North Star Writers Group

Smoke-free bars and restaurants. Taxes on liquor and fatty foods. Government-run health care. Mass transit. All couched in touchy-feely rhetoric about the benefits they would bring. And all antithetical to the founding principles of America. Together (along with a good number of other items with which there isn't space to deal here), they reveal the true agenda of the "compassionate, tolerant" tyrannical busybodies on the liberal left. And it is neither compassionate nor tolerant towards those who believe in freedom, liberty and the personal responsibility with which it goes hand in hand. In fact, it is perhaps the most direct threat to all that America is supposed to be about.

• Smoking bans - This is nothing more than the blatant trampling of the private property and free association rights of bar and restaurant owners. Bars and restaurants are private establishments, not public. As such, the owner has sole authority to decide what he shall offer and to what clientele he shall market it. He doesn't even have to open for business if he doesn't want to. And his customers are free to patronize his establishment or not, accordingly. (In other words, if a bar caters to smokers and you don't like it, go somewhere else!) The idea that government either can or should set controls on what a business may offer or to whom is so noxious on its face that it should be answered with little more than derisive laughter. Frankly, it's frightening that the tyrannical busybodies have already managed to push their noses so far under the tent flap without drawing a vigorous response (i.e. a mallet to the schnozz).

• Obesity tax - This logically follows from the above. If government can choose your customers and policies for you, naturally they can select your menu and punish those customers who don't pick what it thinks they should. The only reason this (or alcoholic drinks) haven't reached the level of smoking is that they haven't yet been sufficiently demonized to where the public would naively go along with bans the way they did with cigarettes. But give the tyrannical busybodies time.

• Health care - If the above examples are on the micro scale, this is the macro scale. The reason liberals are so hell-bent on socialist health care is that it is the most effective means by which to control everyone and everything. After all, if government is going to pay for all the consequences of our "bad" choices and behaviors, then they'll just have to ensure we don't make or engage in any, right? They can try to hide their true intentions behind euphemisms like "single-payer" and the demonization of "Big Pharmaceutical or Big Insurance," but the tyrannical busybodies will stop at nothing to maximize their power. Your health and mine are the least of their concerns. If they truly cared about that, they'd get government out of the health care business entirely. (Or, as P.J. O'Rourke succinctly put it: "If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free!" He meant financially, but he's no less correct if you peg the cost of "free health care" as freedom itself.)

• Cars/Roads vs. Trains/Rail - This may not seem like a related issue, but it really is. When you own a car, you can go wherever you want whenever you want and take whatever you want with you. The car is nothing short of freedom itself, and I believe that's why it's such an iconic symbol of America. This is also why the tyrannical busybodies are so intent on stopping the building of any more roads and doing their level best to force trains and rail transit upon a public that otherwise would never choose them. If the majority of people move by mass transit, they can only go where the tracks run when the trains are scheduled. And who decides that? Why, government, of course. (You didn't really think it was you, did you?) Much like health care, they'll hide behind euphemisms that invoke the environment and "Big Oil," but their real goal is control. (This can be seen more clearly when the transportation issue is expanded to their dislike of suburbia and attempts to stop growth there and force people back into inner cities.) If they truly cared about the most efficient means of transporting the most people in the least time, they'd be building roads, roads and more roads.

I honestly believe that the majority of Americans who support smoking bans and the like are well-meaning. They either don't realize or don't care that a subset amongst them would use such things to stomp on liberty. Or perhaps they cannot see that an intangible principle like the freedom to choose for oneself (and take full responsibility for that choice) is much bigger and far more vital than a small, relatively unimportant but tangible thing like cleaner air in a bar. For all they wax rhapsodic about "diversity," the tyrannical busybodies certainly don't take too kindly to anyone choosing a different course of action from what they think they should.

And for our part, we need to re-discover how precious liberty is and embrace the responsibility that comes with it, prime amongst which is to protect it from those who would destroy it or take it away. If we have reached the point where we cannot put aside our personal dislike for a given activity, and simply defend the right of a free people to engage in it, then the busybodies are much further along in their campaign of tyranny than even I fear. Note also how they have to come up with boogeymen like Big Tobacco, Pharma, Insurance and Oil in order to scare us into letting Big Government have its way.

To paraphrase the old poem: First they came for the smokers, but I wasn't a smoker so I didn't complain. Then they came for the fast-food eaters, but I wasn't one so I didn't complain. Then they came for the car drivers and the health insurers, and by the time they came for me, there was no one left to complain.

Click here to talk to our writers and editors about this column and others in our discussion forum.

To e-mail feedback about this column, click here. If you enjoy this writer's work, please contact your local newspapers editors and ask them to carry it.

This is Column # DKK24. Request permission to publish here.