James Frank Solís: Ah, sweet land of liberty!

05 June 2006

Ah, sweet land of liberty!

5:10 PM

My parents visited over the weekend. My mother is a former mayor of the city in which she and my father live. It should come as no surprise that my mother and I talk a lot of politics and economics.

I related to her a conversation I’d had earlier in the day at a meeting. Part of the meeting was held in a local restaurant. Now, we’re all friends (i.e., those of us involved in the meeting). As we were waiting to be seated, one of my friends said to me, “It’s going to be really nice when you can come into a restaurant and there won’t be any smoking allowed.”

“Well, bud,” I said (I call all of my friends “bud”), “I prefer to see property owners retain the right to decide whether to permit legal behavior on their property.”

My mother informs me that there are those who want to extend the provision of the ban on smoking in public to include smoking outside one’s own home.

The enemies of freedom like to talk about the “necessity” for their measures. When it comes to smoking it’s all about the second hand smoke. If so, then I think we can expect the “second hand smoke stormtroopers” to work to ban outdoor grilling, use of fireplaces, and deisel engines (what gives off more, and worse, smoke than those?). After all, those activities create much more smoke than tobacco smoking.

If someone can tell you that you cannot smoke in your front or back yard, they can eventually tell you that you cannot smoke inside your house—especially if they can already tell you that you can’t allow smoking in a business establishment that you own.

Ah, sweet land of liberty!

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