Does Freedom Stand a Chance..

..when people who should know better are willing to cash it in for a little temporary comfort?

My wife and I took our one-month-old son to breakfast this morning with my in-laws, and the topic of secondhand smoke came up when someone asked if smoke from the bar would waft into the dining area and bother my son.

For the record, I wouldn't necessarily want my baby exposed to extended or concentrated amounts of cigarette smoke, and I noticed very little in the air when we walked into the restaurant. However, my sister-in-law (whom I love dearly) asked rather nonchalantly when Maryland was "going smoke-free," indicating her preference for the state smoking ban that will take effect in February 2008.

I have a problem with the idea that "Maryland" will "go" smoke-free, given that a more accurate account would be to say that a cabal of legislators is forcing private restaurants and bars in Maryland to ban smoking lest they face extensive fines and harassment from the government, at the point of a gun if necessary. But I have a much bigger problem with perfectly intelligent people who apparently just don't care that the state has absolutely no business dictating the terms of use of private property. Indeed, no one forced me to patronize this establishment earlier today; I could have just as easily chosen to leave if I thought the atmosphere in the dining room posed any danger to my child.

Sadly, my sister-in-law even made the oh-so-common comment that she doesn't really care about the immorality of the state's smoking ban -- or any tyrannical legislation, for that matter -- so long as it doesn't impact her.

Ah.

I continue to be amazed by people who believe that empowering the government to trample "other" people's freedoms somehow exempts them from the consequences of such heavy-handedness. Indeed we are all "other people" to those who invariably will have enough clout to convince the state to seize the things we ourselves hold dear.

Comments

[Lightwing1]

I heartily agree and found your blog since I am tracking this dissolution of rights.

Here is a quote for you. Enjoy!

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busy-bodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C.S. Lewis.