Having solved most of the other problems plaguing the city – astronomical rents, high unemployment, a plight of douchebags on Wall Street – Bloomberg’s New York city council voted last week to ban smoking on beaches and public parks. Which at this point leaves pretty much only sidewalks, cars, and the home as places where it’s even possible to do so.
And of course Boston wants to follow in the big city’s footsteps. Is this seriously all we have time for? Curtailing some more rights while actual issues go unaddressed? I know, I know, that’s what government is all about. But really. Next they’ll come for the sidewalk, and then for the cars, and finally it will be restricted to the home but most people live in rentals where that won’t be cool, so maybe this is all a grand scheme to get someone to buy all those empty houses.
I’ve railed against this stuff for a while. Not because I see smoking bans as the final step before the arrival of jackboots on our streets, but because it’s just another small, tiny erosion of liberty in a country that’s ignored the far more meaningful ones. And even then, I’m not some sort of unreasonable full-on libertarian about it; I understand the general existing bans in restaurants, and workplaces, and hospitals. But what I just can’t fathom is banning it in bars.
I have had a proposal in my head for quite a while that would never even reach consideration because it’s too common-sense. The issue here is one of choice. No one is forcing anyone to go to a bar. And yet, whatever, the interests of political correctness require me to say that people who want one deserve a smoke-free bar (even if they’re idiots, but whatever). To give everyone options, here’s what a state can do – and a make a load of money in the process.
Let’s take a state, any state, like the lost Absaroka. Assume, for the sake of simple math, that that state has 10,000 bars in it (and also that Absaroka has passed a statewide smoking ban already). Now, let’s say that according to public health statistics, Absaroka has a 25% smoking rate across the state. 25% of 10,000 is 2,500, and so that is how many “smoking licenses” the state decides to produce. Every license grants an establishment the right to permit smoking, provided that it adheres to certain and specific ventilation requirements. And then these licenses are auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Everybody wins! Smokers have a bar to go to, nonsmokers still have the vast majority of venues open to them (and they can also choose to go inside a bar that allows smoking). Bars can cater to one crowd or the other – before bidding on a license, they can determine for themselves whether it would be worth it or not to convert their premises, or what sort of clientele they’re aiming to attract. In this scenario we preserve choice, give options, raise some money, let the free market handle things for the most part, and let a little bit of liberty back into the political discussion.
All those reasons are of course why it would never ever happen. Blanket bans and universal approaches are all that government is capable of these days. And also, people never want anything unpleasant to bother them in any way ever. But everyone suffers a little when their will is enacted.
Even before starting, the reader is made immediately aware at how intimate the author is to his subject. The Glossary, command structure and other appendices are exhaustive, to the point of referencing the obvious. Marlantes is himself a Vietnam vet, which isn’t necessarily shocking until perusing some reviews and discovering that he’s been writing the book since he got back from ‘the Crotch’ in 1970. This begs the question on how much of the novel is actually a novel. Marlantes was educated at Yale University and a Rhode Scholar, who served with distinction in Vietnam. The main character (if there really could be called a main character, this is truly a ensemble cast so much so that in the early going it’s hard to keep them all straight) is named Mellas and is the recent graduate of an unnamed Ivy League school. He’s an idealist and his confusion and rage at the incompetence and mismanagement he witnesses is not unlike many memoirs of Ivy League students who have joined the United States military. Still, this critique is ticky tack at best. Where and whether he drew from imagination and what may actually have happened is truly immaterial. The book is astonishing, in its breadth, its hard and its ability to capture an incredibly difficult war.
However, this risks leaving a foul taste in the reader’s mouth. Through the mud and blood of human conflict we’re left with no possible conclusion, no greater understanding of human interaction, in war or in peace. There is no St. Crispin’s day speech or moment in this book. Beyond fighting the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong and their own Colonels and Generals, the grunts of Matterhorn must also contend with the utter violence of either their own or their comrades racial bigotry. Coming from a generation in which the Vietnam War was made up of photographs of black and white soldiers dying together and movies where it was given only the most cursory of mentions, the racial problem that underlies the entirety of the book never gets any better. In promise of hope is nothing but fools gold, and in the end Marlantes seems to be showing that fools gold is far more dangerous than outright prejudice. Those that try to strattle the line our caught in a wave of hatred that they can’t begin to fully understand, no matter how much others try and make it clear. The soldiers of Matterhorn are fighting too many battles, and after long stretches of reading the exhaustion of these battles begins to seep into the reader, leaving them to ponder not only the horrors racism’s past, but to also worry if it’s really gotten better or just more easily and cautiously hidden.
