A Libertarian's Thoughts on Whatever

Sunday, May 04, 2003

 
Michael Moore has taken a lot of abuse for his views and methods. Some of the abuse is justified, but some is not. One of the points he made in Bowling for Columbine was that the way the US runs foreign policy has a spillover effect onto how we act. This may seem a bit far-fetched to some. But consider this. McVeigh specifically fingers the bombings of foreign nations as a big reason why he did the evil that he did. I'm not saying this is the only reason things like this happen, there are always a bundle of reasons for major tragedies of this sort. But it seems clear to me that the immorality of the US government is coming back to bite us, with big, sharp, pointy teeth.
A few commentators and policy makers have been making the argument that we should be happy that the US is on the way to being an empire. Well, I'm not interested in an empire. Being an empire entails tremendous costs, in money, in morality, and not least of all in lives. The only benefit is the joy certain people get from having power over others. Well, I don't want to pay those costs, and I don't want that power. And I see little evidence that we're capable of running an empire well anyway.
Today is the last day that smoking is allowed in Boston bars. I am very opposed to the new law. Someone asked me if I thought it violated smokers' rights. No, I don't, because it doesn't. I have no right to go into a bar and light up a cigarette. If the owner tells me he doesn't allow smoking in his bar, he is perfectly within his rights to do that, it's his bar after all (incidentally, I wish more bars would do this). By the same token, the government has no right to tell him that he can't allow smoking in his bar, it's his bar. The bar is private property. As long as an action taking place on private property isn't hurting others, we can't outlaw it. You might claim that smoking does hurt others, and there is truth to that (though not as much as is commonly believed). But there's a simple solution, which is that you can leave if you don't like the smoke, or not go there in the first place. If you want to ban smoking in public buildings, go ahead. If you want to do so on public property, go ahead. If you want to fine at first and later imprison someone because he lets people smoke on his property, you're way off. It's a no-brainer.
Maestro 8:38 PM