The Additional Tyranny
Bad news for liberty lovers in Austin,TX: the proposed smoking ban passed. Drizzten has written a passionate response to the passing that all should read. Here is an excerpt:
Read the rest of it by clicking here.
I have a message for those 34,197 people and the dirtbags who made up and supported Onward Austin:
Fuck you.
You stood up and said, "The collective is more important the the individual and I want violence to be visited upon those individuals when they violate what the collective wants."
You may scoff and claim justification on the democratic nature of this process, but it doesn't even meet the basic dimensions of that standard. Austin's population as of 2000 was more than 650,000 people. It has certainly grown to more than 675,000 since then.
5% of the humans in Austin voted for this law.
That 5% imposed it's will on the entire Austin population.
But ignore the bankrupt democratic justification. What arrogance you have. Every one of you have demonstrated to yourselves and to the citizens affected by this (hint: it is not just limited to the bar scene) that you are willing to say yes to the coercion of peaceful individuals; that you support the application of violence against them for exercising their rightful choice to allow smoking on their "public" property.
Read the rest of it by clicking here.
posted by freeman at 5/11/2005 06:59:00 PM
3 Comments:
Sad, but thought-provoking and educational.
If 5% of a population can ban people or behaviors they don't like, who'll be safe in public? What if that 5% decides it wants to ban body odor or perfume in public, obese people or homosexuals, or some other group of individuals with characteristics they disapprove of?
5% of women might ban men, 5% of men might ban women, 5% of Christians might ban atheists or Muslims or vice versa, 5% of the elderly might ban kids and vice versa... Besides, what's left of public property when intolerant imbeciles conspire (I like that word better than 'voting' here) to smudge out any distinction between public and private property?
Smokers may be among the first, but surely won't be the last to come under the heel of these innovative and insulting applications of democratic theory. Eventually even the most conservative of brain space users will begin to appreciate the importance of private property, when they've enslaved paradise and put up an auction lot.
The expansion of such practices seems almost inevitable and, appalling as it is, it'll be interesting to see what the next target will be. Given the anti-SUV mentality that seems to be growing, could attempts to restrict or ban ownership by certain locales be in the future?
By the way, I'm glad to see your site up and running again!
Thanks, Freeman! I'm glad to see my site up and running again too. ;)
You might be right about SUV's... one truck or poorly running SUV might put out as much air pollution in half an hour as a smoker over decades of smoking, as a guess - I'm not going to chase down statistics, but I've seen many a large construction vehicle belching clouds of black smoke. If the ban-pushers display any consistency, they'll go after SUV's, barbeque grills, cement mixers, incense manufacturers, and on and on ad nauseum.
As you say, it'll be interesting to see who they do decide to go after next...
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