Big Picture News, Informed Analysis

Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise. Former National Post & Toronto Star columnist, past vice president of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

Coercing Your Neighbour Over Plastic Straws

SPOTLIGHT: You don’t build a free society by removing individual choice.

BIG PICTURE: The push to ban plastic drinking straws is all symbolism and no substance. If every last straw were to vanish, 99% of the plastic polluting the oceans would remain. So would most of the litter that washes up on beaches.

Impoverished Asian and African countries lack proper waste management systems. They therefore use rivers as sewers. That’s the real world. Banning straws in Europe and North America will do nothing to address this real world fact.

But banning things makes people feel good. They pat themselves on the back, imagining they’ve done something admirable. Pardon me if I don’t applaud.

It’s one thing to persuade your neighbour to stop using an item she considers convenient, sanitary, or even necessary to her daily life. Those who rely on persuasion don’t undermine other people’s liberty. The neighbour remains free to choose her own path.

Green activists are in the business of taking away choices. Coercion and force is their idea of progress. Siccing the government on their neighbour is their idea of a normal day’s work.

They’re OK with their neighbour being harassed by the state, entangled with the legal system, fined, arrested, even jailed. For failing to conform. For failing to fall into line.

Even when the matter at hand is purely symbolic.

TOP TAKEAWAY: People who respect you don’t want the government to punish you for choosing differently.

LINKS:

The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright

please support this blog

please support this blog

→ Receive posts via e-mail by signing up on the right side of this page, above – or by following this blog on Facebook and Twitter.
→ Download or e-mail a PDF of this post by clicking the Print button under Share This below – then select the blue arrow beside PDF at the bottom left.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Information

This entry was posted on July 25, 2018 by in ethical & philosophical, quotations and tagged , .
%d bloggers like this: