State Intervention and the Surrendering of your Rights for a Good Cause:
– Here Come the PHP (Personal Habits Police) to Save the Day – and You –
“He who trades liberty for safety loses both…” I think it was Thomas Jefferson who first said this, or something very similar. If it wasn’t him it certainly is a statement with which he would agree.
Our Free Market is fundamentally based on the liberty of each Citizen Consumer’s free will – if you don’t like it – don’t buy it – don’t eat it – don’t smoke it and don’t do it.
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– our lawmakers with our support and consent, can criminalize said activity or item.
Otherwise, our fundamental concepts of due process demand that each and every legal product or activity should enjoy equal protection under the law. To paraphrase George Orwell – some legal activities or products should not be more legal than other , legal activities or products.
The incremental acquiescence to greater governmental intervention into our personal lives is a long-term troubling pattern, and a threat which this site has been warning its visitors about since our launch in 2005. The ever expanding attempts by Big Daddy state governments is a fundamental threat to our personal liberties and the free market itself, upon which our country was founded.
For the Sake of the Children…
The irrational rush by all-too many parents to surrender their parenting obligations and look to big Daddy State, to “protect” their children, has put us on a very slippery and dangerous slope of forever losing our personal liberties; liberties that a generation ago, could not have been contemplated as being at risk.
Armed with confirmation of their citizens’ apathy, state governments have embarked upon an ever-expanding incremental course of extending government control into our personal lives and habits. One of the first salvos in this incremental extension of government control was launched against the confirmed weakest link - for personal liberty in the 21st Century - the smoker. But your state government is not content to further assault the personal liberties of this less than politically unorganized minority who still desire the legal habit of smoking. Your state government has far greater ambitions on how to “help” you make the “right decisions” in your most personal life and habits.
The Smoking Police (Coming to a Home or Car Near You):
Several states, including our home state of Texas, have seen fit to impose restrictions into the every day personal lives of foster parents and dictate a “no smoking” mandate in homes or cars , whenever foster children are present.
As a lawyer, I can only assume that one potential penalty for a foster parent who dares to assert his or her previously unquestioned personal liberty and light up at home or in the car, could be the loss of their foster children. Such an outcome of this law boggles my mind. The state of Texas (and unfortunately many more states) has determined that an adult who is willing to undertake such a noble calling as foster parenting, should be punished – as well as the foster children, due to the parent’s desire to exercise a completely legal personal habit.
But the Smoking Police won’t stop at foster parents – where there is at least the color of state government authority or control. According to John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health (“ASH”) – “We are very rapidly moving to protect the children from second hand smoke, even from their own parents and grandparents.” (emphasis added). Many thanks to Mr. Banzhaf, his organization of Ashes and his allies in state governments around the country who have laid bare their credo that in the 21st Century it’s not “Father Knows Best”, but “Daddy State” that will Know Best.
These politicians and their Political Action Sponsors are unfortunately deadly serious about their intended direct intervention into your family and control over you as to how you raise your children.
Remember, that these people are talking about punishing Citizen Consumers for a legal personal habit, as legal as having a cocktail after work, or a hostess twinkee on a Saturday afternoon, I mean who could have a problem with something as benign as those personal choices…
The Food Police (Coming to a School or Street Corner Near You):
The same governmental interests that want to control not only your personal habits, but use that authority to control your habits as the basis of jurisdiction and authority to control everything up to and including the raising of your children, have now announced their intent to come after the rest of us – the entire community of Citizen Consumers, smoker and non-smoker alike.
The latest attempt to dictate the how we should limit our personal liberties, and how our alleged “free market” should operate are found in the efforts to control our diet. This attack is evidenced by the attempts to summarily decide where fast food restaurants should be allowed to be located , based on their respective location to schools.
While a public school (and the local government) does have an interest in what food, snacks and beverages are offered to its students during the school day, these politicians and political action partners have no intent on stopping at what schools serve during the school day. These politicians and Political Action Sponsors want the local government to re-write the zoning laws, to control and deny restaurants the right to locate near a public school – as if a McDonalds now sells McKrack sandwiches as well as — God-forbid the EVIL trans-fat fries .
“There should be zoning laws that prevent this type of exploitation of children [i.e.; restaurants independently deciding upon what pieces of property they should build]. Just like there are drug-free zones around schools, there should be zones around schools that are free of junk food, including fast-food restaurants, mini-markets and gas stations that sell food inside[,]” (emphasis added), declares Yale obesity expert Kelly Brownell.
The Spanking Police (This will Hurt You More than it Hurts the State):
And if an intrusion into your personal dietary habits is not offensive enough, California, the state that has historically launched trends which sweep across the country like a huge big Pacific wave, has now introduced a bill to make spanking your child illegal.
Despite the fact that California, like every other state already has laws against child abuse – California Aseemblywoman Sally Lieber, D – Mountain View (who has no children), has proposed a bill to once again – criminalize something that society has not deemed fit to be criminalized, – spanking your children. As always, a representative of Big Daddy government – who’s never raised a child, knows what’s best for her sheeple – I mean people.
An enlightened Assemblyman, Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine asks “Where do you stop? At what point are we going to say we should pass a bill that every parent has to read a minimum of 30 minutes every night to their child?”
Not to emphasize the obvious, but Assemblywoman Lieber’s bill doesn’t bother to explain how the “spanking law” would be enforced – but I can hazard a guess…
The Loss of Logic:
Is it just me or does anyone else in this country give a damn about what activities remain “legal” versus those activities that are specifically prohibited by law, i.e.; “illegal”? . Because it is apparent that our elected officials and their academic/Political Action Sponsors believe they now possess the otherwise un-bestowed and unauthorized power to declare unilaterally, what acts or personal habits have become “unauthorized” by Big Daddy State – if not de-facto illegal.
Take Back Your State.