Smoke 'em if you got 'em

I quit smoking about 15 years ago. Unlike poor President Johnson, I lost the cravings over the course of several years. I could even have an occasional one (in Ireland, everybody smokes) but I am a cured man. That is, until I read Clay Risen's column in TNR online.

Now I think it may be my duty to take it up. Risen is upset at people who call themselves liberal and advance a liberal agenda (We're talking Humphrey liberals here, not von Mises), yet, gasp-cough-cough, smoke! Not only do they contribute to pollution and give their money to evil tobacco companies, but they express solidarity with bete noir Ayn Rand!

Among Ayn Rand's stranger quirks was her insistence that smoking was not just a right, but a moral obligation. To her, the burning cigarette was nothing less than the physical embodiment of the individual spirit: "When a man thinks, there is a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression," she wrote in her propaganda tract-cum-novel Atlas Shrugged.

Such quasi-mysticism may sound strange coming from the self-appointed doyenne of reason (or not, given Rand's hard-core nicotine addiction). But, especially in light of the health and environmental evidence against smoking, Rand's position makes a certain amount of sense: What better way to give the world the finger than to light one up? What better way to assert your complete independence from society--and your utter disdain for people who assert otherwise--than to sacrifice your own long-term health and that of your neighbors for a moment of self-gratification?

This is why it is striking to find so many liberals who smoke. Is there anything more hypocritical than someone who avers a commitment to the public good, who values personal sacrifice in service of society, who declaims the noxious influence of big business in America, who preaches environmental protection--all while puffing away?

These people are such scolds. They decry Puritanism, but they want to bring back the stocks for smokers, and SUV drivers, and Wal*Mart shoppers, and people who don't listen to NPR.

For Rand, while the personal consequences of smoking proved ultimately compelling (she gave up once she developed lung cancer), it's highly unlikely that the environmental or public health arguments would have mattered much; after all, under her philosophy of radical selfishness, her desires were absolute trumps over any construction of the "greater good."

One would expect a liberal to see things much differently. A liberal would hold that the public good is a compelling, though rarely absolute, interest against his own needs and wants--less against his needs, more so against his wants. The less urgent the need or want, the more compelling the public good. For example, a liberal would recognize that he needs to get from home to work, and may likely have no other choice but to drive. Given that driving a car puts strain on the environment, this is a necessary compromise of a public good in favor of a personal need. But he would also recognize that he has several options in meeting that need--should he drive the hybrid he knows emits less pollution or the SUV he really wants? Should he carpool, even though he'd rather spend time in the car alone? In each case the former is better for the public good, while the latter meets his wants at the expense of the public good. The more willing he is to make these sorts of concessions to the public good, the more in line he is with liberal principles.

This says a lot more about Mr. Risen than it says about Ms. Rand.

From the other side Posted by jk at August 11, 2006 2:43 PM