Louisiana’s PJ Police
For those who still don’t understand why people like me are vehemently opposed to laws passed by municipalities dictating things like where people can smoke and if they can wear sagging pants in public, I offer this story out of Caddo Parish.
In some instances, laws written by busybody public officials like this one are evenutally enacted statewide, such as a Louisiana law that forbids smoking in restaurants. I suspect that there will be many who read this who believe that laws like the PJ prohibition parish ordinance are good ideas. They aren’t.
PUBLIC ENEMY No. 1
People who agree that laws should trump business owners’ rights to decide things like allowing smoking in restaurant, bars and casinos and how people dress in public don’t understand the tyrannical mind. Give these officials an inch and they will take a mile and pretty soon we have pajama police pulling you aside trying to decide if the house pants you wore to shop for coffee filters makes to an outlaw.
In the Caddo Parish case, you have an official who went to Walmart and saw people wearing pajama pants and house shoes. He might have been looking a little too hard, because he said he could tell they didn’t have underwear underneath. In any case, if he felt that what these bozos were wearing was inappropriate Walmart attire–and that’s a very low bar–he should have taken the matter to a manager. Instead, its become a knee-jerk reaction for authoritarian-minded politicos to draft yet another stupid law to micromanage our lives.
And we have a plethora of stupid laws in The Bayou State, a reported by dumblaws.com. Louisiana, of course, isn’t alone. There are lots of states with inane laws:
Here are a few more:
And here one more video that features laws enacted to meddle in people’s love life, in honor of Valentines Day. I realize that it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and not Valentines Day, but my lady is already buggin’ me about jewelry. There should be a law:
You got it on the pajamas issue but your argument fails on smoking. The difference is, certain people have disabilities related to pulmonary function where they would be excluded from many life activities if smoking was not regulated. Remember, smoking is a choice while having pulmonary problems is not. You can engage in commerce without having to smoke. People with COPD, emphysema, cystic fibrosis, etc. can’t.
Tyranny in this instance is allowing voluntary behavior injurious to others to deprive them of exercising liberties that the majority can enjoy without similar interference. I think if somebody’s behavior must be modified in this instance, let’s err on the side of liberty.
eating out is a choice,the person with lung problems can get the food to go
So the ability to smoke voluntarily and cause distress to others at a dining establishment trumps the right of somebody to enjoy that establishment (dining out is more than just the food)? Congratulations, I’m sure the Obama Adminstration has a job waiting for you with that attitude.
I think you are missing the point here. It’s not really about smoking in restaurants. It’s about the government overstepping its bounds by making laws that take away the rights of others, in this example, PRIVATE business owners. What’s the difference between this and the government passing a law banning table salt in restaurants? Michelle Obama’s “Let’sMove” propaganda makes it feasible. If a restaurant wants to offer a smoking section separate from non-smoking, what’s the problem? Government needs to stop telling me how to live my life.
One more question, define “distress”. Isn’t that up to interpretation? I mean someone wearing an overly eccentric screaming neon yellow outfit might cause someone “distress” because they have sensitive eyes and seeing that causes them to get a headache, then get physically ill, causing an ulcer, then a trip to the ER that costs so much money they have to sell their vehicle, now having to take a bicycle everwhere, which causes him to get….. You get my point, I hope.