The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Opinion

January 19, 2012

Your View: Venting

WEBB CITY, Mo. — Is this not America, the land of the free? How can anyone who calls themselves an American endorse and support any form of discrimination?

Religious affiliation, nonprofit, or not, how dare you propose hiring policies against any person who partakes of a legal substance such as tobacco, as long as that person adheres to any, and all, workplace policies?

Within the confines of legal consumption, and/or practice, what anyone does on their personal time is absolutely no one’s business! What’s next, if I don’t de-gas my beans to your satisfaction, is that grounds for exemption from employment?

Ludicrous, yes, but no more so than testing for nicotine consumption.

If that’s acceptable, then let’s take a look at banning obese health care employees. At one time or another, we’ve all been subjected to an enormous person, huffing and puffing, and perspiring, and their flab is laying on some part of our body while tending to their duties. As a smoker with emphysema, I breathe easier, and get around better than most obese people.

I thank the “powers that be” that my time left on this earth is limited, because this nation is headed to hell in a handbasket, whatever that means. Freedom of choice is in a rapidly spiraling descent.

We have a president who’s selling us out to East Indian nations, while living high on the hog. And, next in line, this once great nation is “hell bent for leather” in becoming the “Northern United States of Mexico.”

Thank God, (oh, no, I dared to mention him) I won’t live to see some of the devastation.

I’m so Caucasian I glow in the dark, but that’s an atrocity these days. You can celebrate, and days are set aside to celebrate, being anything other than a white, heterosexual person.

So many people come here to supposedly better themselves, and/or live the American dream, then try to turn this country into what they left, and they’re “hyphenated” Americans! In my little pea brain, being American is plenty good enough.

Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if everyone relearned the meaning of “tolerance,” and truly came here for the right reasons? Aren’t we supposed to be the “melting pot,” not the “hyphenated melting pot”?

Most importantly, come here legally. If you can’t, you don’t deserve to be here! It’s disrespectful to all who did it the right way, and to those of us born here.

Julia Miller

Webb City

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