Virginia Libertarian

This wonderful article just got me going this morning.  Not only are our lovely local government representatives trying to slide in a hidden tax on driving, but they are making our streets less safe.  The original intent of red light cameras was to catch and deter people from unsafe behavior at traffic lights.  Now you government representatives see it as a revenue scheme, by shortening the length of yellow lights, they catch and fine more “violators”, increasing the revenue of the municipality, and also making the intersection less safe.  Your wonderful big brother looking out for you.

It would seem that smoking has become one of the large battles now in terms of property rights (next up appears to be being able to eat whatever you want).  I read this little “gem” yesterday, and aside from the fact that the American Lung Association appears to be blatantly using extortion to try and get states to pony up money to them, the comments on the site where I originally found the link to the article are very interesting.  My main interest were in the comments by “Douglas” and how he feels that we should ban smoking in restaurants, and the rebuttals of “Free_America”.

Douglas wrote:
I think they ment public restaurants not someone’s home. Smoking just ruins a meal when you are eating out.

Free_America wrote:
So the Restaurant is government owned???
See that is the problem with that type of thinking,bans deny the owner from using a legal product on their own property, it also denies them the right to cater to the clientele of their choice?

Douglas wrote:
Who said restaurants were government owned? You can cater to who you want as long as there is a clear smoking section seperated away from those who do not want to deal with the smoke. The owner knows the bans going into business and if the owner still decides to open shop the owner deals with it. The owner can cater to his clientele and risk loosing those who do not want to deal with smoking. Their choice.

Free_America wrote:
No the owner should have the right to decide whether or not he even has a smoking section. It is not the governments place to dictate what legal product they can use or allow on their own property. Yes if they make the wrong decision they will lose business and maybe go out of business but that is how the free enterprise system works, those that cater to their customers wishes will thrive, those that don’t die. It is the ultimate level playing field. Private property is private property! How would you feel if the government forced you to have a smoking section in your home????

Douglas wrote:
We’re not talking about residential we are talking about commercial property there is a huge difference and you are trying to compare apples to oranges here. You can’t discuess one and then go to the other that makes no sense. Standards are different from one to the other because one is a place where someone lives the other is a place of business. Business are held to higher standards then residential dwellings for public safety. Smoking is a public safety hazard in my opinion.

Freedom wrote:
Another confused socialist who fails to comprehend the importance of property rights and constitutional protections. You are attempting to justify one intrusion based on another intrusion. What a dangerous way to attempt to apply logic.
Tell us…when the owner of the property is forced to change their LEGAL lifestyle of choice on their own land…even in their private office…what loss of rights would you quote? Can you site precedent for such insanity from our nations past that you are actually proud of?
If the new self righteous moral busybodies can now do this to one LEGAL lifestyle of choice…what protects others who fall out of political or social favor?

Douglas wrote:
Socialist?!! Try conservative thank you get your facts straight there princess. I am for a healthier environment if you want to smoke do it in your own home and kill your family do not bring that around mine flat and simple. I don’t want cigarette smoke hovering around my head while I’m out enjoying a meal. They can do what they want in their own homes but not in a place of public business. The hospitals are finally smoke free and the majority is very happy for it. Your in the minority there so take your cigarette back to your house and keep it out of my clean air.

A couple of points, in order of the highlights above: 

1. Just because the owner knows the bans and restrictions on business, does that make them right?
2. It would appear the moral busybodies can do this to legal lifestyles, look at what happened with the fois gras ban.
3. I can agree with Douglas on this point in public places.  But does this apply to private residences or businesses?  This is something where you can chose not to patronize a business that allows smoking. As I am thinking about this further, however, how does this apply?  I would think the business owner would at least have to have public notification that they allow smoking on the premises.  One of the libertarian tenants is that we don’t cause each other harm, and second hand smoke does have the potential to cause harm.  I like the fois gras example better, it’s a little more clear-cut in this area in that it has no potential to cause others harm.

Douglas goes further into how smoking is bad for the smoker, and how it bothers him if he’s around it, and he wants to ban smoking to save the smoker (and as a convenience to himself).

Douglas wrote:
I said I don’t like it. I said smoking causes diseases. Where did you correlate something I don’t suddenly causes diseases? I don’t like it and I don’t think it is healthy. You are defending it like it is healthy and great for society by bringing up property rights and owner’s rights. Defend you claims that it is so great then!!! But here are a few things from the cdc.gov website that we give patients so you can learn something. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/secondhand_smoke/i…

Douglas wrote:
I hope your business does well and you prosper. But with a lot of smoking I will not be in your busniess because I have seen too much of what smoking can do to ones’ body. When you have a woman who is dieing and hating herself because she has a cancer she could have prevented if she did not light up when she was a kid it kind of gets to you. Hence I do not want my family around smoking.

Douglas wrote:
The majority rule is a principle of Democray hence why we have elections so who or what ever gets the most votes wins and the minorty has to deal with it. Smoking is unhealthy that is all there is to it. You allow smoking in your busniess without having a closed off area for smokers that nonsmokers don’t have to deal with you go out of business. I see how it has killed and is killing patients everyday and needs to be banned. How about I let you talk individual rights with my last patient who had to go smoke out her trach hole will that make you feel better? Keep the subject to smoking this isn’t for politics.

Ok, aside from the point that having a smoking section somewhere is like having a peeing section in a pool, we are finally getting to the meat:

common sense wrote:

<quoted text>
You have it confused, sir. In this country, if I have a majority that wants to change something, that’s what happens. You have the freedom to disagree all you want with that change. But, unless you can then organize your own majority to change it the way you want to, there’s not much you can DO about it.

Freedom wrote:
You have confused a constitutional republic with tyranny of the majority. The constitution was set up to protect the minority from the majority.

This is what so many people in this country either never learned (and that they don’t teach in our wonderful public schools), or have forgotten.  The USA was not founded as a Democracy.  We are (or I should say were)  a constitutional republic.  We are a nation of laws that are supposed to protect the rights of its citizens against the tyranny of the majority.  Unfortunately the majority has the power to change the laws and even the Constitution itself.  It would appear that it was made too easy to amend.

Both the house and senate area available for either video or audio (I’m assuming the video includes audio) from the main page.

Just found this site on the state budget, haven’t had a chance to dig into it much but looks like it has potential. I got to it from the Sunshine Review. It looks like it has decent summary graphs and information, I will dig deeper to see how detailed the data we can get to is.