One thing I really enjoy doing is taking an idea out to its logical end.
When that happens, usually during a debate with someone, I am often told my conclusions are absurd.
I remember when the health crusaders started pushing heavy taxes on my cigarettes and calling for bans on smoking in so-called public places.
The problem with these crusaders is that they feel a duty to control my life and yours, I said. Many of them argued and still argue that cigarettes are unhealthy for me and I should not be allowed to smoke them. A reader wrote such a letter to the editor in The New Era a few months ago.
And so they tax me more heavily than other members of the public to change my behavior or to raise cash for their prize programs on the backs of other people, like me. It’s always easiest to spend other people’s money.
They deny the rights of individuals to freely trade with each other. They tell private businesses that they cannot allow smoking in their private buildings. They call them public places, but that’s entirely the wrong term. They are not public places and never have been. They are places where trading is done by individuals who have the choice whether to do business in that particular location.
A demand by many of these individual traders successfully created smoke-free restaurants, long before government got involved. Then individual cities, Corvallis and Eugene, the enemies of freedom, took it further and limited the freedom of individuals and their businesses to make decisions about their own lives and property by banning it everywhere.
Years ago, while in college, I and others suggested that if the state has a right to tax smoking and ban smoking in private places it also has a right, even a duty to tax and ban junk food.
I was told by some that comparison was absurd.
Yet today, it’s happening. The only question is how long it will take Oregon to jump on the bandwagon and meddle again in private affairs.
New York City has approved a ban on restaurants serving foods with trans fat.
Like every single loss of individual rights, this certainly seems reasonable. That’s how we lose our liberty, one reasonable step at a time.
Fifteen years ago, such a decision would have seemed absurd.
And even now, some of you read this and snicker about trans fat and individual rights.
You’re right. Trans fats are bad for you; and restaurants serve them to an “unsuspecting” public. That’s led to lawsuits and settlements against companies, as if anyone other than a 3-year-old ever really thought a diet of French fries or potato chips is really good for you, even without trans fats.
Those who understand the importance of individual rights need to stand up to this and say no more, not in Oregon and never in Sweet Home.
It’s time to stop an action that I’ve been told was absurd and would never happen.
There is a solution to the problem. Demand foods without trans fats, but do it in the marketplace. Don’t buy foods with them if you don’t want to consume them.
Allowing a government ban to bring this about is abdication of individual rights and personal responsibility. It is not even the same as selling yourself into slavery.
It’s more like signing the title and handing your life to someone else for free.