O Tempora!

There are many good ideas floating about – good ideas how to be safer, live better, and live longer. These are ideas that ought to be adopted by everyone. A couple of these ideas are buckling seat belts when driving or riding in a car and avoiding smoking or smoke-filled rooms.

However, good ideas sometimes go bad. Sometimes, certain people want good ideas to become mandatory. Mandatory good ideas are bad ideas, because they obstruct the best idea ever invented – freedom.

If I am dumb enough to drive without fastening your seatbelt, I am risking injury or death that might otherwise be avoided. But my body is mine, and I harm no one but myself if I have a wreck and fly through the windshield. I harm no one but myself. The argument that taxpayers have to pay to patch me up is due to another gone-bad idea – health care that got mixed up with government mandates.

Another stupid idea is to set fire to a noxious weed and inhale the smoke. It is also not too good to hang around in closed areas where others are puffing on this nasty substance. It’s not nearly as hazardous as actual smoking, but it is very unpleasant and it makes you stink.

However, both smoking and breathing others’ smoke are voluntary activities. No one makes a person light up, and no one makes a person sit in smoke-filled rooms. You don’t have to patronize or work in a restaurant or bar where people are smoking.

Our benign and wise Colorado legislators want to protect us from ourselves. For one, they propose to make the failure to use seat belts a primary driving offense. This is wrong. It should not be any kind of offense at all, not even the secondary kind that it is now. Adults own their own bodies, and they have the right to be stupid. Regulating seat belt use restricts personal freedom.

The great and benevolent legislature also wants to snuff out smoking on private property. Wrong again. Private property is open to the public only under the owner’s conditions. Don’t like to breathe smoke in Rick’s gin joint? Leave. Your nose’s rights end where Rick’s property line begins. Big Brother should butt out of private business.

For the record, I have used seat belts for 44 years – since before most cars had them. I have never smoked, and I don’t allow smoking anywhere on my private property – at my home or at my rental properties. It is good to use a seat belt and it is good to be free of tobacco smoke. But these good ideas go bad when they are hijacked by grandstanding politicos who shove them down your throat.