I MAKE absolutely no apologies for comparing the current anti-smoking lobby in the UK to the fascist authorities that did such harm to Europe 60 years ago.
Because, you see, the controversy about the ban on smoking in enclosed public and work spaces in England is not really about health at all.
It is about something that is ultimately much more important to humanity – namely personal freedom.
It is a cruel irony indeed that the new repression is being pursued by people from the liberal persuasion in modern politics.
Ironic but not entirely unexpected …
For nearly 150 years ago Pope Pius IX, in outlining the Syllabus of Errors, pointed out where Statism and Liberalsm would lead humanity – into a very dark cul-de-sac indeed.
The Syllabus showed how Liberalism, born out of a desire for freedom, would first conflate the concepts of freedom and licence and then transmute itself into a nasty, proscriptive monster which wants to stamp its joyless orthodoxy all across the world.
That is what is happening now.
And that, in part, is why it comes no surprise to me that the Liberal Democrat-controlled city council in Liverpool has been among the most active public authorities in the nasty persecution of smokers which has been underway in recent years.
Nor am I surprised that this financially inept and lunatic council will be mounting the largest clampdown in the country to ensure that no-one breaks the monstrous new smoking ban.
The Liberal Democrats (who are neither liberal nor democratic in the true, original senses of the words), have together with the equally nasty Primary Care Trust in the city (representing doctors and local health centres) recruited 200 busybodies to go stomping around restaurants, shops and bars to hunt down anyone daring to flout the bifter ban.
What a repulsive waste of public money. And again, it is quite typical of emerging totalitarian societies to give the under-employed silly little uniforms and then set them to “work” in non-jobs to irritate the hell out of the general public.
Why don’t these smoking ban enforcement officers get a job that allows them to sleep at night – such as closing down orphanages?
Such is the sickening culture of cronyism and political correctness in Liverpool, however, that I wouldn’t be surprised if the taxpayer-funded Culture Company was right now busy designing a logo for these so called “smokefree ambassadors” to wear on their jackboots.
Something very sinister is afoot in the Western nations. Governments are starting to use environmental dangers and health scares and terrorism to trample all over our freedoms.
They won’t stop at banning smoking in pubs. Now that they have got away with that, it will be the other things that traditionally happen in bars they will try to ban next...
Soon they will try to stop us: drinking beer in pubs (that has already started with warnings on labels); playing darts (now the health and safety Nazis’ top priority); telling dirty jokes; and heaping scorn on the Government.
All those things have been going on in pubs for centuries – as had smoking, until the dawn of the new fascism on July 1 2007.
And with Merseyside Police at the forefront of outrageous new moves to spy on the Great British Public, it won’t be long before Big Brother’s boot is stamping on all our heads, again and again and again. It stinks.
Remember, you heard it here first.
I am grateful to regular readers Jack and Jools for pointing out that Nazi Germany had the world’s strongest anti-smoking movement in the1930s and early 1940s, supported by the fascists’ tame purveyors of perverted science.
Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Hitler(pictured above), Mussolini, and Franco were all non-smokers, whereas those lion-hearted champions of human freedom Churchill and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco.
One of Hitler’s stated goals was the achievement of a “secure and sanitary utopia”. That is precisely what Britain’s modern health fascists are trying to achieve too.
Disgustingly, Hitler also saw his anti-smoking campaign as one instance of the Nazi campaign for “racial and bodily purity”.
The trouble with people such as Hitler and the current smoking ban zealots is that they do not comprehend one of the most profound lessons from history – namely that (a) you cannot, and should not try to, achieve a human society that is free of risk and (b) if through repression and prohibition you come close to eliminating risk, then the resulting society would not be fit for humans.
It would be a society that couldn’t, in truth, be called human at all.
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Lord Vino du Matin wrote...
I am getting angrier and angrier. I am also concerned about the danger to the environment posed by millions of discarded ashtrays. Have the health/eco Nazis thought about that? Well, HAVE THEY?
Posted by: Lord Vino du Matin | July 2, 2007 5:27 PM