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Posted on 11/02/2001 8:38:49 AM PST by jbemis

"L.A.'S SLAVES"

BY JAMES BEMIS

Well, the totalitarians are at it again. As if our freedoms weren't already under assault by the Nanny State, the Los Angeles City Council has come up with another humdinger: banning smoking in all of the city's more than 200 public parks.

Many cities, of course, restrict smoking in public buildings, bars, and other places. But the ban proposed by LA Councilwoman Jan Perry is much broader than anywhere in the United States. Every inch of LA's parks would become "no smoking" zones with fines imposed on those who dare light up. According to Perry, "Going to a park is critical to the mental health of many residents, and they want to enjoy it without having to deal with the risks of second-hand smoke."

Right. I wonder how many people got lung cancer from being exposed to second-hand smoke in public parks. And just who will enforce this measure? LAPD is already woefully undermanned, unable to recruit sufficient candidates to replace retiring officers. The idea that the city has enough cops to bust smokers in hundreds of parks spread over the city's 466 square miles is ludicrous.

But facts aren't of interest to fanatical kooks like Perry, power is. And in America, the power to micromanage others' lives rests with government officials. Thus, those with the totalitarian impulse - mainly the left - naturally gravitate toward government service, and the more numbers under the state's thumb the better. One look at the governing bodies of America's largest cities, almost all of which are controlled by Democrats, says everything you need to know.

But the LA City Council seems hell-bent on taking the Nanny State where it's never been before.

Already, Los Angeles' citizens are among the world's most tightly regulated. By government fiat, businesses must provide carpooling incentives, drug-free workplaces, and are required to subject workers to costly anti-discrimination and sexual harassment harangues by fear-mongering lawyers, in which listeners are presumed guilty until proven innocent. Firms doing business with the city are told whom they can hire, who must be insured, and how much employees must be paid. The Municipal Code requires "Every person engaged in any trade, calling, occupation, vocation, profession or other means of livelihood" to be registered with the city.

Individuals may not smoke inside buildings, improve their homes, use leaf blowers, put up signs, or start a business without city permission. Housing rents are regulated, with the housing department determining a property owner's "reasonable return" on his investment. Freedom of thought and speech are strictly controlled by egregious "hate incident" reporting to police. In the City of Angels, the land of the free has become the land of the fettered.

Funny, but LA-LA Land's residents probably think of themselves as free, liberty-loving people. The truth, however, is very nearly the opposite. There is scarcely a more government-controlled group on earth. Even socialist states like the Soviet Union and Mexico wouldn't dare tell its citizens where they could smoke.

But election after election, voters keep returning the same petty despots to office. Like the protagonist in George Orwell's 1984, they love Big Brother.

We tend to think of tyrants as strange little men with big mustaches or imposing generals wearing fatigues. Nowadays, though, they're just as likely to wear a tie or pantsuit and drive a Volvo. History teaches that all oppressors, ancient or new, are driven by the same malignant instinct: the fantastic, unquenchable lust for power. Thus, it's not surprising elected officials try imposing their will on others. The mystery is why so many - apparently comfortable living under a soft tyranny - don't find the will to object.

Aristotle observed that most men were by nature slaves, meekly submissive to their masters. The wise old philosopher must have been thinking of Los Angeleans.

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