Posted 3/20/2005 05:07:00 PM by Douglas

Is it every going to end? Is there ever going to be a vice that someone (or perhaps, a government) isn't going to protect us from? Prohibition, smoking, the drug war, and now it seems like their sights are set on fast food. Is there no end? Well, if you enjoy washing down a cheeseburger with a few beers, you're not alone.

HOW DID IT come to this? When was it decided that the dorks and the squares, the button-down mediocrities for whom a third Friday-night beer is the height of excess, would be calling the shots? Who empowered these teetotaling chumps, these jogging crypto-fascists with spotless livers and unblackened lungs, to decide where we smoke and how we drink and what we eat? The Declaration of Independence professes a commitment to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But apparently when it comes to substance abuse and foods of dubious nutrition, all bets are off. America is in very real danger from a creeping neo-prohibitionism, a systematic snuffing out of our beloved vices. It can only end badly.

Why does the government care? Because in our nanny-state, the government gets stuck with the bill when you smoke and eat ice cream all day, then waddle up to the free clinic wondering why you got heart disease. The problem isn't that the government is trying to tax the shit out of drinking, smoking, fatty foods and pizza, it's that government is married to curing your fat ass when you get sick. Take government out of the equation of curing the ignorant masses, and we'll see their interventionist nature dry up in a heartbeat.

But I didn't know when I woke up today that I'd be blogging two stories that reference Bill Hicks. Here's what he has to say on the matter of public smoking:

I smoke. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your fuckin’ mouth.

-- Bill Hicks

Rest his soul. If he'd have lived through another Bush presidency, and a $7 pack of cigarettes in NYC, there's just no telling what would have happened.