A few weeks back we were in a local watering hole. It was the day of the Datona 500, so my ire was up anyway. (I find NASCAR fans among the most insufferable people on the planet, but that is a topic for another post.)
After several rounds (and much delicate mocking of the NASCAR fans), a family of sorts walked in. It was a woman, two men and yes, a baby. I mean literally a baby, as in ‘I’m-just-learning-to-stand-on-my-own-baby’).
Now, I’m not a believer in ‘family values’ or the nanny state. I generally believe people should have the freedom to do what they want to do. Coercion is usually a bad thing.
But this bothered me. Keep in mind this isn’t a restaurant that happens to serve booze. It’s a bar. Smoky, full of drunks, loud music blaring, sports on the TV – a bar.
Then one of the guys at the table lit up a smoke. The baby starts to cry, or more accurately, scream. The other guy gets pissed off at, of all people, the baby, not the jerk who’s smoking less than two feet away from the baby.
Then it hit me; there’s three of them, and only two of us. We’re both politically-minded people, and the primaries have become our new favorite sport. Lately, our nights out involve beers, whiskey and hours of discussion about the merits of different healthcare systems.
And these three jokers, who probably couldn’t pick a presidential candidate out of a police lineup, will actually have more sway in the general election than we will. I don’t mean to be an elitist, but seriously, what am I supposed to make of that?
Freedom = good. Coercion = bad, but does that include the freedom to be morons? Freedom to be uninformed? It’s this freedom that’s given us the past eight years.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe when these people aren’t getting tanked up with their baby and blowing smoke into his face, they’re at home watching “An Inconvenient Truth” and reading policy papers about taxation.
Somehow I doubt that.
