Keeping Government Out of Trivialities Keeps Us Free

By Jon Sanders

A strain of the vampire legend holds that the blood- sucking fiends can enter people's homes only with their victims' consent. Similarly, government can enter an area only if its citizens allow it.

Charity, for instance, was once no province of government. Neither was medical care. Nor were health and manners. But today people are carelessly welcoming the fiend, seeking legislative prohibition of activities they consider unhealthy and unmannerly.

The most far-reaching example is California's ban on smoking in bars, which completes its total ban on smoking in public areas. Most of the activities under legislative fire are thing- smoking, drinking, and eating fatty foods-that bring many people pleasure but that many other people consider rude or unhealthy.

At one time, people ignored activities they disliked and avoided places (like bars) where they took place. Nowadays, the easily offended insist that the government ensure that no building or gathering contains whatever social ill offends them.

Citizens in a free society however, should never confuse their right to disdain rudeness with the government's ability^, to outlaw it. Our rights protect the boorish along with un-boorish; the healthy with the unhealthy.

Those rights exist for everyone or not at all. If society outlaws smoking, then it takes away the right to smoke. What it leaves is not, however, the right not to smoke--that would imply a choice.  When a government makes the choice, then what it grants those who would, in a free society, choose not to smoke is not a right, but a convenience.

Many people, of course, would prefer that fewer of their fellow citizens smoked, drank, wore perfume, played music loud, ran air conditioners or read Huckleberry Finn. And they would use government to end those activities and enforce what they deem proper.

If we wish to be free, however, we should work to keep the government out of trivial matters. We would do better to remember the words of George Santayana: "A man may nor always eat and drink what is good for him; but it is better for him and less ignominious to die of the gout freely than to have a censor officially appointed over his diet, who after all could not render him immortal."

Another problem with this tyranny of the proper is the transience of what society considers proper. Think of how much and how often the “Proper” fashion and dress have changed in this century. Society's tastes in food, music, sports and other things are equally transient. So, too is what society deems proper and improper.

Aside from being priggishly autocratic, dictating notions of health to all following generations may actually be unhealthy. Against centuries of warnings about the dangers of alcohol, recent studies have found that for many people, moderate consumption of alcohol can be more healthy than abstinence.

Another recent study suggests that a high-fat diet reduces the risks of stroke for men. And smoking may lower the cancer risk for some women

Thus, uncertainty over what is healthy or proper is another important reason to keep government out of these arenas. Let people decide for themselves what they want, and let science help them choose. If enough people decide a certain activity is undesirable, let them discourage it not by legislation, but by peer pressure.

The paramount reason that government should stay out of the topics of health and manners is the erosion of freedom. Just because some people make what most people consider to be the wrong choices does not mean government should do the choosing.  Allowing foolish choices is far wiser than sacrificing the freedom to choose­

"Freedom is not worth having," Gandhi said, "if it does not connote freedom to err.

Jon Sanders is a research associate for the Pope Center for Higher Education Reform in Research Triangle Park, N.C., a program of the John Locke Foundation.

From The Harrisburg Patriot, 1/6/99