What we have here is a variant of the second-hand smoke problem.
You, as an individual, are free to decide if you want to smoke. Unfortunately, doing so in a enclosed space can also infringe upon the rights and choices and health of everyone else around you.
Hence society as a whole has rules in place about just where and how a smoker may indulge themselves.
Or as stated by Thomas Jefferson, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
Freedom and rights are always in tension, your rights verses those of others. Unfortunately, some people don’t respect the rights of others, or for whatever reason think their rights and their freedoms are somehow more important than those of others.
They’re not. Hence rules.
The Declaration of Independence reinforces this: “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
But again, note that Jefferson and the founders were careful to put these inalienable rights in a specific order: life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. In doing so they wanted to show that no individual’s pursuit of liberty or happiness should come at the expense of endangering someone else’s life.
I have no problem with people who think differently and want to make their own decisions… but I would like them to at least consider the fact that their decisions and actions could — quite literally in this case — kill someone else.
Yes, we all eventually die, but I think that most of us would tend place somewhat more stress on the word eventually in that sentence.
I for one am not rushing to stick my foot into the grave. Are you?
Both you and I might wish people would simply use common sense, but as I believe Voltaire once said, “Common sense is not so common.” And the simple fact of the matter is that you and I simply might disagree as to what constitutes “common sense” in a given situation.
Which again, brings us back to the rules that society has hashed out over the years in an effort to resolve those disputes.
We are a free people.
But freedom is not open season to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and to whomever you want. Freedom comes with responsibility, to yourself, your family, and to others.
