Commentary: The Chimes of Freedom

Back in the early 80s I was living on California’s central coast when the city of San Francisco passed one of the country’s first restrictive smoking laws. By today’s standards, the law wasn’t very restrictive at all, only requiring that large employers supply a smoke free environment for their office workers who didn’t smoke.

Even though I was a smoker, I supported this effort, figuring it only right that those who didn’t use the evil weed shouldn’t be made to breath second hand smoke. The law seemed to be fair to both smoker and nonsmoker, since it required employers to supply designated areas for employees to light-up, and also allowed smoking in areas where all of the employees smoked. I figured that maybe this meant that governments were now going to turn their attention to genuinely dangerous drugs like tobacco and leave harmless substances like marijuana alone.

About the same time, states began passing laws that required the use of seat belts. These were also laws I supported, believing the argument that the massive injuries suffered by those who didn’t buckle-up cost us all with higher auto insurance premiums. Although I supported the seat belt regulations I didn’t obey them, however, until a North Carolina state storm trooper pulled me over to ticket me for riding sans belt. Since paying that ticket, buckling-up when starting the car has become something of a Pavlov response.

My support of these laws, which were controversial at the time, came about because I’d seen evidence that the government could legislate positive changes in our society. Very few would argue that the civil rights legislation of the 60s wasn’t good for us all. Likewise, laws that spelled out the rights of women and gay people seemed to benefit everyone in our society, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, since they promoted both tolerance and diversity.

Something has happened to me, though, since September 11th, and suddenly I find myself seeing the world through the eyes of the freedom loving hippie I used to be, back in the days when Haight Ashbury was more than a historical monument. Suddenly I remember that the utopia we were trying to build was based on freedom, not on piling regulation upon regulation until you couldn’t turn around without violating some ordinance.

In this utopian state, everyone would probably wear their seat belts when driving an automobile. They would do so because it is the prudent, safe and healthy thing to do, not because some law requires it. Also in this utopian world, cigarette smoking would become a thing of the past because they are dangerous and serve no worthwhile purpose, not because the government won’t allow citizens to light-up. Healthy people don’t have a death wish, so they don’t smoke, drink alcohol to excess, drive recklessly or engage in other dangerous activities.

The trouble with trying to legislate social evolution is that it’s dangerous. Just as often as these attempts are right minded and helpful, like the seat belt laws, they are counter productive and harmful. The problem is, we do not live in a utopia and those trying to legislate one have absolutely no idea of what utopia would look like. They are bureaucrats whose only answer to a failed regulation is to add a new regulation on top of it. A smoke free environment at the workplace turns into no smoking at all in the workplace which turns into no smoking at all in bars and restaurants, which is the current situation in California. The Clinton administration was even planning to ban smoking within fifty feet of any government building.

Which brings me to another thing I now remember that I’d forgotten: both the liberals and the conservatives are enemies to the cause of freedom. Liberal Democrats want to curtail our freedoms just as much as conservative Republicans, they just want to do so in different ways because of their different agendas. The partisan arguments in Washington are about how our freedoms are to be curtailed, not about whether we shall have freedom or not.

Things were bad enough in the 60s and 70s. Since then we’ve seen the advent of mandatory drug testing at the workplace. We’ve seen laws that confiscate personal and private property just because a person is suspected of drug dealing, property that often isn’t returned even when the person is acquitted. We’ve seen the will of the people usurped by the feds when the democratic process has been used to take a sane and sensible approach to marijuana use, like legalizing it for chemotherapy and AIDS patients.

When I was a 7th grader Russia was still feeling the aftereffects of the Stalinist era. Mrs. Murray, who taught social studies at the junior high school I attended, told us that we could expect the Russians to become more like us, and that we would become more like them. Evidently, she knew what she was talking about. Soon, we’ll all probably have to carry national ID cards.

©Copyright 2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com