Disturbian Nightmare

For what it's worth, I love living in suburbia. I live in a quiet little town about 30 minutes from where I work. There are plenty of restaurants, grocery stores, hardware stores and gas stations, but there's a paucity of leadership that recognizes individual rights.

My lovely little suburban enclave just passed an ordinance banning smoking practically everywhere outside of your own residence. I thought I lived here for the freedom to enjoy my life, associate with whom I please and enjoy watching a game or two at the local sports bar without worrying about "offending" anyone by smoking. After all, my favorite sports bar is only about 1.5 miles from my house and I have been going there for over 10 years. Neither I nor any of the other patrons every complained about the presence of "smokers". If you didn't like it, you could always go somewhere else down the street.

Most of the restaurants in town had already established "Non-Smoking" sections within the confines of the restaurant and there were restrictions put on the bar area to make sure that smokers did not intrude on the non-smoking sections of the establishment. I guess that wasn't good enough, however.

The Town Council thought it was a good idea to remove smoking from EVERY business establishment. Forget about who caters to who or why anyone may frequent a given place. Forget about the property rights of business owners. The Town Council decided it needed to impose a restriction on every business property owner to maintain the appearance of being "progressive".

What's really sad is that only about 2,000 people out of a town of 55,000+ voted these idiots into office. And this is endemic throughout the United States. A very small cabal of people force their liberal views on the "non-voting" majority because, well, they can.

It makes no difference that this non-smoking ordinance was scheduled for discussion and voted on within a period of less than a week. It makes no difference that the majority of residents at the meeting were overwhelmingly against the ordinance. It makes no difference that the Town Council didn't schedule public comments until almost 10pm. What mattered is that a select few individuals decided that they would force their will on a population of people and no one would care.

This same scenario is played out every day at every imaginable level of government. It happens locally, it happens on a state-wide level and it happens on a national level. It's not just about smoking. Hell, I'll go to the sports bar in next little town over that allows smoking. No, this is about a nightmare of disturbing proportions that continues to be played out behind the scenes in every corner of our country. How long before this disturbian nightmare begins to affect people in ways that they are totally unprepared for and were never a willing party to?

I think it's already begun. We've seen and are seeing it on a national level within every branch of government. And that example has not been lost on local and state governments, because we see the same thing happening there.

When does the sleeping populace awaken to take back that which it is unwittingly giving up? More importantly, will it ever?