Welcome to the Libertarian Party of Pittsburgh

Most individuals would never dream of banding together and demanding legislation that forces the owner of a restaurant business to change its menu to satisfy some group’s diet requirements. Or for that matter, it would be considered thuggish for citizens to demand police raids to enforce legislation requiring a specific décor that might make yet another group’s dining experience more appealing. The same might be said for legislation requiring music to remain below a certain volume as to not distract from patrons’ conversation or hurt their hearing.

Most Americans would consider any such laws to be an appalling mutation of democracy and in a direction totally opposite of freedom. Such laws would trample the equally important rights of the owners of such businesses and impede their right to compete to create their own, unique environment, which consumers would then be free to support or not.

More precisely, such laws would be downright immoral in their use of government force to confer a reward to a specific group that somehow managed to finagle itself such personalized benefits at the expense of everyone else’s’ freedom and rights. And it is an issue of morality, of right and wrong, since a very simple solution to these sorts of “public problems” exists (if we would even dare to call them such) without stooping to any government meddling whatsoever -- and it is a solution more oriented towards true American freedom and liberty.

Plainly, those citizens who actually view these previously described examples as 'business defects' can simply choose not to dine at restaurants that don't bother to offer the preferred menu, dining ambiance or music volume. After all, this is about personal preference -- wants and desires -- and nothing more.

Of course, any diner wishing for such a menu or an environment could easily patronize venues that gladly (and voluntarily) choose to offer those items of personal preference in order to meet the consumers' demands. Or the disatisfied diner might start an establishment of his own, offering the exact environment of his liking if he believed a niche opportunity existed. The latter essentially defines the fast-paced dining industry as a whole.

What’s So Different About Smoking?

Most reasonable people would not disagree with anything I've said so far.

However, when it comes to the issue of smoking in restaurants, many otherwise reasonable non-smokers feel it is their prerogative and right to have every eatery in Pennsylvania provide them with an environment that meets their personal preferences, regardless of whoever else’s freedom, liberty and choice gets destroyed in the process. They believe that because health may be involved, any and all restaurants should cater exclusively to their personal affinity for smoke-free dining.

Hence, a sizeable group of anti smokers have banded together to demand legislation for smoke-free environments whenever, and wherever they go out to eat, and they are currently lobbying the legislature to pass laws making it criminal for privately owned restaurants to allow smoking on their private property.

Never mind that this might trample others' rights or show total disregard for their personal inclination to have a variety of smoking and non smoking alternatives. By placing their own personal preferences and choices above those of all others, the smoke-banning lobby reinforces a dangerous and all too common anti-freedom phenomenon in the United States today.

But before I go further, I must clarify something about public property rights and its relationship to smoking -- and smoking in general.

Certainly, having to breath somebody else's second hand smoke is a nuisance for non-smokers. For some it causes health related problems even with limited exposure. Evidence also suggests that long-term exposure to second hand smoke is not good for anyone, although generally speaking, this issue is open to debate on a variety of levels.

That said, because second hand smoke is potentially a hazard, any taxpayer-subsidized venue must abide by what is generally considered best for the group since all taxpayers are forced to pay for these venues. Nobody should be precluded from enjoying them because of cigarette smoke. This would include Stadiums, Arenas and the new Convention Center, among many other buildings.

Let it be understood that government projects are an exception, and compromise is the only way since everyone's tax dollars pay for them whether they like it or not -- which is a separate discussion unto itself.

But when it comes to private property, our indifference in allowing one group to legislatively force its personal preferences on everyone else eliminates freedom of choice in matters that hardly require state intervention. This mass citizen lethargy regarding liberty is as malignant as a lifetime of smoking, but instead it is cancerous to the health of our fundamental liberty and our freedom as a nation.

A Big Step in the Gradual Increase in Government Threats of Violence Against Freedom

These are important questions to answer honestly. After all, any one of us could easily avoid the nuisance and potential health hazards of smoke-choice restaurants simply by refusing to patronize those allowing smoking to take place. We non-smokers could tell the management of these venues about our dissatisfaction with pro-smoke policies so that they might learn how much business they are losing.

Employees not wishing to work in such environments could refuse to work in them, which many already do. Some venues will change their policy, and those that do will have a niche advantage in both dining and hiring.

We all know the old joke about the man who visits the doctor, complaining that every time he does this (he makes a jolting movement with his body) it hurts. He asks the doctor, what should he do about it? The doctor replies, "stop doing that".

So let us not forget that we all have many tools at our disposal before we ask government to do our bidding. We have choice in this matter, and it need not involve the threat of government sponsored force and violence.

Wait. What?!?!? The smoke-baning crowd didn't say anything about using the threat of government force or violence, did they?!?!

Government edicts -- every single law -- would be meaningless without the implied threat of force and violence backing it up. That is the reality of most any legislation.

With smoking, once the government is involved it will levy fines, and if not paid or complied with, it will threaten the proprietors' livelihood. It will use incarceration, and if resisted, it will use violence.

The bottom line is that any such ban on smoking is ultimately enforced at the end of a gun.

If you doubt me, simply ask what would happen if restaurant proprietors decided to stand for what they believe regarding property rights. Imagine that instead of complying, they refused to be pushed around like complacently. Imagine that they instead chose to prevent their freedom from being coopted by the smoke-baning crowd and chose to fight for their private property rights -- so that their customers might be free to smoke on their private property, at their personally owned place of business.

Our new laws would have them fined, incarcerated, carted away or shot, depending upon how willing such people would be to resist government efforts to ban smoking. It is this implied threat of violence that keeps most citizens in line on every law, from taxes to all regulation -- even as laws get more meddling and intrusive to our basic liberties. This threat invariably breeds complacency in its victims who know better than to resist the majority, no matter how meddlesome the law.

This is exactly why few bother to fight such a fight. Sadly, it encourages busy-bodies to think they can get away with making even more absurdly ridiculous demands of restaurants simply because the busy-body believes he is entitled to dine wherever he wants, and in ways that please him.

Violence is the ultimate threat, the force that holds all such legislation in place.... And it will be used just so some people can have it ONLY their way when they eat out, so that THEY can eat at ALL the restaurants in Pennsylvania and not experience any second hand smoke.

Is this price of admission worth it when you really cut it down to its most basic, ugly truth?

Hence, we really must question not only the necessity, but also the morality of such intrusive, compulsory legislation. After all, it is not as if smokers are demanding to smoke in your family's kitchen. Nor do they even demand to smoke in smoke-free restaurants. They simply smoke where allowed on private property. Yet some, knowing what is best for everyone, intrude on this property and deem to make them criminals?

Smoking may not be to our liking, but that is life. Each of us has plenty of alternatives in dining that are smoke-free. The same holds true for employees seeking smoke free jobs. Must we hide behind government strongmen to do our personal bidding and in doing so, carelessly stamp out others freedom?

Yet I fear for the worst. We have become more and more a tantrum oriented society. There are those among us who will force their no-smoke-preferences on all citizens and venues at the expense of the many who prefer to let each venue decide for itself.

While most of us would never assert such privilege over our neighbor’s home or kitchen, in a mutated form of self-righteousness, there are many among us who don't think twice about holding group-lordship over the same neighbor's private business.

So we take threats so severe that we would never dream of directly offering them to our neighbors in person, and instead we launder them through the legislative process. Then, with merely a government stamp of "legality" in support, and with a host of government employees to hide behind, we enforce those same, formerly unacceptable threats as if they are miraculously cleansed of their immorality... simply because enough people pile on the bandwagon via the democratic process.

And ready for any popular vote, regardless of cost, politicians will gladly aid and abet such boorish behavior, lending their official credibility to each appaling act that enables one group of citizens to willy-nilly forfeit their neighbors' freedoms.

Which brings me to the most important point.

We call ourselves "The Land of the Free". But is this still true, or can we now only hold claim to being "The Freest of Lands"?

There is a big difference, and it is captured in the phrase "things could be worse".

In this instance, can we honestly call ourselves "the land of the free" when we no longer allow citizens to smoke simply because we feel entitled to dine or work smoke-free on someone elses property, in an eatery someone else has built with their own effort and money?

Well, I guess things could be worse...

It is a shame, though. Our nation was founded on the premise that each human being is free to do as he or she wishes in so far as he does not force or threaten his will on another or his property when that "someone else" is simply minding his own business. Whenever we have ignored this basic tennent, we have allowed travesties to exist, such as with slavery or by withholding the rights to property for women and other minorities.

Consider that on issues such as smoking, it was intended that one might seek another's consent by making a good argument to persuade the other to ban smoking in his eatery. But forcing him to comply against his will was out of the question, and even considered to be despicable. And the government's lone responsibility was to protect the owner and others from such threats to his God granted individuality and rights.

Hence, essential to the whole concept of American Freedom is the belief that we prefer "to agree that we disagree", and that we can live side by side without intruding legislatively or otherwise, into our neighbors' homes, bedrooms or places of business when they would not affect you in any way, but for the fact that you choose to enter those places at your own discretion.

Really, for the smoke-baning crowd to complain about smoke hazards on someone elses private property -- which they voluntarily choose to visit -- is no less outlandish than you or me deciding to fuss when we, let's say, can't get steak at an Indian restaurant. Have these people lost all sense perspective and respect for others?

In the case of private restaurants, it is not your right to force others to provide you with an ambiance of your liking, weather it be a color scheme, a preference for lighting, music volume, menu, or air quality. To insist otherwise is selfish and with little regard for others' self-determination.

Instead, if you don't like what a restaurant has to offer, be a respectful adult and tell the management you disapprove-- and take your business or labor elsewhere. Don't cower to the politicians so that they might bully others on your behalf, just so they meet your personal dining demands.

A Pandora's Box -The Real Danger

And don't forget, by demanding that you be allowed to chain everyone else to a dictate that forces your personal smoking beliefs on all other people and their property, you leave the door wide open to become the victim of some other groups’ personal preference legislation.

Multiplied by the thousands of possible scenarios that have already been legislated and those that might come to be, you will have reinforced the precedent that no individuals truly have rights of their own, since a majority may simply outvote them. When others force their personal beliefs into your business, your career, your home, or your family, forever altering and outlawing your preferred way of life -- especially when you are simply minding your own business -- you will reap the very seeds you have sown.

Perhaps with that sort of system we might each get our little piece of the pie on one or two issues close to our heart. But the cost is as massive as human beings are different -- it is a deal with the devil, an inevitable Pandora's Box of one-sized fits all solutions forced upon all of us, from which none of us is allowed to escape.

Revisit the Tradition of Freedom & Liberty

It is sad that such ideas should even need to be reminded, as smoke-baning on private property is itself a barometer of how forgotten and tarnished the original ideals of American liberty have become at the turn of a new millennium.

The United States may still be the freest nation in the world, but when we indiscriminately pass these kinds of meddling and intrusive laws, we no longer hold claim to being 'the land of the free' -- we become a land of collective group-think, and a mere shadow of the Great Experiment in Freedom we once were.

"Oh, but this is only a tiny smoking law being blown way out of proportion", you say? "What harm can come of such a small law", you ask?

When we become more and more bound by countless incidents of legislated, collectivized conformity like this, although it may be the will of a majority, such an America will bear absolutely no resemblance to what made it great in the first place -- Our once heralded staunch defense of rugged individualism, personal responsibility and property, and freedom and liberty.

The simple answer is that property rights are essential to preserving a free republic. Smoking bans send the message that your property is not yours, but instead that some group-collective holds title to everything you or I own. That is not the America of our forefathers. That is the America of Marx.

So ask of the smoke banning crowd, who gives them the right to assert that their will is more virtuous and legitimate than those of the owner of a restaurant, or his employees and his patrons? Who gives these organized busy-bodies the right to revoke others' freedoms legislatively?

We should constantly be reminded that even with democracy "We The People" may vote our selves and each other into chains, comforted as if chains fit better because they are of our own majority's making.

But have we simply exchanged one King George with millions of individual tyrant kings forming many groups that each claim enitlement, lordship and domain over others' property, labor, and way of life? Or simply over their private restaurants?

Perhaps this is why we were intended to be a democratic republic and not a pure democracy. Our Republic would have prevented such mob destruction of freedom if we had not so recklessly tossed it aside and relegated it to be a forgotten, mythical souvenir in the dusty attic of history.

Let us hope it is not too late to salvage our fading republic so that we may return it to the proper glory it deserves in our homes and lives, so that our God granted freedom and liberty might be protected and preserved for generations to come.

Vote libertarian and help fight for its return.

J C Ernharth