Another travestry of justice!!!
Tax-Funded Hate Campaigns
by Tibor R. Machan
In a free country one may dislike a lot of things, including people and institutions, but one can rest assured that one's own life and resources will not be conscripted to support what one dislikes, nor will one be prevented from supporting what one likes. But the United States of America is not a free country, certainly not as free as it should be.
One sign of this lack of freedom is that many of us must devote part of our lives and resources to shore up projects that we oppose. Consider those unbelievably mean-minded ads the California Department of Health is running in that state voicing unabashed venom against tobacco companies.
Cigarettes do not do much for one's health, no one can reasonably dispute this. But one's health isn't everything there is to one's life. Many people enjoy smoking not as a means to improve their health but for the fun of it.
Yes, yes, there is a lot of talk about being addicted to cigarettes, but the case made by its proponents isn't a slam dunk in favor of this idea. Indeed, there are serious scientists who debunk the idea of tobacco — and indeed, lots of other types of — addiction. They hold, instead, that folks just like to smoke a lot and that is why they do it. But because there is all this politically correct rhetoric going against smoking, a lot of those who like smoking put it in terms of being unable to quit, and not in terms of being unwilling to do so.
Even if the addiction idea carried conviction, there are millions of smokers who like to smoke and these folks, and the companies that serve them, are being reviled mercilessly at taxpayers' expense. And this is really pretty nasty. It involves attacking, via broadcast advertising, millions of individuals who work in honest jobs and who serve people with products and services they choose to obtain from them. (It is curious that these people are subjected to government-sponsored hate campaigns, especially at a time when so many politicians, including the president of the United States of America, want to enact hate crime legislation!)
Why should people who disagree with the view that smokers are sick or evil, and companies serving them even worse, be forced to contribute to a campaign of advertising claiming such things? Why may they be forced to fund such a campaign? There just is no valid reason for that.
The doctrine of freedom of speech should have something to say about this. Not only should one not be forced to stop thinking and saying what one believes, but no one should be forced to say what he or she does not believe. Yet by being taxed — indeed, via one's purchases of tobacco products — to support the anti-smoking ad campaign, that is just what is happening. Millions of people are conscripted into the war on smoking and many other crusades the government is conducting at their expense.
Back in the late 1960s many opponents of the war in Vietnam tried to refuse paying taxes so as to avoid being complicit in an military operation they didn't support. Conservatives argue that abortion clinics should not receive tax monies because this makes abortion opponents support something they oppose. And now I want to make it clear that I find it revolting that I am forced to support an ad campaign that attacks people I do not believe should be attacked.
Of course, the government taxes citizens to support all kinds of things they oppose. That is one thing that is so wrong with taxation and argues in favor of finding some other way to fund government. Free men and women should not be coerced to support projects they oppose. No democratic process should allow this. That, indeed, is one reason that there exists a separation of state and church, so that government will not transfer the wealth of some in order to support ideas they oppose.
But in the case of ad campaigns, the matter should be clear cut enough from the point of view of the US Constitution that forbids censorship and thought control. The First Amendment should be understood not only as a ban against limiting freedom of speech but also as a ban against forcing people to advocate what they do not believe.
ttp://www.zolatimes.com/V4.50/tobacco_ads.html |
