Kevin Drum nearly pops a rotator cuff while patting himself on the back for backing the New York City smoking ban early, which, now that the New York Times has declared a success, is apparently univerally agreed upon as a “good idea.”

Drum says this is a case of “pragmatism defeating libertarianism.”

Y’know, I’ve been told that there was a time when liberals gave a damn about individual rights. I guess that time has passed.

There are all kinds of problems with the NY Times article, but let’s assume for a moment that it’s accurate. It’s too bad that people like Drum will defend to the death what you’re permitted to do behind your bedroom door (and rightly so), but they can’t bring themselves to apply the same principles to permit a business owner to do what he pleases within the walls of his own establishment. Worse, they can’t see the connection between the two.

It wasn’t too long ago that Drum was bitching and moaning about an eminent domain case in which the state was snatching private property from some poor people to give to retail outlets in order to generate more tax revenue.

Well, here’s a clue, Kevin: Either the state respects rights of property owners, or it doesn’t.

If you’re going to define the “public good” in broad enough terms to include restrictions on free association, and allow healthist government bureaucrats to rush in and save us from ourselves with respect to tobacco smoke, don’t be surprised when “public good” also comes to include the tax revenue generated by Big Retail. You can’t cheerlead one and scold the other, simply because you like the fact that Big Tobacco gets hurt in one scenario, and lament that Big Retail benefits in the other. A little consistency. That’s all we libertarians ask.

It’s infuriating, really. An entrepeneur invests the resources, sweat, risk, and hours to start a business, then people like Drum come along — people who didn’t risk a damn thing — and demand laws that force that entrepeneur serve them on their terms.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 7th, 2005 at 3:54 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.