Damn the Torpedoes, I'll Smoke if I Want To!

So I promised a little something about tobacco, government and other such things, but I've realized that instead of doing this myself and doing it poorly, I should just refer you to an article that's actually worth your time to read. Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State by Joe Jackson.

However, I do have something to say on the subject of personal freedom, and this extends beyond the issue of tobacco to all areas of life.

(Edit: For any non-US readers, I apologize for my US centered language. I do not intend any offense or disrespect to other nationalities. It's just easier to use "our" or "us" than to say "the Americans'" or "the Americans".)

Government sucks, we all know this. It always has sucked, it does suck, and it always will suck. As an institution of authority, government is constantly seeking to intrude itself into the lives of its subjects, since only by the steady increase of intrusion can it maintain its relevance and therefore its authority. However, as history teaches us, anarchy sucks even worse than government (see the French Revolution). So the problem is to temper the extremes of anarchy, without intruding into the lives of the citizenry of the government. (Hmm, that was probably too many prepositional phrases all together there) But this is just the dilemma that the Founding Father solved (or at least so they thought) when they drafted the Constitution. As the supreme law of the land, the Constitution restricts the powers of the government in order to keep it from intruding and trampling on the natural rights of its citizens. It is important to remember that in its original form, the Constitution had no say over the citizens. Many people forget that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, and the Constitution is the contract by which the consenting governed bestow powers upon the government. The idea was that citizens should be allowed to do as they please within the voluntary bounds of the contract they, acting as a social unit, formed with their government. Coming directly from Locke and Hobbes, these ideas retain ultimate authority in the hands of the citizenry, not as a democratic mob, but as individual members of a single societal structure. As such, the chaotic struggle for survival envisioned by Hobbes is regulated by the imposition of such regulations as will prevent any individual from violating the freedoms and rights of any other individual. In theory, these regulations should be as unobtrusive as possible while still achieving their end. However, history has shown us that those in power will invariably seek to increase their power, and the eventual abolition of the inherent rights of Man is inevitable. To prevent this oppression, the Founders, drawing on their British heritage, drafted the Constitution as a barrier to governmental expansion and repression of natural rights. With this in mind, I ask you to contemplate our present governance. Does it appropriately wield its power with a view to protecting personal liberties? Does it, in all its proceedings, hold as its highest aim the advancement of the society to which it owes its very existence? Do those who, having been chosen by the citizens to represent them in discussion of political policy, bear in mind the weighty responsibility which their office bestows upon them to always strive for maximal liberty in exercising one's natural rights? The Founding Fathers, whatever their faults may have been, at least understood that no man who is denied the freedom to exercise his natural rights can be truly a citizen, but only a slave. I, for one, will never be enslaved. In the words of that great orator of American independence, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"