perfidy

Public smoking bans do fall under a different set of ethical issues than most personal liberties. As public smoking is possibly a public health nuisance or threat, it's not like free speech or freedom of the press. But part of my point was that public smoking bans are just one of many objectives of the Neo-reformists. In antebellum America, reformists initiated movements to abolish slavery. They also initiated temperance movements and rabid Protestant Christian Evangelicalism. While abolitionism was a noble cause in that it demanded an end to slavery, temperance and evangelicalism sought to force everyone else to live their lives the way that Evangelical reformers did.

I'm drawing an analogy here. Public smoking bans might be the parallel to abolitionism as an effort to create a greater good. But beneath those efforts for the greater good, or right alongside them, are efforts to make everyone else live exactly the way these present-day reformists, who are frequently guests on Oprah Winfrey's talk-show, live. In addition, public smoking bans are part of an effort to make everyone safe in a world where life turns on a dime, nothing can be predicted, and anything can happen.

If the neo-reformist and pro-safety camps are indeed coming together and pulling their resources, they will not stop at public smoking bans. They won't be happy until everyone has a helmet and everyone lives they way they think people should live. In addition, lots of abolitionists were just as racist as the people who owned slaves. Maybe Neo-reformists pushing the public smoking ban don't really care about public health. Maybe they just want to legislate their narrow vision of morality. When it comes to a moral issue on which we cannot agree, it's best to leave it out of the legislation. Permit it for those who want it, by not outlawing cigarettes altogether, but don't subject people who don't want it to it. A public smoking ban is a way to do that, perhaps. A counter-argument is that non-smokers could simply stay away from bars, but that's not fair.

Of course the problem is that the Neo-reformists don't want to permit naughty things to the people who want them and keep it out of sight for those who don't. Neo-reformists think, "Well, I live my life this way so everybody else has to live their life that way too." Neo-reformists want everyone to wear drab clothing without hooks or fasteners (because they're flashy), not smoke, not drink, not eat red meat, not barbecue, not eat baked potatoes because they're carcinogenic. Of course this brings in the pro-safety camp who agrees with most of the above (except maybe the clothing), and wants everybody to put on a helmet, and wants potential terrorists or people they can paint as such, even though they aren't herded into camps, where they can't hurt the people with helmets on.

The public smoking ban is one thing. It's not the same kind of personal liberty issue. But the pro-safety types want helmets on non-smokers, too, just to be safe. And no baked potatoes, either. The Neo-reformists want to ban cigarettes altogether, because their god told them cigarettes are evil tools of the devil. They have the souls of smokers to save.