IF THEY WEREN'T SERIOUS, THIS WOULD BE HYSTERICAL

The movement to get the Dallas City Council to pass a city ordinance to make ALL establishments 100% smoke free is gaining momentum. They advocate preventing a bar or restaurant owner to make his or her own decision about giving a choice to the customer. They advocate putting into LAW that you can't... CAN NOT... smoke anywhere in the City of Dallas. "Well, how about the cigar bar in Del Frisco's after a big steak dinner?"

Nope. In fact if they get this passed, they might come back and try to get a law passed that we can't eat a big steak dinner because they found a study that suggests that the side-effects of other people enjoying a steak is bad for "the children".

In fact, there is no stopping a group of people organizing, coming up with their own "research", and lobbying to take our rights away because they don't like what others do.

I know that sounds ridiculous and that is why no normal citizen, who enjoys the rights that people before us fought and died for, ever thinks that anything as absurd as a law to take away any of those rights could be even considered as serious. That is where we have been wrong... dead wrong. It seems that advocates share a certain trait with politicians: they both feel the need to get "involved" with the issue of guiding our citizenry. In the meantime, our citizenry is comfortable knowing that our Constitution is protecting us so we can go about our daily lives working and enjoying life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There is a group in Dallas that is working hard to "ban" smoking in any establishment in the city limits.

They contend a restaurant owner has no business making a decision about his or her own policies. They think that the local government should decide what type of customers they should try to attract. This group has even stooped to the over-done, we-should-do-it-for-the-children-and-if-you-disagree-with-that-you-hate-children tactic.

They wonder why when they are with their "children" (because after all, they are pro-family... aren't you?) and someone in a restaurant lights up, the government isn't there to protect the health of their family. They wonder why they are expected to make a decision not to go to that restaurant instead of making everyone around them change so they don't have to.

To find the wisdom in our system, it is often necessary to read what our leaders said a long time ago. It was Abraham Lincoln that had words for this situation:

Let me be clear. I do not smoke cigarettes. They are nasty and dangerous. There are probably many chemicals and poisons that are let out into the air by smoking. But I reserve the right to smoke one day, if I want to. I won't smoke at your church, school, or in your government building. If you don't allow it in your home, I will totally respect that. I won't smoke in your car, or even near you when I can... I am not rude. However, when I choose a restaurant that wants me as a customer so much as to have a section for me, and you want to go there too (because the food and service are great), we have both made a decision based on personal freedom. Since you have made that choice, why is it my fault that you aren't comfortable? Why do you insist that city government get involved to make sure your dining experience is more pleasant? If you walk by a club and the rap music from inside is so loud that it seems offensive, will you go inside? No, of course not, and you wouldn't run to the city council wanting a law against rap music.

I am not even going to start in on the junk science and so-called "surveys" presented as "irrefutable fact" by this poster group for political correctness. I will give you the link to the web site. Twenty years ago this web site would have made a great satirical magazine. It would have shown, in a ironic way, how fanatics try to push their agenda using any scare tactic they can. Sadly, this is not satire. It is a group that will not be content until others behave the way they think they should. It is time for common sense to replace political correctness.

Rather than parse your sentences, I'll offer my thoughts on your paragraphs as they are hung together as you are sincerly trying to make your points. If I disagree, even profoundly, the knowledge that you are my countryman, engaged in discourse about those things that matter makes fully strung together points something to be met with full regard.

Small and locally do have sensible definitions. Only obfuscation or nominalism will make those meanings vanish and the best then be undiscoverable. We are conditioned by our modern liberal education to ignore meaning and to make all things equal and open to individual judgement. Such a virtueless look at the world is a curse of modernity.

You stress "representative democracy" and for me that is a key in where we differ. It, again, is a lie sold to us as modernity substituting for history. The founders never used the word "democracy" in our constitution and the ommission was entirely intentional and providential.

Deliberative Representation is what we have in the bulk of the offices that serve use under our State and Federal Governments. Read Burke's Speech to the Electors at Bristol for a clear understanding of that convention as I mean it. We do not have Pliebisitory Delegates and we darn sure were never meant to have a "democracy". Our Deliberative Representatives were chosen by diverse means, some of which were elective and therefore democratic in process as a broad part of it was participatory. This holds true for appointed roles as well, because the appointor is often elected.

Democracy, especially egalitarian, implies that my desires of the moment are to somehow make their way into the process and there was nothing further from the founders' intent. But, why was that?

It was to keep the tyranny of the majority in check. Sure Numbers matters and deciedes things. But only those Numbers and by those processes framed in the diverse process of our constitutions. Thereby the Majority is kept from (1) violating by whim of the moment, (2) intemperence, (3) the will of demogogues, (4)violating prescriptive principle honored from time immemorial (as opposed to abstract rights), and (5)never being given the ability to announce any One decision, of merely 51%, as the ultimate public will.

While conservatives often believe in an Enduring Moral Order, an Order for the Soul and an Order for the State, Government itself is a narrow tool often negative that is not the perfect vessel for all that Order. Culture and social society itself must carry the bulk of that Order; not the negative and blunt tool of government.

The framework of which you speak is actually meant to be an absence of most authority, not the counterpoint between an all encompassing Process or Authority (or Anarchic lack thereof).

In your second paragraph, you again put Democracy in a primacy where it doesn't belong. But even more, you make the same mistake of utilitarian primacy that Sowell criticizes modern liberals and libertarians for in establishing the greatest good, or abstract rights, as a judge or value to measure by.

In a battle on abstract rights the right of the one always gives way to the rights of the many. Speech or something similar, always trumps property says Sowell ( See A Conflict of Visions). We weren't given a governmental structure to lay on that much control over us.

In your third paragraph, I agree the the citizen must submit to just and proper authority. But he also must resist and fight improper authority of the acquisitive nature of those in authority will overturn his society. So if I agree that Judges Interpret as well as Adjudicate, I will always make that resistance when they Legislate rather than Interpret. So you see that we are once again back to the plain meaning of Words.

When we confuse the Animating Principles of our Revolution with the Constitution, when we get filled with the metaphysical nonsense of what Hayek calls Rationalist Totalitarian Democracy, why then our land is no longer the land of liberty.

And besides, a valued customer and I, discussing a book in my own future book store, can't each smoke our pipes fired with virgina and burley. My countryman, if you wish to give community its proper due, go no further than Nisbet.

I have enjoyed reading your posts throughout this thread, but I must bring forward the issue of selective enforcement of laws which the liberals in conservative clothing are advocating.

I find it very disturbing the recent action of the NJSC. It is reflective of this discussion as it is a selective interpretation of statutes, which are enforced only the political whim of the party in power. This random application of our nation's laws, along with creative interpretation will be the failing of our Republic. When the Legislative branch creates laws which oppress some individuals or laws which are designed to profit another group (i.e., healthnazis, trial lawyers), then what has been endorsed is a slow dismemberment of our Constitution. It is my belief that by clogging the courts with these lawsuits, while creating oppressive regulation on laissez-faire capitalism, that our Republic could cease to function in less than 50 years.

Unless self-responsibility becomes the precedent again of our legislative structure, we are doomed.

I posted on the same subject to Templar yesterday a comment that applies just as well here:

The Rule of Law as understood by the Old Whig tradition that founded this nation was something seperate from just the legal process. It contained the freedom from arbitrary power and equality under law, a blind justice.
Law applied in the manner of activist judges leads to arbirary application of punishment. The lowly, under the eyes of courts or society, get the heavy punishment and the alleged worthy do not.
Society then reacts with harsher laws through representative legislative power as they see the rule of law unevenly applied. Activist judges then further pervert the process by applying more, and more, arbitrary justice as they see it rather than adjudicating an offense under the law and established precedent.

Well, it is late and I have to mow the lawn in the morning...nite all.

OF COURSE emphysema is CAUSED by first hand smoke, glad to know you are aware of that, but it is aggravated by 2nd hand smoke.

You obviously don't understand allergies & the part they play in asthma. A person is born with the tendancy to become allergic to the things that they encounter in their life. Nothing much you can do about that, its your genes. As the person encounters allergens the allergic reactions will *develop*. In the cases of my brother & me, it was cigarette smoke. Our father came back from WW2 a smoker & my mother soon joined him. My brother & I soon were both asthmatic children that lasted until we left home. Now neither of us have asthma attacks unless we are subjected to smoke. I have other allergies but *nothing* else causes me to have asthma other than tobacco smoke, with cigars being the worst.

As far as me having to start my own smoke free business, it looks like that won't be necessary. As it has been pointed out to you on this thread, things are going my way & it looks like smokers are 'sh*t outta luck'. (Heads up Joe, I've told you all this before)

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