Legislators in Concord are hard at work right now not only showing complete disregard for the traditions of the state, but also treating their constituents like toddlers who got a hold of mommy's matches.
New Hampshire Senate Bill 42, spearheaded by Sen. David Gottesman, D-Nashua, is currently in committee in the State Senate. As reported in the New Hampshire Union Leader, a similar bill is in the House, bill 762. Both bills are familiar. Each is "[a]n act prohibiting smoking in restaurants, cocktail lounges, and certain enclosed public places."
Ever since being introduced in the utopias of Western Europe, the idea of smoking bans as social progress is, frankly, spreading in the states quite cancerously. Gottesman gives us the argument typical of so-called progress: "All the other New England states have gone smoke-free, and New Hampshire should not be left behind."
Thankfully, we can all take some wisdom from our mothers here, when they told us that we should not jump off the bridge just because everyone else is doing it. Gottesman's advice is appreciated, though.
But government can be used for good, dangnabbit! Maybe the recent fertilizer-fest of nanny legislation banning trans fats, the new Great Satan of fast food, and New York's barring cell phones in crosswalks, the new "blame-the-victim" hotness emboldened sponsors. Or maybe the nanny state just makes sense to them because they do not trust others to make their own choices.
Proponents argue that banning public smoking will cut healthcare costs and cancer rates. Good. At least we are getting closer to an actual argument that does not turn us into lemmings. Sen. Robert Odell, R-Lempster, is co-sponsoring the bill because "one thing we can do to reduce cancer in this country is to reduce the use of tobacco."
He is absolutely correct. Unfortunately for this argument, though, we have no fewer than three foundational documents, the federal and state constitutions and the Declaration of Independence and almost half a millennium of history, which does a fine job of informing us that it is our birthright to act voluntarily as citizens of New Hampshire and the U.S.
Simply put, if you do not want to get cancer from smokers, stay out of privately owned restaurants that want smokers' business. This goes for the employees, as well. Last I checked, you choose your profession. If Major League Baseball agrees with batters that pitchers' fastballs pose a health risk, the league can use its power as an employer to regulate its employees' jobs. Similarly, if employees want to avoid customers smoking, they should bug their bosses and not clog the legislatures' dockets.
Gottesman responds to these kinds of objections with the same disdain for thought that most people do when they have no good idea how to respond to a criticism. "This is not a referendum on our state motto, 'Live Free or Die.' It is an economic and health issue," he said. Fortunately for me, political theory and philosophy has foreseen this and -- get this -- included "economic and health" issues in their purview. As it turns out, this is nothing but a referendum on our state motto. It involves both freedom and death.
As it turns out, liberalism tells us that there are some things -- rights, liberties, all that boring junk -- that are just too important to trust to the majority in the legislature. We cannot give government the power to enforce what one group sees as "the good" because even though they may use this power for good today, we have a sneaking suspicion that the next guys will not. If we allow nanny legislation, it only sets the precedent for more intrusion.
History teaches that when government takes control of quotidian concerns of citizens' lives, bad things tend to happen (think Great Leap Forward). Proponents of the smoking ban may call me a pie-in-the-sky ideologue, but the fact of the matter is that I understand, as a son of both two smokers and the Granite State, that when authoritarianism comes to America, it will come gradually, wrapped in good intentions.
