Libertarian Think Tank

I had a similar conversation to this one, but without the moderator. I said that I was displeased about the Seattle smoking ban which demands that smokers stay 25 feet away from the entrance of an eating or drinking establishment. A friend of a friend (who seemed inordinately upset about the topic) exclaimed that he liked the ban because he didn’t have to breathe smoke while getting plastered at the Pacific Inn. I tried to explain that that wasn’t my point, but alas, it was to no avail. He assumed I was a smoker demanding an indoor puff and we got all derailed from there. I am not a smoker.

The moral is that the electorate votes on what they like, not theoretical understandings of personal liberties. You need tyrannical regimes and revolutions to make them think like that. But even after our own revolution, we founded a republic in the hope that representatives could think more abstractly than the majoritarian will. I still hope about that.

Here is a prime example of that. The woman insists that secondhand smoke and transfats are bad, but skips to the conclusion that they should be outlawed. She makes no argument to that effect (though, to be fair, she didn’t have much time). For her, it just simply follows.

One small county in Arizona has abrogated citizens’ rights to allow dancing on their property. After spending over $100,000 in efforts to comply with harrassment regulations, restaurant owner Dale Bell and his son Spencer say, “They’re going to have to take me on all the way to the Supreme Court, because I don’t believe that you can tell people…that they can’t dance”.

Some children attend school to learn. But when the principle of Locke High School in Watts, California afforded them the opportunity to do that, the teacher’s union saw to it that he was removed. The parents, their children, and charter school specialist Steve Barr struck back. Watch to see who wins.

Ok, Drew Carrey isn’t actually *on* medical marijuana, but the episode would be interesting if he was.

I’ve always argued that we should never make something illegal when we can make its more ill effects illegal. For instance, we don’t have to make drinking illegal simply because drinking and driving is a terrible thing; we can make drinking and driving illegal itself.

 However, when it comes to people smoking herb, the worst effect is that the level of negligence could increase in society. As an illustration, if I was walking down the street and a piano was about to fall on my head, I would rather have a drunk standing nearby than a stoner. The drunk would at least let out some slurred sound to warn me, whereas the stoner might just watch it fall before he realizes what happened. You can’t really legislate against that. Not like you can against drinking and driving. The logical extreme is that we would have to reconstruct expectations to accomodate a society that is constantly dumbfounded by its own shoelaces.

Judge Andrew Napolitano waxes libertarian all over history. Turns out, the Constitution was intended to limit the powers of government. For God’s sake, get this man back into public office.