The new Jim Crow laws

With a new Democratic majority in Minnesota state government, liberals are hopeful that they can now force a law that will require businesses throughout the state to mount signs on their doors excluding an unwelcome minority group. Businesses that once welcomed all customers will be required to turn away some... not because the business doesn't want them, but because the newly powerful liberals don't want the businesses to be open to all.

The same sort of people who once forced businesses to take down discriminatory signs, will be forcing businesses to discriminate and to put up signs clearly warning a minority that they're not welcome inside.

That is another version of this recent story:

Statewide smoking ban looks more likely. With a new DFL majority, advocates are optimistic

It didn't take long for the StarTribune's liberal editorial staff to jump on the bandwagon with one of the most deceptive statements in history:

Last summer's comprehensive report on secondhand smoke by the U.S. Surgeon General may have marked a nationwide turning point.

The Surgeon General issued a simple statement, not a "comprehensive report", and there is no evidence to support even the statement he did make. There is no evidence of danger from secondhand smoke, as was verified by a real and large study by the World Health Organization:

Way back on March 8, 1998, the British newspaper The Telegraph reported:

The world's leading health organization has withheld from publication a study which shows that not only might there be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer but that it could have even a protective effect.

Last week the science fell off the campaign wagon when the definitive study on passive smoking, sponsored by the World Health Organization, reported no cancer risk at all.

Yeah... withheld from publication. What the WHO said in their abstract was this:

Our results indicate no association between childhood exposure to ETS and lung cancer risk.

Go on... don't take my word for it; read it yourself. Truth is, the only significant result of the study was that children raised by smokers were 22% less likely to get lung cancer.

Less likely? Sure doesn't jive with what you hear and read these days, does it? The anti-smoking industry (you better believe it's an industry... with big profits) has turned the truth upside down... wiped out the truth and substituted falsehoods that they simply repeat so often that they have successfully made the lies into "common knowledge".

It's ironic that the people who would claim to be the most in favor of diversity, and toleration of the beliefs of others, are very often the same people who self-righteously and vigorously stomp all over the rights of anyone who wants something they don't want. Yes, I'm talking about "liberals", the absolute experts at pushing what they want onto those who disagree with them, all the while proclaiming their personal tolerance.

When "liberals", who wouldn't even think of publicly discriminating against another race, another religion, or another lifestyle, put on their "what's good for you" spiked helmets, they proceed to discriminate without hesitation or a hint of guilt. When they jump into "nanny" mode, deciding to push what they believe is politically correct, they become self-righteous and vicious. They're also expert at ignoring evidence and promoting what they want the truth to be.

When I encounter a restaurant with a NO SMOKING sign on the door, I have an idea what it would have felt like when a black person saw a WHITES ONLY sign on the door. Sure, there are differences... I can choose whether to smoke but I can't choose my skin color, and I can choose to not smoke while in the restaurant, but I can't temporarily change my skin color. However, it is exactly the same kind of thinking that produced both signs... do it my way or take a hike, backed by the force of law.

Do-gooders also ignore whom they're pushing around. While they preach against smokers, they ignore some facts, such as the fact that a higher percentage of blacks smoke than whites, or the fact that more poor people smoke. That doesn't stop them from not only taxing cigarettes outrageously, but continually reducing where we can smoke.

The discrimination won't end with non-smoking restaurants and bars either. Smokers have already become so isolated that the noses of non-smokers have become sensitized to being aware when a smoker is nearby, even when not smoking. I have no doubt that once a non-smoking ban is in place that some anti-smokers will complain that they can still smell smoke, and that smokers should therefore be excluded completely.

I have no problem with an individual business putting the sign up... in fact, I have no problem with the restaurant putting either sign up. That should be the right of the owner of the restaurant or bar. If the owner chooses to lose the business of smokers (or non-whites), he should have that right. I happen to be white, but I wouldn't object to a restaurant sign proclaiming BLACKS ONLY, or MUSLIMS ONLY, or WOMEN ONLY, even though each of them would exclude me. I don't need the freedom to go anywhere. There are lots of private places I'm not welcome, and I have no desire to go where I'm not welcome.

Not long ago, and still so in many places, smokers and non-smokers got along well, with businesses accommodating both... by choice. Some businesses catered only to non-smokers, and that was legitimate. Each business could choose, but that wasn't good enough for anti-smokers, who wanted their point of view forced by law... exactly as Jim Crow laws did in forcing businesses to exclude blacks.

The simplest, most obvious, most ignored fact is that force of law is only needed when an action is not the will of the people. Government-forced discrimination is always wrong. Every bar and restaurant owner could simply declare their businesses non-smoking. Many did. That's the way freedom works. There were businesses that didn't want to exclude blacks, which is why Jim Crow laws were needed... to force them into discrimination. There are restaurants and bars that don't want to exclude smokers, which is why liberals want the state to force them to exclude smoking. Smoking bans are cut from the same cloth as anti-black Jim Crow laws were, and are just as wrong.