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Passing thoughts on the random scene.

Bless Fred Coyle for wanting to show up at Thursday’s Chamber of Commerce candidate forum.

The incumbent Collier County commissioner has no opponent in the upcoming election and is the winner by default. “Obviously, the best campaign I’ve ever run,” he quipped at the outset of the event.

But his participation may have had an effect on the race between Commissioner Frank Halas and attorney Joe Foster, who is challenging him for the District 2 seat.

Coyle’s presence, coupled with a format that had each candidate offering in turn a one-minute answer to a question from a panelist, had the following result: A question about county affairs would be posed. Both Halas and Coyle would defend the county’s action on the matter and Foster would argue that the county should do a better job.

It was as if the incumbents were ganging up on the challenger.

Of course, Foster’s failure to provide specifics as to exactly what the county should do better didn’t help his cause. The ideas he offered Thursday — plan for growth, bring all the parties together to address problems, diversify the economy, aren’t new.

As the campaign builds toward a climax, Foster, free from the constraints of the one-minute answer, will have to do a better job of explaining what sets him apart from Halas.

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I used to think the prolific Daily News letters contributor Eddie Filer was a harmless hermit advocating a bucolic, if unrealistic for most, lifestyle.

His July 28 contribution to the letters column forces me to reconsider. He writes in part: “If you bring children into this insane, cruel world, you are selfish ... Abortion is an act of kindness to the unborn. If it were possible to ask the unborn whether they want to be born and were given a preview of what their lives would be like, I’m sure most of them would say, ‘No thanks’ ... This world is bursting at the seams because of too many people.”

So Filer advocates abortion to spare the unborn the horrors of life and to ease overcrowding. It isn’t possible to ask the unborn if they want to live nor is it possible to foresee what their lives will hold. But it is possible to know what one’s own life is and to make the choice to continue with it. Curiously, Filer chooses to go on living, soldiering through the hell that life by his definition is and burdening the planet with one more mouth to feed.

There’s another hermit, hiding in Afghanistan, who encourages others to forsake their own lives while he tenaciously clings to his.

- - -

You’ll forgive Israelis if they lack faith in the United Nations. The U.N. force in southern Lebanon, much publicized since four of its members were killed by stray fire last week, is called UNIFIL. That stands for United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.

It has been in place since 1978. It currently consists of more than 2,000 people, including troops from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy, Poland and Ukraine. It costs $100 million a year to maintain.

Its mission, according to the U.N. Web site, is “to confirm Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, restore the international peace and security and help the Lebanese Government restore its effective authority in the area.”

Great job, guys.

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E-mail Brent Batten at bebatten@naplesnews.com.