Our friend Mr. Schuldt over at CCK is disappointed that the expanded ban on smoking in bars has failed. The human mind is an interesting thing. Chad is convinced that adult women are completely competent to decide whether or not to abort their unborn children and should not be told how to use their bodies, but apparently these same women are not competent to decide whether or not to go into a smoky bar, and indeed this is such a matter of public concern that we must have legislation on it. I do not mean to chide our friend. Which of us does not hold some views which are inconsistent with each other.
This is illustrative, though. Chad and Mr. Epp get very agitated regarding "abortion rights" and insist that women (and men, I suppose) have the right to "control their own bodies." Here are a list of laws that one has to get rid of if we are to take that notion to its logical conclusion: laws against prostitution, public nudity, public sex acts, public urination and defecation, all laws against drug use, any laws that seeks to restrict food and drugs because of safety issues (good-bye FDA), laws mandating seat belts and motor cycle helmets (where such laws exist). This list is not exhaustive. It is only what I came up with off the top of my head. Now, these fine gentlemen may protest that, for example, they are for laws against public urination and public defecation because such laws protect public health. Indeed. But then that admits that sometimes public interest trumps my right to control my own body. All of us except the anarchists believe that there are times when the public interest should contravene our "right to control our own bodies." So when it comes to abortion, Chad and Todd don't really think that people have the right to control their own bodies in every case, just that the public interest in abortion is not enough to counteract that right in that case. But Chad clearly thinks that the right of people to control their own bodies is trumped by the public interest against second hand smoke and that, in effect, adult Americans must be protected from themselves. I, for one, think that the public interest in the moral status of the unborn is enough that the public should decide what protections the unborn get, not individuals, thus the public interest outweighs the interest in women controlling their bodies. But I don't think the public interest in smoking is enough that we need to tell bar owners, who run establishments only frequented by adults, whether they can allow smoking or not. I err on the side of private people deciding whether to go into a smoky bar or a smoke free bar. Perhaps that makes me as inconsistent as Chad. Or maybe it just illustrates that politics is about what we value, and we all evaluate things differently.
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