Government Regulating Personal Behavior

Where does it end?

First we let the government define places where someone could smoke and where they couldn’t. Originally, it was businesses themselves who chose whether to be smoking or non-smoking. Which is just the way it should be. If a business doesn’t want people smoking in its establishment, so be it. They get to set the rules. It’s theirs. But then the government got involved and said you can only smoke in part of an establishment, then it progressed to not in the business at all. Now they are saying you can’t smoke in parks or at the beach. (Understand that I am an ex-smoker. I don’t believe in smoking. I believe it’s harmful to you. I don’t want my kids smoking. But I don’t see that it’s the governments place to say where you can or can’t do something, or where it will allow you to do or not do something in your own place of business or home.)

Next came motorcycle helmets. In the majority of places, governments demand that you are to wear a helmet if you are going to ride a motor cycle.

Then came seatbelts. I believe in seat belts, my wife and I trained ourselves to wear our seatbelts before it was the law, because we believe it is the wise thing to do. I do not believe the government should be able to mandate that you wear them. I believe it is OK to make the car companies put them in the cars for you to use. No, I take that back. I believe it’s OK for the government to make them an option you can choose, I don’t believe the government should force the car companies to put them in. If they are a good idea, and I believe they are, consumers would ask for them to be included and competition would most likely force all car companies to include them in order to keep up.

Then came salt, cholesterol, transfats (what the hell ever those are), sugar, and the list goes on and on and on. Now NY has proposed limiting the size of a drink you can order. And the health board or whatever it is called, is considering including milk drinks and coffee drinks it thinks you shouldn’t have.

OMG! Is there no end to this madness?

Now that the snowball has been rolled over the crest of the hill, will it ever stop getting bigger and bigger? Will they ever stop intruding in our lives?

What’s next in the Libpo’s (Liberal/Progressive) fevered brain that they want to force us to do, or stop doing? What if they conduct a study and find that people who have sex once and only once a day live longer, healthier lives requiring less late life care. Because of government run health care they will then want to set up sex stations where you and your partner are to come and complete your daily sex act under government supervision. If you don’t have your own partner, you will be required to have sex with a government assigned partner that day. If you fail to have sex one day, you will be fined, but they will call it a tax. The Non-F#$king tax.

This would be done under the reasoning that if you weren’t having sex, it would cost the government more to provide your health care so of course they are just recouping the cost that they will have to pay out later when you get sick more often because you failed to f#$k. They will have actuarial tables and everything to justify and quantify these fines/taxes.

Of course this is an absurd proposition. But in the 1950’s can you imagine how absurd it would have sounded and how they would have looked at you if you told them about all of the government restrictions there would be on smoking. Or that the government would make you tie yourself into a car. They would have looked at you the same way you were just looking at the metaphorical me as you read my speculation on forcing people to have sex once a day.

But we’ve all seen what crazy things the government has forced folks to do or not do for our own good. Because they know better than we do. Because they think they are the smartest kids in the room and thus should be able to tell the rest of us how to live by their rules.

Well I’m sorry (no, really I’m not), but I think the government ought to stay the hell out’ta my life. The only time the government ought to tell someone what they can or can’t do is if the individual’s actions will impact another’s life, liberty or property in a negative way through force or fraud.

If a bar owner wants to allow smoking in his/her establishment, it’s nobody’s business but their own. If people don’t want to go there because of the smoke, the business will not survive. They made a poor choice. Too bad. So sad. It was their choice and they made it. They don’t deserve to be bailed out by the government because of a poor choice on their part. Nor should they be kept from making the choice by the government because the government knows best.

Or so it would seem to an old farm boy.