 
live in a perpetual fantasy land of sorts)

Kate