Nov 14 2009
Tell Me Again How We Live in a Free Country…
If this doesn’t get your blood boiling…
The challenge ahead for conservatives is to tap into this clear support for freedom by illustrating what happens to real people when their lives and dreams get in the way of government tentacles that stifle personal and professional liberty.
That brings me to Adam Bliss, who owns Hookah Bliss in Chapel Hill. Thanks to North Carolina’s ban on smoking (pdf link) in most bars and restaurants, which takes effect Jan. 2, Bliss may lose his business and life savings. Why? Because hookah bars fall outside the exemptions state legislators wrote into the smoking ban to protect cigar bars and some clubs. As Bliss told The Daily Tar Heel, “If you look at the exemptions, they’re generally all places that rich, older white men like to smoke. If our representatives liked to smoke in hookah bars, hookah bars would have been exempt as well.”
Bliss is a real-world example of what happens when government policy — even when it’s well-intentioned — collides with the freedom to operate a business and sell a legal product.
There’s only one reason someone would voluntarily walk into a hookah bar. Yet, the conceited anointed in our government think they have an obligation to protect us all from unwittingly inhaling the scourge of second-hand hookah smoke.
Adam Bliss is the face of freedom lost. Today it’s hookah bars. The question is, which industry — and which one of us — is the next Adam Bliss?
Unfortunately too many people out there don’t angry enough to do something until it happens to them.
First they came for the smokers. Then they came for the hookah bars. Then they came for fast food. Then they came…
Didn’t they make a decision, locally, to allow Bliss to open a business? Isn’t it about time Chapel Hill turned ‘California’ and say ’screw the legislators, we won’t enforce the ban’?
What assholes.
This is a sad law that is becoming a norm in many states now.
We don’t live in free country. We are always getting things taken away. Instead of being worried about all the crimes that are going on in th world they are more interested in banning smoking. Where are our rights? We have none. Smoking in bars is not hurting anyone. This is suppose to be America the land of the free. But, it is beginning to be more like other countries where we are told what to do. We don’t have rights. Lately, its like the smokers are being punished. Not only you are hurting the smokers but, you are hurting business owners. Is that fair. These are some tough times and now you are making it worse. It is not right to ban smoking everywhere except non-profit. If you ban one then you should ban the other. What is the purpose of that? Don’t make since. This isn’t land of the free it is more like prison. We are told what to do and what not to do. Just like prisoners.