Freedom – You’re doing it wrong
Posted by Robb Allen | Filed under Administrative, Nanny Business, Non-Freedoms, Plain Old Hypocrisy
Sigh… Owning a gun is nice and all, but if we keep putting up with shit like this, it’s a useless gesture amounting to nothing more than a distraction from the true loss of freedom
TAMPA – Hillsborough County soon will begin enforcing its strict ordinances governing adult businesses now that a federal appeals court has ruled the restrictions are constitutional.
…
“But we will make sure that these businesses comply with the law,” she said.
The ruling from the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals means that dancers at bikini bars will have to stay 6 feet away from patrons, and the sale or consumption of alcohol will be prohibited at adult businesses.
Additionally, adult video stores would be prohibited from having private viewing booths and workers would have to pass a criminal background check before they are hired.
When I lived in Atlanta, you could go to a nudie bar and have your 14th shot of tequila served to you by a butt naked chick grasping the glass in a way that would, from first appearance, be viewed as anatomically impossible. Now, if you wished to keep your nose centered between your eyes and mouth, you didn’t want to grope the girls but they’d touch you, that’s for sure.
In a free society, what I wish to pay for is my business. If I want to go watch some lady take off her knickers while consuming absinthe with a handful of Flintstone vitamins and having taco sauce poured over my freshly shorn genitalia for $25.95, that’s my business. No one else’s. Period. It doesn’t matter how ‘icky’ you find it, how morally degrading it seems to you, it’s none of your business.
But that’s the problem we have in our society, and both sides, left and right are to blame. When the left sees someone not caring enough, they give the government more power to take away things and redistribute. When the right sees someone parking their trailer in the wrong side of the gas station, the impose “community protections”. And both have the audacity to bitch when the other side does the same thing.
Look, we can’t live in anarchy. I’m not a full blown Libertarian because they don’t have enough of a plan to keep society from tearing its own throat out. The non-aggression principle works fantastic when everyone is non-aggressive. I can even understand the idea of zoning for businesses and residential areas. But that’s about it, folks. Once you say “You can run business of type X here”, that’s where the line is drawn.
Of course, that would take control away from the elite, and they’re not real keen on giving it up.
Now, the constitution doesn’t allow mini-tyrants local governments to prevent people from running nudie bars. So what to the tyrants legislators do when they can’t directly attack the constitution? They impose “regulations”
Imposing tight regulations is one way jurisdictions can attempt to control adult businesses after courts ruled cities or counties can’t pass such restrictive zoning requirements that leave no place for the businesses to operate. The regulations don’t outlaw the businesses, just stringently regulate them.
You see, you can still run a tittie-joint but the girls must wear county approved pasties, dance no more than 78″ away and not less than 72″ from the patrons, only operate between 3AM and 4AM, cannot serve any alcohol, and must employ only blind nuns who have never been in a car with anyone who’s ever had a speeding ticket. As long as you follow the near-impossible set of regulations, you can run your business as you see fit.
Reminds me a lot of “common sense gun regulations”.
Here’s another little factoid – I don’t particularly care for strip joints. Never have. For one, I am a very, very cheap bastard and paying $10 for a watered down coke just so some strung out bint can shake her plastic tits in my face isn’t what I’ve ever considered economical. For much less I could always get some girl drunk enough to take home which not only cost less, it generally ended up being much, much more enjoyable than just watching. Generally. And I know it’s cheesy, but the prude in me always felt sorry for the dancers even though most of them did not want nor need my pity.
But that’s me. If you like it, who am I to tell you no? And that’s what pisses me off so much. If you value freedom, then that means letting other people do things you would never consider. I’m not into the whole gay thing. Not my bag of tea. But I’ll be damned before I let some jack-ass politician tell me who (or what) I can and cannot have relations with.
Each time you allow your representatives to tack on more and more “regulations”, you limit your freedom more and more. Each time you vote to increase the power of the government, even when you think that particular increase is beneficial, it will never go away and always be added on to, generally by people who you didn’t want to have that power in the first place. Don’t like the way Bush uses his authority? YOU gave it to him. Maybe not directly, but by constantly assuming it’s the government’s responsibility to do X, you grant them more and more power.
This isn’t how free men and women live, this is how slaves are created.
Tags: death of common sense
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September 27th, 2008
You really hit the nail on the head with that one. Wouldn’t it be nice if people could just mind their own business.
November 15th, 2008
It amazes me that people don’t understand that just because the thing *they* don’t like is being “regulated” out of existence at the moment does not mean that something they like very much might be in the future.