Freedom and Bummers

You will find me squarely in both the anti-smoking and the anti-anti-smoking legislation crowd. (I'm also anti-turnip but I'm not pursuing any laws against them.) You see, I don't smoke and don't much like smoking, but then again, I have disliked anal-retentive hall monitors since long before any of my coolest friends started lighting up.

I take my own initiative and avoid smoking quite successfully. There is no smoking in my car, my house, or in my office, and when I venture into a smoking restaurant or into a smoker friend's house, I do so without dictating my demands to everyone already inside. (Humility obviously being one of my more impressive perfections.) I also believe that when it comes to private businesses and buildings, it is the owners of these establishments that should dictate which lawful activities take place inside, much like I do in my own home.

In my book this is called freedom. A lot of sullen bureaucrats would call this a bummer.

But this isn't really a post about smoking per se. It is instead about a novel tactical change being made by Michigan Rep. Gary McDowell in his enlightened crusade against evil bar owners while protecting a sub-class of citizens he feels is too challenged to get up and move a couple of bar stools farther away from a Lotto playing chain smoker.

Rep. McDowell has become discouraged that the Michigan legislature has been unsuccessful in passing a state-wide smoking ban in bars and restaurants, and in a maneuver of almost dizzying misdirection, he has decided in this one specific instance that he wants to kick the authority for passing laws back to the local level.

Now, I don't agree with his motivation for pursuing the measure because he is simply trying to control smaller areas of behavior until he is able to control the whole ball of wax.

Really, I get it.

However, his chosen tactic did get me wondering. Could I imagine a world in which distant bureaucrats voluntarily kept their noses out of things in which they had no business and allowed the locals to manage their own lives? If it is a worthy idea as it relates to smoking, why is it not a good idea for anything else?

For most of us at least, if our representative considers doing something that we don't agree with we are forced to make phone calls to a switchboard or send letters to a post office box. Things are different at the local level where politicians are not able to dodge the debate by hunkering down in a distant office and surrounding themselves with smooth tongued staffers and bused in union protesters. Honestly, I wouldn't even recognize my representative's ugly mug if it served me deep fried chicken on the way to a cholesterol screening, but my local township supervisor is another thing. If that guy starts trying to run my life he can expect to find the rebel in me parked in my gas guzzler at the end of his driveway, dragging on a cigarette, and playing music way louder than is recommended by government authorities.

McDowell's motives aside, I sincerely hope that this starts a trend where Lansing nannies disencumber themselves from all the areas in our daily lives where they have stuck their unwelcome noses.

Could we see a day when Rogers City locals are allowed to choose whether or not a power plant is built in their area?

Could the time arrive when the local school district is allowed to hire the teachers and administrators that it wants to hire without interference from legislators influenced by the teachers unions? Could it potentially boot out into the streets the disruptive students that want to keep everyone else from learning?

Could local governments keep funds local rather than having so much of it travel to Lansing and Washington to be divvied up and redistributed according to the latest push button issue traveling like a wildfire through the house and senate chambers?

Might a struggling family with the need of a new home be allowed to build one without having to adhere to mounds upon mounds of ever more restrictive state mandated building and energy codes?

And might we live in a world where field agents of the garage sale police are retrained and transferred into the government agency that makes sure that no serial offender is tearing off Do Not Remove Labels in the pillow section down at Kohl's? (Don't you cynics ever accuse me of being soft on crime!)

I'm not holding my breath at any of this and apparently neither are the legislative powers that be. McDowell's bill was taken off Wednesday's agenda.

Currently Michigan law allows only the state legislature to ban smoking in dining establishments, and so far, despite many attempts at passing legislation to accomplish this, it has failed in the effort.

As I have said, I do not believe that Rep. McDowell pursues the overturning of this law for the purpose of ceding power on philosophical reasons, he does this only to pursue a specific end. He knows full well that local control of smoking laws could easily be returned to the state when passable legislation is produced, and you can bet that a part of that very legislation would include a provision that returned this glorious power back to its rightful owner.

So, I guess this really is nothing more than a dream and I need to wake up before the flying monkeys arrive. Big brother is not going to relinquish any of its real power regardless of any sly little maneuver being carried out by one of its own.

What was I thinking? People dumb enough to breathe in all that second hand smoke should not be thinking for themselves in the first place. Really, why should they even have to when we already have a glut of overlords quivering at the thought of being able to make more and more of our choices for us in ever expanding areas of our lives?

A lot of bureaucrats would call this freedom. It's what I call a bummer.

cross posted at Right Michigan