Hope Smokes

Not anymore! They banned It.

by Patrick J. Shanahan
08/16/04

Hope is For losers.

That may sound a wee bit harsh, but it is true. I do not say this because I am a pessimist. Indeed, I am an incurable optimist. But I do not spend much time "hoping." Hope is the language of young children and the desperate. It is what people have left when they have nothing else. It is what one turns to when one has no control over one’s life.

Those who feel an ounce of control over their own destinies do not waste time on hope. I do not sit around and “hope” that a paycheck will arrive in the mail. I get up out of bed every day to ensure that a paycheck is there when I need it.

Hope is the flip side of despair. Hope and despair are the equivalent of optimism/pessimism when you have no control over a given outcome. If we want to think happy thoughts we hope. When we lose that capacity we despair. But in neither case do we do something to affect the outcome of the situation.

Interesting, then, that hope is the resonant message from the Democratic National Convention. Not Reaganesque optimism. Not a "can-do," hands on, "make it happen" enthusiasm. Nosiree. Hope is the elixir that John Kerry and John Edwards are peddling. Like the Jack Frost character in "A Nightmare Before Christmas," in which he tries so hard to mimic the goodness of Santa Claus but can produce only a pathetic ghoulish shadow Santa, the Democrats have gone full out to recreate the positive and upbeat Reagan optimism. But they cannot do it. Because they do not have the right worldview. All they can do is produce a ghoulish shadow of optimism called "hope."

Somehow this is fitting. The entire liberal worldview depends on the helplessness of the “people.” Deep in their bones, they believe that the people are indeed idiots. They are pawns subject to the whims of rich white male Republicans. The entire liberal self-view depends on the daydream of them rescuing these helpless saps from the evil rich and the rich evil. Like a young boy dreaming of rescuing a fair maiden from disaster, liberals pine for the day when they are finally lauded as the heroes they think they must be. And so they urge us to hope. And they tell us, “Help is on the way.”

The flip side of this pseudo-Happy-Talk is a contempt for the ordinary people. Real Reaganite optimism (which is still, for example, a staple of Rush Limbaugh’s worldview) springs from a profound trust in the competence of the American people. White, black, rich, poor, male, female: however you slice it or dice it there is nothing the American people cannot accomplish if they are freed of silly constraints and regulations. Get the government out of the way and just watch them take off. Contrast this with the liberal message. “We know you are not capable of succeeding on your own. So sit there and hope for us to win, and then we will rescue you.”

Reinforcing this institutional arrogance is the local Twin Cities fad for banning smoking. This has hitherto been a fringe fad, affecting liberal enclaves like Duluth. But now it has hit the Twin Cities full force. The City Councils of Minneapolis, St. Paul and Bloomington have banned smoking in all restaurants and bars, and there is talk of implementing county-wide bans. The Mayor of St. Paul, Randy Kelly, vetoed his Council’s motion on the grounds that it would hurt commerce. But he would have no problem if it were a region-wide ban.

What is astounding is the completely one-sided nature of these votes. They are along the lines of 11-1, 8-0. This tells me that virtually nobody in the governing structures of Minnesota’s premier urban area sees any merit whatsoever in letting merchants and customers choose for themselves. The notion that free people ought to be able to choose whether or not to work at or attend a bar that welcomes smokers is simply not part of their thinking. That is scary. Non-smokers and workers in these establishments are viewed as saps needing to be rescued. They are children, not to be trusted with making important health decisions for themselves.

What is absolutely clear about the liberal establishment is that they are willing to permit the illusion of choice as long as the result of that choice is foreordained. Indeed, the euphemism “freedom of choice” in their lexicon does not mean choice at all. It is means freedom to abort and nothing else. It sure as hell doesn’t mean freedom to smoke. The liberal worldview demands that the people be kept on a short leash. The people need to be tempted with Hope yet kept at bay with rules and regulations that demean the worth of their citizenship.

Perhaps the ultimate irony of liberalism is that it can only succeed where dissent is nonexistent or squashed. In our fancier urban areas it is predominate to the point of consensus. And in those places it can run amok. But when it is stymied by ideological diversity all it can do is stomp its feet, mumble something about hate crimes, and conduct a love-hate relationship with the American people - alternating between exhortations of hope and expressions of pure contempt.

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