I am no fan of the much-maligned cigarette. I do not smoke, and have never smoked. I dislike the smell. I find consumption of this particular product to be annoying and dirty. However, I am not part of the snowballing campaign to make smoking illegal anywhere in the US or its territories. For now, it is legal, and for the most part it harms no one but the person who smokes, despite what the alarmists would have us believe about second-hand smoke.
It is amazing to me, however, that people get away with such alarmism. The latest is that the Motion Picture Association of America has decided as of last Thursday that smoking in a movie is equally as bad as sexual content, nudity, and violence. This will only make it harder for those of us who wish to instill Judeo-Christian morality in our kids. It used to be that if a movie had an ‘R’ rating, it could be assumed to have gratuitous violence, nudity, excessive profanity, or some other such moral ill, and I would do well to shelter my kids for it while they are especially young. Now, a movie could be quite family friendly but get the ‘R’ rating because someone in the background of a minor scene is smoking a Camel. Imagine a movie about a family road trip containing a scene with a minor breakdown, the father pulls into a mechanic shop and the mechanic happens to be out front on a break having a cigarette. The entire movie is now tainted. Never mind that I can take my child to an actual mechanic who is actually outside smoking and no one is harmed. My kid doesn’t see a naked person, gratuitous sex, or needless violence as such things are not only illegal, but still shunned by society as a whole.
The Left in this country scares me. As a Christian, I am often accused by them of being authoritarian for following Judeo-Christian values, and seeking leadership and values that reflect those values. However, when a Leftist forces laws on the rest of us forbidding smoking on private property, they do not see the irony. They do not see it as authoritarian to override 85% of the population that wishes marriage to remain defined as one man and one woman. They don’t see it as forcing their values on others to decide that no one should see movies with smoking going on in them. Yet maintaining the status quo on social issues like marriage is forcing values on people.
I was raised in a family of Democrats. They would have been considered by most to be fairly moderate, though my extended family has a few fanatics. When I stopped and took a step back to see what the issues were and what side of each issue I actually agreed with, I tended to find that I was much more conservative than I ever thought I could be. After realizing that I was conservative, it became incredible to me the hypocrisy that I see in the Left. The intellectual dishonesty astonishes me.
I’m about ready to quit! Maybe it’s time to call a Realtor on a small Pacific island somewhere and just check out of society.