On Smoking Bans

(Inspired by Scoot’s comment here.)

I view modernity as progressive, and it is progressing towards the most maximally evil and yet boring place possible. Universal smoking bans is to me one of those fascinating modernisms that 1. Nearly everyone takes for granted today – indeed positively love it – and 2. Nearly no one took for granted 30 years ago – and indeed would have positively been horrified by it. Modernity deals with things it doesn’t like in the most ferociously managerial, scolding inhumane way until divergence of opinion is obliterated. It also smuggles so many bad ideas into the mix, so much question begging that I’m suspicious that life was just ever so slightly more interesting and humane then. I could be wrong and don’t mean that I want to make the 80’s great again – I also have never smoked, have no interest in starting, and am well aware of the body bags left in the wake of mass market factory tobacco (despite my misgivings of equating smoking with all that). It’s just a hunch I guess.

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  1. Ahh I see your point, thank you for clarifying.

    “Is protecting us from our own decisions a responsibility of government?” Before I was Catholic and before I thought very deeply about politics, I was a libertarian and my answer would have been “no”. If Dingus McGill wants to inhale a barrel of tar, let him.

    The Catholic view as I have come to understand it is that custodianship of the populace is an implicit responsibility. A PFC President should align the apparatus of government around leading the populace to virtue. Should a PFC President go so far as to eliminate vice or merely encourage virtue? The absence of vice does not a moral population make–but a moral population will precipitate the absence of vice.

    That’s why modernity is an insidious set of values: it approaches reason (“The government should care about it’s people”) and then goes too far (“The people can’t be trusted to take care of themselves”). The “interesting and humane” society before the era of excessive regulation was a society where people took responsibility for themselves. There was moral hazard. That is certainly interesting–and people would certainly behave more carefully. Reminds me of the saying that “An armed population is a polite population”.

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