The Looming War Over Property Rights Versus Personal Comfort
As expected, the state of Minnesota is poised to be the latest to enact a full-frontal assault on property rights by banning smoking in so-called "public areas", which actually refers to privately owned restaurants, bars, and bowling alleys. The idea of a Big Brother-imposed smoking ban in privately owned bars is so wrong at so many different levels that I could spend the entire evening dissecting its foolishness, so I'll focus on the one issue where the law portends an Orwellian future, where private property rights are tossed to the wind in the interest of serving every individual's perceived entitlement to comfort on demand.
Whatever the high-minded rhetoric regarding smoking bans in restaurants and bars may be, the bottom line is that the motivation driving them is the very loud grumbles of a small group of prima donnas who believe that it's government's jurisdiction to clear a path of fresh air to accommodate their every footstep....even on OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY. The clever talking point of smoking ban proponents is to frame the issue as "workers' rights" by suggesting that employment in a smoky bar puts the bar employee's health directly at risk. The absurdity of this premise is that a bar/tavern employee loses his or her life every day in America as a result of the violence instigated by patrons who consume the very product that keep bars in business....alcohol. If we are truly going to ban the consumption of a legal product in a bar in the interest of workplace safety, certainly we have to ban alcohol in bars along with cigarettes, right?
And there's the rub. As ridiculous as that may seem, the anti-alcohol special interest groups watching Big Anti-Tobacco successfully snuff out cigarettes in bars and restaurants are gonna see these victories as their opening to further microregulate legal activities on private property to achieve their agenda. It will also be cleverly framed within the context of either "workers rights" or "your rights end where mine begin."
That latter context is ultimately the scariest, because these smoking bans give every petulant prima donna in America license to use government as their personal lifestyle enforcer. If enough people complain about their "allergies to the poisons in perfume or cologne", you can be sure power-hungry state legislatures across the country with far too little to do will lobby for perfume prohibitions outside of private homes. And how about my right to listen to the radio in my house at a modest volume? Does my right completely end where my neighbor's begins should he decide to thrust the bootheel of the state on me?
The extent to which anti-smoking whiners have moved the goalposts on acceptable venues to criminalize tobacco consumption (they are now moving to outlaw smoking at beaches, outdoor parks, and apartment buildings, where "workers rights" issues cannot even be used a convenient distraction) suggests that other special interests will use any excuse to move the goalposts further for their own agenda. The term "slippery slope" is often overused, but it's no exaggeration to suggest that America has a full-blown property rights crisis looming as an inevitable consequence of nanny-state creep, where nobody's personal property is exempt from the latest whim of those crying foul from the edge of the property line.
There are no end of special interest groups out there (often in the insurance trade) just salivating at the prospect of legislating your rights away, usually as a means of health-and-wellness purity. The anti-smoking lobby may be the most ruthless and most obnoxious special interest group, as trendsetters usually are for better or for worse (in this case worse), but I am positive others will follow. That's why even as a lifelong nonsmoker with no personal interest in this cause, I weep for my home state as I watch it pander to the insufferable forces attempting to sacrifice liberty for security. It scares me to death to ponder how far our elected leaders plan to let this trend go before someone tells the property rights invaders to suck it up rather than trying to legislate other people's freedoms out of existence.
Whatever the high-minded rhetoric regarding smoking bans in restaurants and bars may be, the bottom line is that the motivation driving them is the very loud grumbles of a small group of prima donnas who believe that it's government's jurisdiction to clear a path of fresh air to accommodate their every footstep....even on OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY. The clever talking point of smoking ban proponents is to frame the issue as "workers' rights" by suggesting that employment in a smoky bar puts the bar employee's health directly at risk. The absurdity of this premise is that a bar/tavern employee loses his or her life every day in America as a result of the violence instigated by patrons who consume the very product that keep bars in business....alcohol. If we are truly going to ban the consumption of a legal product in a bar in the interest of workplace safety, certainly we have to ban alcohol in bars along with cigarettes, right?
And there's the rub. As ridiculous as that may seem, the anti-alcohol special interest groups watching Big Anti-Tobacco successfully snuff out cigarettes in bars and restaurants are gonna see these victories as their opening to further microregulate legal activities on private property to achieve their agenda. It will also be cleverly framed within the context of either "workers rights" or "your rights end where mine begin."
That latter context is ultimately the scariest, because these smoking bans give every petulant prima donna in America license to use government as their personal lifestyle enforcer. If enough people complain about their "allergies to the poisons in perfume or cologne", you can be sure power-hungry state legislatures across the country with far too little to do will lobby for perfume prohibitions outside of private homes. And how about my right to listen to the radio in my house at a modest volume? Does my right completely end where my neighbor's begins should he decide to thrust the bootheel of the state on me?
The extent to which anti-smoking whiners have moved the goalposts on acceptable venues to criminalize tobacco consumption (they are now moving to outlaw smoking at beaches, outdoor parks, and apartment buildings, where "workers rights" issues cannot even be used a convenient distraction) suggests that other special interests will use any excuse to move the goalposts further for their own agenda. The term "slippery slope" is often overused, but it's no exaggeration to suggest that America has a full-blown property rights crisis looming as an inevitable consequence of nanny-state creep, where nobody's personal property is exempt from the latest whim of those crying foul from the edge of the property line.
There are no end of special interest groups out there (often in the insurance trade) just salivating at the prospect of legislating your rights away, usually as a means of health-and-wellness purity. The anti-smoking lobby may be the most ruthless and most obnoxious special interest group, as trendsetters usually are for better or for worse (in this case worse), but I am positive others will follow. That's why even as a lifelong nonsmoker with no personal interest in this cause, I weep for my home state as I watch it pander to the insufferable forces attempting to sacrifice liberty for security. It scares me to death to ponder how far our elected leaders plan to let this trend go before someone tells the property rights invaders to suck it up rather than trying to legislate other people's freedoms out of existence.
posted by Mark at 5:40 PM
2 Comments:
Here in the Lone Star State, you can be arrested for being drunk in a bar! Words can't describe just how appalled I am. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of going to a bar in the first place?
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1799505
sara, I heard something about that in Texas. And while most people may find it crazy now, give it another 5-10 years, a tireless wave of special interest-funded propaganda, and a political class dedicated to advance every whim of the nanny state, and the premise of criminalizing drunkenness at a bar is likely to be as widely accepted by a brainwashed public as criminalizing smoking in bars in today. There's no telling how far the indifferent drones that are modern-day Americans will allow this insanity to go in regards to the theft of personal freedoms and private property rights, but I suspect we've just seen the tip of the iceberg.
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