Advice on Coping with Collectivist Anti-Smoking Tyranny

In response to the latest phase in the continuing campaign against private property rights and personal choice (edicts regarding the enjoyment of tobacco in private places to which the public has access) I have taken the time to offer some friendly advice to the beleaguered smokers of Ontario and any other jurisdiction where the dominoes of liberty continue their collapse in the face of galloping socialism. To smokers in other jurisdictions facing similar edicts, I say, feel free to use this advice as well.

Celebrate Freedom

First of all, dear smoking brothers and sisters, do not despair. This can be seen as a time for celebration. Thirty years ago I realized that any freedom we have in Canada did not exist because anyone in a position of influence or power saw value in defending it. Rather, the freedom we had at the time existed only because no one had yet seen any advantage in extinguishing it.

At the time I was still swayed by the naive belief that freedom was very important to Canadians. After all, they told us way back in public school that two world wars had been fought to defend the world against tyranny. When a growing awareness of the contradictions between this alleged devotion to freedom and the actual state of freedom in this country became too great to ignore I became angry. This was my first mistake.

Rather than becoming angry and mourning the loss of past freedoms I should have been thankful that so much freedom was still left. After all, working people still had control of more than half of their income and anyone could go into a pub and puff away on their favorite brand of cigarette while debating the relative virtues of individual autonomy versus obedience to the dictates of politicians and the organized interests financing and influencing them.

The freedom to puff was, of course, subject at all times to the willingness of the owners of the venues to permit it. The rights of property owners to set smoking policy and the rights of smokers to puff away in private establishments where smoking was not prohibited seemed secure. If I would have possessed the wisdom I now have at that time I would have celebrated this lingering breath of freedom.

At this stage in my life I am reluctant to make the same mistake again. Instead, I shall rejoice in the liberty that I still possess. I invite all other smokers and anyone else who values individual sovereignty to rejoice with me.

We still have some freedom! Consider the following list of liberties that have not yet been abrogated:

1 - you can still smoke in your "own" home. (I put the word "own" in quotation marks because, socialism has won by default. No one really owns anything in Canada. Ownership means possession and control. Though people may currently retain possession, control has long ago been relinquished to those who claim to represent "the people."

2 - you can still smoke in your own car. (with the same caveat as in 1 above.)

3 - you can still smoke right outside the entrance to your favorite bar, restaurant or bingo hall etc. (they haven't imposed the 9 meter requirement yet. Probably an oversight.)

4 - you can still smoke while standing at a bus stop. (they haven't imposed the 9 meter requirement yet. Probably an oversight.)

5 - you can still smoke while walking down the street even though the sidewalk is not private property. (they haven't imposed the 9 meter requirement yet. Probably an oversight. Which will come first, a complete ban on smoking on public sidewalks or an edict prohibiting smoking within 9 meters of anyone else using that same sidewalk? - or anyone within 9 meters anywhere as in, a passing car with a nuclear stereo blasting mind-numbing, window vibrating, youth corrupting, hate mongering rap music.)

6 - you can still smoke in some parks.

7 - you can still smoke on patios including patios less than 9 meters from the bar entrance.

8 - you can still smoke just about anywhere in Las Vegas.

9 - If it is raining or snowing or sleeting, if the weather outside is generally miserable, you are still free to seek some form of shelter provided it does not violate the 9 meter rule now seen at hospitals, nursing homes and government buildings. Hence you can still go find a tree somewhere, or perhaps a covered laneway or garage. If the rain is spewing down at an angle, you can still stand beside a telephone pole or something to derive some modicum of shelter. If someone tells you smoking under any form of shelter will someday be prohibited as well... recall how we all laughed when we first heard that bars had been targeted for prohibition.

10 - eventually, many or all of the above freedoms will fall before the Anti-Smoking Zealot (ASZ - ASZholes or ASZ's) juggernaught. It is difficult to accurately predict the exact order in which the above freedoms will disappear however I am certain it will either be in public parks or on patios. (probably on patios, more smokers can be harassed this way.)

Smoking in cars and on sidewalks will follow. The last to fall will be smoking in the home and in Las Vegas(the Las Vegas prohibition will be based on the serious health consequences of THS - Third Hand Smoke).

So where is the freedom in item number 10? Smokers will still be able to climb trees and smoke up there.

11 - You can still express an opinion about smoking. For example, I can say "I enjoy smoking. I have been smoking for years and there's nothing I enjoy more than getting together with old friends and having a few beers while enjoying a Marlboro." Currently seen as a "right", in the same way as setting smoking policy in your own business once was, statements like this will eventually be banned.

Never underestimate the ingenuity of the ASZ's to use whatever means at their disposal to mount an attack. Given that the ASZ's, who have a monopoly on truth, have declared there is absolutely no redeeming value to smoking, positive comments about smoking will be seen as hate crimes. No minority group can be identified as the target of this hate crime. This, however, will not be a problem for the ASZ's. Positive remarks about smoking will be viewed as hatred of humanity in general and thus worthy of sharing cellspace with Ernst Zundel.

12 - When all of the above freedoms have been extinguished the toughest smokers will head for the non-populated parts of the country. Wearing buckskins and sporting beards they will hang out in the mountains and in the forests.

This is where the ASZ's will get together with PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. "PETA believes that animals deserve the most basic rights—consideration of their own best interests regardless of whether they are useful to humans. Like you, they are capable of suffering and have interests in leading their own lives; therefore, they are not ours to use—for food, clothing, entertainment, or experimentation, or for any other reason.)

Government money extracted from recalcitrant smokers will be used to fund studies by experts who will be instructed to conclude that ETS causes cancer in wolves, warblers and worms. Smoking in the woods will be banned.

13 - Let's face it smokers. While we still have a lot of freedom to celebrate eventually the ASZ's will see to it that there is absolutely no place we can go to indulge our preferences.

With smoking in the wilds banned smokers may head to the cemeteries. That's where they're going anyway so why not get there early. The ASZ's will eventually follow. More "studies" will prove that second hand smoke causes cancer in corpses. Smoking around the dead would be considered an indignity to the dead and likewise banned.

14 - perhaps the last refuge will be in the minds of smokers. They can always dream of lighting up a tasty Marly. "Seine Gedanke Sind Frei." Perhaps not. With advancing technology the human brain may eventually be directly hooked up to the internet or whatever succeeds it. The flow of information will have to be two-way. To imagine that one is enjoying a cigarette would violate new laws restricting Third Hand Smoking.

Marvin Caplan, one of the architects of Hamilton's smoking edicts said, "law is those restrictions that make men more free." Given the nature of current smoking edicts, the ASZ's and their elected allies are working hard passing laws forcing people to be increasingly free. Eventually, there will be so many laws our freedom will be unlimited. If and when they gain the ability to read the minds of their constituents is there any doubt they would demur from enacting new laws to impose more and more freedom on dissenters? Like the radio propaganda has been cheerfully anouncing in the month leading Hamilton's last imposition, "On June, 1st We All Win." What a disgusting example of political doublethink.

So celebrate folk's. Enjoy the freedom you have left. Savor it. Remember it. Be thankful you were born in an age where it was entirely yours. Your children will grow up in an entirely different world.

Don't feel bad about the world in which our children are growing up. Celebrate. When we were young, we had to make our own decisions about how to use our freedom. This was a burden Canadians have rejected massively, election after election.

With no shortage of Caplanesque politicians our children will have someone else decide how they employ their volition. Like that great line in the movie GI Jane, where the Master Chief (Viggo Mortensen) tells Jordan O'Neil(Demi Moore), "If I wanted your opinion, I'd give it to you."

Be Proud

By now we have all seen it. People standing outside their own homes, smoking. The Second Hand Smoke hoax has been so successful that many smokers seem to think they are performing a heroic public service by going outside their own homes to smoke a cigarette. This activity has to be regarded as perhaps the ultimate expression of schmooism I have ever seen with only one exception - those who *volunteer* for military service, then go off and get themselves killed in some third world shithole because some asshole like George Bush wants to get his name in the history books.

Get a grip people!

Common sense ought to have told you right from the start that second hand smoke ain't nothing like primary smoke. When you consider all the different chemicals we in the industrial world are exposed to on a daily basis why does diluted tobacco effluent rate so highly? The answer is as plain as the nose on your noggin.

The thing that makes second hand smoke such a contentious issue is that millions of people, around the world, *enjoy* burning and inhaling tobacco.

Since the beginning of time there have always been a small group of people who simply cannot tolerate the fact that other people enjoy an activity of which *they* disapprove.

So I say to you now, fellow smokers, accept no more guilt or shame for your particular choice of enjoyment. Rejoice in being an autonomous biological unit separate from the collective which aims to control you as if you were a mere cellular component. You have a right to be here and you have the right to smoke and no one has a right to interfere with that decision.

Accordingly,

1 - punitive taxes imposed by governments intended to make your financial life difficult as a result of your choices are illegitimate and ought to be resisted with any and all legal means available to you. The law has been perverted. It no longer represents a means to promote the general interest. It is now a tool of special interests and as such has no moral authority. If you can break the law by smoking without being caught feel free to do so without guilt. I do not advocate that you break any law, mind you, I simply state that if you choose to do so without fear of reprisal you ought not feel the slightest twinge of guilt at having done so.

2 - you have the right to smoke anywhere you damn well choose so long as your exercise of that right does not violate the rights of others. If you happen to be visiting the home of a friend who asks you not to smoke be respectful of that request. Even if the request is based upon the idiotic belief that your ETS will cause some grave harm to the host or their family respect their rights. You are not the ultimate judge of what is or is not true,(nor are the assholes populating the local legislature.)

By the same token, if you happen to be present on the property of someone who does not object to your enjoyment of tobacco, feel free to light up without guilt. What you are doing may be illegal but it is not immoral. I am not advising anyone to break the law. I am merely stating that a decision to do so need not be accompanied by any sense of guilt or shame.

3 - Show your pride, as a smoker but more importantly as an independent thinker. Devise ways of demonstrating that you do not simply submit to the edicts of ignorant, pandering politicians without question. Stand up for the integrity of your own mind and for the dignity you deserve as a free and independent individual.

- smoke in your own home.

- smoke when driving your car.

- smoke while walking down the street on public sidewalks, at bus stops and while watching your kids play ball at the park.

- carry a pack of previously enjoyed cigarette butts with you at all times. It may be illegal to smoke in a lot of places but so far, it isn't illegal to carry a pack of previously enjoyed butts in your pocket.

- If you go to a pub where a sign has been posted on the door requesting that you extinguish your cigarette before entering determine whether the request originated with the owner of the pub or with the local crew of gauleiters. If the source of the request is the latter, by all means extinguish your butt, then put it in your shirt pocket along with whatever other tobacco residuals you have saved and go on in. Derive pleasure from the degree to which your unlit smoking residuals reek the place up.

- whenever you enter a building or establishment where smoking has been prohibited, not by the owner, but by interloping politicians and their chosen minions, carry an unlit cigarette with you. Hold it in your hand or in your mouth. So long as it is not lit you will not be "smoking" hence you ought to be out of reach of current dictates.

- word on the street is that legions are not affected by the current usurpation of private property because they are "private clubs." Call your local legion hall and confirm whether they have been nationalized along with other drinking establishments. If they have not consider becoming a member or associate member.

- if you happen to find yourself in a non-smoking pub resist the urge to step outside for a smoke. Keep in mind the current torrent of legal harassment of smokers has been engineered by a very small minority consisting of an assortment of nasty misanthropes and puerile narcissists. Though these people will never be satisfied, can never be satisfied, with the restriction of the choices of others - particularly the misanthropes who can only be pleased by human extinction, you have to know they will derive a vindictive pleasure at the sight of smokers huddling around doorways. Don't give them that satisfaction.

- get in touch with old friends and invite them to your home for friendly conversation, beer and smoke. Take heart in knowing that so long as you retain this liberty the ASZ narcs and thropes will suffer terribly.

- if you have children it is probably a good idea to try to discourage them from smoking. Smoking does incur certain risks. Explain to your children that if they never develop a penchant for smoking that certain health risks associated with smoking can be avoided.

Explain to them also that almost no human activity is devoid of some degree of risk and that any activity under consideration will involve a degree of risk. If they ride bicycles they could be hit by a car. If they climb trees they could fall down. If they eat a lot of junk food they could become obese and risk any of a spectrum of diseases associated with that condition.

Above all, inform them that if they accept any and all edicts handed down to them by their so-called political leaders they run the risk of becoming selfless, mindless schmoos. Make sure they understand that once they have adopted the personal ideology of schmooism they become the tools of politicians and public policy "experts".

The dangers of schmooism can be aptly demonstrated with a gob of plasticine. Plasticine can be molded into various shapes at the whim or will of the molder. It is vitally important that children be apprised at an early age that in Canadian society, if one does not develop the capacity for independent thought one becomes mere human plasticine, available for the satisfaction and furtherance of the careers of any number of whoremongering politicians eager to make a living, not by serving their fellow man as carpenters and hamburger flippers do, but by pretending to serve their fellow citizens by flapping their jaws and inventing new edicts.

As any parent knows, one of the first things children learn once they become articulate is to question authority. Rather than attempt to suppress this absolutely natural human tendency, smoking parents ought to nurture and encourage it. If this were done on a wide scale, the next generation would be equipped with something the malleable voters of our present day sorely lack.

- Educate Yourself!

Nothing is more important to the individual being assaulted and manipulated by the whoring despots who compete with one another for the privilege of writing the "laws" of our supposedly free society than education. Read the editorial pages of your local newspaper and you will soon develop a sense of the utter intellectual vacuity that prevails amongst the "man in the street", the puppet on the end of the string of the pretenders who have chosen politics rather than service as their means of earning a living.

Politicians often live out their entire lives without getting so much as a single dollar exchanged for service provided. This is not to say they do not receive money voluntarily from certain interests. There are always those who make "political contributions" to their campaigns in the hope of receiving some later legislative consideration. Once elected though, the rest of us who have no choice but to pay the taxes mandated, find ourselves paying the salaries of those whose sole raison de etre is to turn their fellow citizens into servants of those with power and influence.

Consider this insult.... now that Andrea Whorwath has been elected as an NDP member of the Ontario legislature, anyone including myself who abhors her collectivist ideology must nevertheless contribute through taxation to the furtherance of the NDP, a primitive tribal cabal with which no civilized individual would ever choose to be associated.

Part of your self-education should include your own research into second hand smoke or ETS. If you have an internet connection, visit forces.org, a site containing tons of information exposing the dishonest techniques and plain old human greed that hide in the shadows of the anti-smoking movement.

In some cities, including my own, smoking has been banned in taxis. Though I would never advise anyone to break the law I have to admit it gives me great pleasure to see cab drivers smoking away in their cabs. I see the practice as a benign statement from the cab driver to the oppressor saying, "take your law and stuff it."

So I say rejoice fellow smokers! Light one up now as I am doing! Nothing worth doing has ever come without a price.

If you are naive about liberty as I once was, wake up. It does not exist in this world. Correction, there is no government in this world that I am aware of which respects freedom. Until I encounter evidence contrary to this I must surrender to the fact that the dominant, perhaps universal belief, is that individuals are always and everywhere, tools of the state. Any freedom that does exist, exists merely because no one has seen the advantage in restricting or prohibiting it.

Is this a reason for liberty lovers to despair? Not at all. Human life, human affairs are enormously complex. The Marvin Caplans, the Whorwaths, the Daltoff McGintlers ad infinitum can devote their miserable existences to the regulation and control of human affairs. Sadly for them, human affairs are so rich and varied they will never, NEVER, even come remotely close to the degree of control they desire. For proof consider visiting Cuba, a communist dictatorship where no one wears motorcycle helmets or seatbelts and where you can light up just about anywhere with a few common-sense exceptions, like in the vicinity of refueling jetliners.

Sure, they can use the police powers of the state to prohibit this and ban that, to restrict this and limit that, to tax this and fine that.... but people will always find a way around their edicts.

In the end freedom lovers will survive. They will never prevail, that would require an almost universal devotion to individual thought. They will survive though. In an imperfect world, what else can one ask for?

So light up one of your favorite smokes and celebrate freedom!