Prompted by “Radical Rant: Even Tobacco Smoke-Free Bars Are Ridiculous Abridgments of Freedom”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/radical-rant-even-tobacco-smoke-free-bars-are-ridiculous-abridgments-freedom
I understand the concerns about indoor smoking, but I don’t agree with them, even for tobacco. I think we’ve gone too far into trying to Nerf the world so nobody is ever threatened by anything anywhere.
The ranting traditional political leftist (as opposed to actual progressivism in the form of scientific constitutionalism) thinks coercive blanket laws (regulations — including their extreme banning form) are bad in this case.
I’m someone who grew up with parents who worked in restaurants and bars in the 1970s and 1980s. This crusade to make them all smoke-free was promoted on the idea that the poor working-class people slinging drinks, cooking and delivering food and playing songs onstage shouldn’t be subject to lung hazards while working.
I’m someone who grew up during those years, so I lived through it. What this ranter conveniently left out was customers (e.g. yours truly) having to suffer through the nastily offensive smoke (e.g. eating a meal next to a table with a smoker crassly corrupting my experience — if you’re a non-smoker who has never ate next to a smoker, trust me, it’s heinous).
But Russ, what’s the harm in making her workplace smoke-free?
Other than demonizing and ostracizing nicotine addicts, I guess nothing. And I support the smoke-free restaurants, airplanes and other public places. I just draw the line at bars serving alcohol, something more likely to immediately harm the consumer’s health and much more likely to harm others than cigarettes.
I also remember coming home from such smoke-filled bars and clubs (i.e. any bar and club) — from usually seeing a band play live there. My clothes smelled so disgusting, I couldn’t wear them during the next morning prior to showering (my shirt from two days ago smelled way better). When the ban kicked in, and I went to a show, enjoyed the smoke-free air, and came home without that antagonizing smell — it was a wonderful plus.
After the ranter expressed the standard “slippery slope” concerns over regulations reaching deep into the private domain, there’s the following…
I always thought that in America, we should be free to do things so long as they don’t harm others and even be free to do things that may harm others so long as we take reasonable precautions. The short track speedway in my old home town subjected people to plenty of noxious gases and the occasional chance of a flying piece of wrecked car debris. But we’re free to drive ridiculous cars fast around dirt circles in front of bleachers full of potential victims, because America!
Not only “should” we be free limited only by the civility of that freedom, but by any rational (including consistent) application of constitutional law, “We the people” are lawfully obligated to define liberty as only limited by the right itself (progressively not a risk-based judicial society, but a harm-based one — because our Founding Fathers understood the deadly serious risk of abusive law ironically defining risk to inevitably match those “slippery slope” concerns).
The problem is liberty is a perpetual war within humanity, but not a self-evident and unalienable right necessarily protected by the power of law (and eventually a gun) to respectably reinforce the unalienable property of that key right — the one defining responsible social flexibility against the commonly selfishly defined social rigidity (primarily oligarchy-serving — so not actual socialism or such in application) found everywhere without that right (i.e. everywhere).
Everyone forms groups (strength in numbers) and demands liberty and anti-liberty all be complexly structured to their liking (screw you, if you’re victimized by such preference, because not America in America!)
Guns being the weapon of choice in the Liberty War? Not necessarily directly, but there’s ultimately a coercive gun in your face at some point, if you honor the ‘sometimes you gotta break the rulez/regulationz’ mindset to the epitome of antagonizing/sufficiently-threatening national paternalism.
If I could wave a magic wand and make it so, we’d have tobacco licenses like we have liquor licenses. Every jurisdiction would have its own system, like liquor, but basically it would work like this: You have a club, and if you want to allow smoking, you have to get a state tobacco license. There’d only be a certain amount of them, like liquor licenses, so their value would skyrocket.
And this is where I diverge from traditional political leftism (all formed from our Supreme Court waving their magic judicial wand to illegally redefine the Commerce Clause to allow “socialist” ideology to ultimately trump constitutional protection against law abuse — i.e. disguised socialism against actual socialism).
The ranter (with dictatorial expression) has decided to take the ironically destructive regulation mindset causing the rant — and turn it into the solution.
The problem isn’t the domination against liberty by unconstitutional law for the ranter. The problem is that law isn’t molded to the ranter’s liking (the Liberty War rages on).
Instead of abusing the hell by bludgeoning constitutional law into unconstitutional law for the supposed sake of equality (that’s never actually achieved, after the “bloodied” rule-of-law causes terrible problems throughout legal precedence destructively pressing upon the masses) — which is basically the traditional leftist solution for everything (public sector dominance with no respect for legal consequences) — this is where consumer demand is ironically more socialist (yes, I do know what socialism is by intention and — when against free markets with healthy competition — its inevitably oligarchy-serving and monopolistic result).
Consumer demand (i.e. private sector “vote”) is much more powerful than a public sector vote. Private sector command is stronger than public sector command by the masses, so the people have more power when private-sector-favoring solutions are put in place (matching the intention of socialism without relying upon gross public sector power always forming an oligarchical shift rippling oppression against the pathetic power of public sector votes sharply historically often limited to choosing a highly misfitting loser to impact our lives).
Instead of coercive (and illegal) regulations, how about just supplying demand?
Why is it impossible to imagine our undeniably tough reality full of tough (not ironically obscenely sensitive) people understanding that if you want a change in a product/service, you have the choice (if not duty) to roll up your sleeves and compete with your change? At least then you’ll realize why unconstitutional regulations are so seriously dangerous against your health (and society’s health).
Why should the whole world of users (including cannabis users, and extremely busy small business users often crushed by the additional burden from waves of anti-abuse regulations to the pleasure of monopolists ironically benefiting from having the wealth to manage and influence those regulations to grow unhealthily strong) bend painfully, because a minority of folks (too often backed by lousy so-called science) want to target another minority forming the abusers?
Keep my liberty out of your incessant demand for liberty warfare, ranter. That’s not a request, but a constitutionally backed and natural demand.
You want a smoke-free place or otherwise? Make one. That’s the whole point of the American dream that’s been utterly ruined by the Liberty War (undeniably dominating nation-wide treason by any application of sound reason).
If I had a choice between a smoke-free restaurant/bar and your preference, the smoke-free one wins 100%. Smoke-free restaurants or otherwise (all wanting to promote their advantage) can simply wisely post a sign in a style fitting the restaurant’s ambiance declaring their chosen rule with respect to smoking.
Whoops, sorry. Logic. I forgot. This is America!
Your logic leaves out relevant factors, so it’s not really logical upon expressing full relevancy.
That’s America (and dominantly humanity at large).
The end result is irrationality disguised as a respectably logical stance. You (the ranter) believe the cause of your problem is the solution. How logical is that?
I only believe in grounded logic. I find the certainty anchoring any issue to reality’s extreme reach (i.e. a certainty that cannot possibly be undermined), and then I grow the logic tree from that anchor certainty. You can see this demonstrated by reading Reality Waveform Theory, Liberty Shield, or any of my informational roots.
When I write a post like this, there’s a risk of missing my own set of relevant factors, but I encourage you (dear reader) to correct me. That’s called a public discussion — at least a major part of the basis for actual socialism — and it’s how we all learn and grow together through understanding (which requires full logic, not the ‘partial truth = whole truth’ scam flooding informational sediment these days).
I intentionally left out a factor in this post. What if a business sets a rule that prohibits people of certain skin color (etc.) from conducting business there? By the logic of this post, the discriminated can make their own business to supply that demand. Of course, when our entire society upholds that obscenely baseless discrimination, the possible inability to secure funding for that business crushes its fruition. The Liberty War strikes again! That’s America (persecuting at least one minority in obvious infringement upon unalienable rights is always a part of so-called American exceptionalism).
I don’t hate my country. I want to actually live in it.
Instead, while seeing our Constitution is clearly on my side (much to the chagrin of so-called moralists and “equalists” with way more power than I have these days), I have to suffer often as collateral damage in the Liberty War driven by survival instinct disgustingly at the expense of a healthy social evolution.
My logic (actual logic) always has a fully logical foundation, so never a cloud of logic from smoke and mirrors reasoning continuously obnoxiously wafting throughout our judicial system to poison my “self-evident” and “unalienable” rights and even press the poisonous dagger deeper by the constant buildup and release of that obscene smoke into the air of liberty and beyond.
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
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