State Invasiveness, Marching Ever Onward

Another Lode article here follows. I have kept the original title, and I've been unable to incorporate any of the changes which my editors made--including, strangely, removing the very last line of the piece.

I don't like editors.

“Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” H.L. Mencken

Not content to prevent patrons from smoking cigarettes in restaurants and bars, USA Today is reporting that the Texas legislature has decided to ban smoking in “private places such as homes and cars when children are present.”

As usual, permit me several, possibly even related thoughts.

First, the next time someone tells me that “the slippery slope is a logical fallacy” I'm going to scream. Vox Day sums it up nicely: “From vaccines to health bans, from polygamy to proposed invasions, the "slippery slope" argument has never been more reliable as a predictive model... I remember a friend of mine from New York who loved the new smoking ban and laughed at the absurd notion that they would ever lead to food bans. And it wasn't all that long ago that the homogamy crowd was insisting that expanding the state's definition of "marriage" regarding sex was possible without expanding the number of individuals involved.”

Government is inimical to freedom. Democracy is especially so, despite our President's assurances to the contrary. Sadly, most people don't give two cents for liberty, and see no problem in letting it slip right down the drain. That is, so long as we can be safe from... terrorists, second-hand smoke, intolerance, bogeymen, etc. And since democracy pretends that dullards and imbeciles have the foggiest idea about how to run a government, the aforesaid vote for frauds that throw away freedom faster than they break campaign promises. If you don't understand this by now you need to take a closer look at recent history. Put down the TV remote and slowly back away.

Next, the abject failure of parents to insist on the right to raise their children however they choose is coming back to haunt them. It is not the duty of the state to educate the children; that responsibility belongs to the child's mother and father. Hence my ardent support for homeschooling. Indeed, the same principle applies to smoking, or any other unpleasant behavior. If the child doesn't find secondhand smoke to be enjoyable, I suggest he either thank the Good Lord that he doesn't have to live on the street or use his stores of cash to move into a smoke-free environment.

Tangentially, I feel the need to mention the hypocrisy inherent in the legal system. If a woman feels that she doesn't want to carry her child to term—heart-beating, unique DNA fetus, complete with brain-waves and cellular replication—she can head to the local abortion mill to murder the little bastard. But if she decides to have the child and wants to smoke around the kid, well, she can't do that! The poor thing might get asthma or maybe even a case of the low self esteem.

It's not hard to see where this line of “thinking” will lead us. We have established that, insofar as children are concerned, the rights of the state trump the rights of the parents when the health of the children is under attack. We need only wander down the slope to determine what constitutes “health” and an attack thereupon.

I'm somewhat surprised that the government has yet to prevent parents from stuffing their progeny full of twinkies. This is surely worse for their health, and, once the detestable Texas law finds its way into other states, it seems only a matter of time before parents of chubby children will be fined—and probably later imprisoned.

This gradual descent into tyranny is a bit tedious. I say we take the principle to its logical conclusion and mandate that the government raise children from the day they're born. Oh Brave New World!