Do You Have A Fascist Personality?

Karen De Coster reports:

Someone opined recently that you can test a person's "fascist factor" by bringing up the issue of smoking bans with that person and gauging their reaction and listening to their take on the issue. I thought it was a strong point, and in fact I think it's a good yardstick from which to begin to determine a person’s comprehension of "your freedom ends at my nose."

Why smoking? Why not the host of other, more important infringements on freedom? I single out smoking because it’s a common endeavor. We all know family and friends and co-workers that smoke. Smoking never used to be evil; in a more sensible time and place, it was merely considered to be a health risk. Someone else’s health risk, if they were a smoker. Plus, the smoking issue is often in the news because every person who has any animosity whatsoever toward cigarettes is beating the drums for blanket non-smoking laws – in their city, your city, your restaurant, my house. The act of an individual smoking his or her cigarette, in a place where permission is granted by the owner, is being snuffed out everywhere we turn.

In testing this fascist factor, I recently asked a blonde friend why she favored more laws against smoking on private property. Her reply was straight to the point: "Because I hate smoking." She stated that she was tired of going to restaurants and putting up with cigarette smoke. Thus the snap reaction is to demand that one’s personal needs be met, even when you are just one of many visitors to another’s private establishment. I asked her, What if the same government that bans smoking in private businesses in Macomb County, Michigan suddenly declares that, effective immediately, those same businesses can no longer have blondes within their establishments because blonde hair is being banned also? "Oh that’s stupid. That’s not the same," she answered.

Oh, and how so? They both fall into the same stupid category in my mind. In fact, they are both arbitrary decrees that invade the self-ownership and private property rights of others. Both decrees are based on the view that one group of persons has the means to control another group of persons and their choices via government fiat. Both decrees are fascist in that they subject the individual to the collective and private property to some notion of "public good."

Some people don't like liberty of contract.