Thanks to The Devil's in the Detail I found the famous Peggy Noonan article in the Wall Street Journal written in 2002
People who come to this blog may have read it before but it was the first time I'd seen it although I had heard about it. Good honest writing has no shelf life and what Noonan says is as relevant now as it was then:
Why do liberals punish smokers? Could we discuss this? Is it that it makes them feel clean? Some parts of our culture in which liberals largely call the shots--Hollywood, for instance--are fairly low and degraded. Maybe liberals can't face this, and make themselves feel clean if they ban unclean air? Or maybe banning smokers makes them feel safe, like they'll never die.
Maybe it makes them feel in control. Maybe it makes them feel superior.
Or maybe they just want to bully someone.
I think the old Liberals are the NuProgressives who are taking us back to the Middle Ages on the one hand while enforcing perverted ideology on the other
Smokers have been dehumanised further in the 10 years since Noonan's article highlighted the danger of socially acceptable intolerance and as The Devil's in the Detail points out :
All any of us really want is to be left alone. I don't know if we can go back to just being people again but let us have our separate places,our separate lives and live them so we are in the end happy, we will take responsibility for ourselves if you all just go away.
That is the bottom line on this issue. Both sides can be accommodated and the health issue is just a smoke-screen to hide vile prejudices about people singled out for a kicking with Govt approval. I will never understand why choice - especially in our leisure time - is too much to ask. Leave us alone and we will not come within a mile of smokerphobics who do not deserve the amount of discriminatory legislation that Govt gives to pander to their mental phobia.
Smokerphobics really are an orchestrated minority and Govts should stop listening to them and putting them into positions of authority
Noonan, on the other hand, is representative of the real non-smoker and people like this are the ones who should be involved in any political decision that targets this particular cultural lifetyle group.
She says :
No, I don't smoke. I used to. I still have some feeling for my old messier, more anarchic self, but now I don't like the smell of smoke and don't think I'll ever go back to it. But that doesn't mean no one else can. And it doesn't mean I won't let you light up.
We should let the smokers back inside and treat them as if they're human, because they are. Until then I hope the smokers huddled together in the cold realize they're outside because of the modern liberals' war against being human. I hope they organize building to building and raise money to fight the prissy prohibitionists of politics, the Bloombergs and their ilk, who can't keep you safe from muggings or suitcase nukes but make believe they're being effective by keeping you safe from a Merit Ultralight.
The full article linked above is well worth a read if you haven't read it before. If you have then read it again and share it. Decent people - smokers, non-smokers, or never smokers - need to realise they have been duped into accepting the exclusion and punishment of fellow human beings who will do them no harm.