re: Mandeville to consider banning smoking in bars

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This could extend to toilets, food storage, hand washing, any number of health codes. "Let the owner decide. Let the market determine where people are getting the shits and they will stop going there? Who is the government to tell a man who has cooked chicken wings for 30 years how to prepare or store his wings? His business his choice. "Hi

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Well, if you feel that the hand washing and cooked chicken is a bit shady, don't go.

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None of this is about smoking. For those who don't mind government inserting itself ever more in personal freedoms, then fine. Some don't.

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Your smoking infringes on my personal freedoms.

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How?

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I don't smoke. I'm repulsed by smoking. I just believe in personal liberty.

But if I did, and you freely choose to enter a private business that allows smoking, then that is your personal choice, not mine.

How some of you cannot understand this, I'll never understand.

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It's a "freedom" with no consequence. This entire argument is mute anyway; courts have repeatedly upheld the ordinances and local communities across the nation continue to vote to enact them. You keep speaking of freedom, but the most basic of all freedoms we enjoy in this country is that the government serves at the pleasure of we, the electorate. They effectuate our collective ideals and what we want for our local communities, states, and country. Everyone of those city councilman that are contemplating this are where they are because the individuals in that community put them there. They weren't appointed by a some person in some far away place, nor did they simply take the position because they could. In essence, it's the community enacting the ordinance through representation, which is exactly how the founding fathers designed this country to work (i.e. original intent).

Hardcore republicans and democrats alike, as much as everyone talks about original intent and textualism, seem to forget the most basic intent of our founding fathers whenever a law comes into being that they disagree with: a democratic republic where we select people to enact and carry out the laws that we value. No law gets passed without the will of the people; it's simply not possible because the people enacting the laws are only able to do so because we elect them.

Moreover, as I said before, you, nor I, nor anyone else in this country has unlimited freedom. The only freedoms we have are those that are enumerated in the Constitution or implicitly flow from those freedoms. I can say without a doubt there is no personal freedom to choose whether or not to allow smoking in your place of business. In fact, the constitution expressly gives the government (specifically legislative branches) not only the ability, but the absolute right to regulate commerce, which is completely contrary to the assertion that store owners have some implicit freedom to choose all the manners and methods by which his business operates.

Business owners have the freedom to choose how to operate their business to the extent that the government allows. This isn't some recent idea or statute enacted by big government or liberals. It's in the main text of the constitution and actually precedes the Bill of Rights. That's how important government regulation of commerce was to the founding fathers. If you actually read some of the writings of the drafters of the constitution you will find that they believed that the rights and dignities of the general public supersede those of a business owner when he opens his place of business to the general public, thus the government has the right to regulate.

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Well, if you feel that the hand washing and cooked chicken is a bit shady, don't go.

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