50 Years Later, Barry Goldwater's GOP Convention Speech Still Resonates

“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” was the biggest applause line of Barry Goldwater's speech accepting his party's nomination as a presidential candidate.

It is probably also the most misunderstood, ripped-out-of-context line in a speech that stands, even today, as a succinct definition of conservatism.

Surprisingly, in 3,186 words, Goldwater never used any form of the word “conservative” in this famous speech. This stood in contrast to four years earlier, when he scolded supporters who threatened the cohesion of the Republican Party by saying, “Let's grow up, conservatives.”

Fifty years ago today, on July 16, 1964, grown-up conservative Barry Goldwater spoke to the GOP convention in San Francisco.*

Most readers of this blog are too young to remember Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, yet it is almost universally credited with launching both the modern conservative and the modern libertarian movements. The principal founders of the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation worked on Goldwater's campaign. The founding members of the Libertarian Party were Goldwater campaign volunteers, and Virginia's current Republican National Committeeman, Morton Blackwell, was the youngest Goldwater delegate at the 1964 convention.

The campaign set the stage for a transformation of the Republican party and Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. As George F. Will has put it, Goldwater won the 1964 election but it took 16 years to count the votes.

Something of a précis of his 1960 book, The Conscience of a Conservative, Goldwater's convention speech endeavored to explain conservatism – or what he called “Republicanism” on that occasion, eschewing specific references to the C-word – to listeners who had not yet learned much about it and who unfairly feared it.

In the same speech, Goldwater displayed a certain amount of prescience regarding the course of human history and offered advice to his fellow Republicans who, then as now, often found themselves among bickering factions.

In one, brief paragraph about halfway through the speech, the Arizona Senator summarized the conservative view of individual liberty and the proper role of government.

We see, in private property and in economy based upon and fostering private property, the one way to make government a durable ally of the whole man, rather than his determined enemy. We see in the sanctity of private property the only durable foundation for constitutional government in a free society. And beyond that, we see, in cherished diversity of ways, diversity of thoughts, of motives and accomplishments. We do not seek to lead anyone's life for him - we seek only to secure his rights and to guarantee him opportunity to strive, with government performing only those needed and constitutionally sanctioned tasks which cannot otherwise be performed.

Goldwater also drew a contrast explicitly to the communist, totalitarian vision and, implicitly, to big-government liberalism then in vogue, and recognized the tensions inherent in simultaneous pursuits of liberty and equality.

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

In a line that could be welcomed equally today by the Tea Party and by the Occupy movement, Goldwater said that conservatives must “resist concentrations of power, private or public, which enforce such conformity and inflict such despotism. It is the cause of Republicanism to ensure that power remains in the hands of the people.”

And, as if envisioning the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire a quarter-century later, Goldwater made remarkably accurate predictions in this paragraph:

I believe that we must look beyond the defense of freedom today to its extension tomorrow. I believe that the communism which boasts it will bury us will, instead, give way to the forces of freedom. And I can see in the distant and yet recognizable future the outlines of a world worthy our dedication, our every risk, our every effort, our every sacrifice along the way. Yes, a world that will redeem the suffering of those who will be liberated from tyranny. I can see and I suggest that all thoughtful men must contemplate the flowering of an Atlantic civilization, the whole world of Europe unified and free, trading openly across its borders, communicating openly across the world.

Toward the end of his speech, just before the famous line about “extremism,” Goldwater pointed out the factionalism in the Republican party was not necessarily new, but also was not necessarily bad.

The GOP, he said, is “a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists.”

Then he quoted Abraham Lincoln in 1858 “because he probably could have said it during the last week or so: "[The Republican Party] was composed of strained, discordant, and even hostile elements.'”

As if warning the Tea Party and “establishment” branches of the conservative movement of the 21st century, or the social conservative and the libertarian factions, Goldwater admonished: “Let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels.”

Explaining that the Republican Party should require no litmus tests, Goldwater explained:

the beauty of this Federal system of ours is in its reconciliation of diversity with unity. We must not see malice in honest differences of opinion, and no matter how great, so long as they are not inconsistent with the pledges we have given to each other in and through our Constitution. Our Republican cause is not to level out the world or make its people conform in computer regimented sameness. Our Republican cause is to free our people and light the way for liberty throughout the world.

It was in that context – between “stupid labels” and the beauty of the American system – that Goldwater added:

“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue" -- the second part being so often forgotten while the first part so often misinterpreted.

He concluded with the modest thought that conservatives have “a very human cause for very humane goals.”

Perhaps suggesting that he knew victory in November was unlikely, Goldwater went on to note that his 1964 campaign was a first step in a long journey.

This Party, its good people, and its unquestionable devotion to freedom, will not fulfill the purposes of this campaign which we launch here now until our cause has won the day, inspired the world, and shown the way to a tomorrow worthy of all our yesteryears.

Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech of July 16, 1964, can be viewed in its entirety on the C-SPAN web site, where you can see people smoking openly on the convention floor.



*Twenty years later, when the Democrats chose the same city for their nominating convention, then-UN Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick repeatedly dripped with contempt the phrase “San Francisco Democrats” in her own GOP convention speech.

(Cross-posted, in slightly different form, from Bearing Drift. A shorter version of this essay also appears on Examiner.com.)

Call for Philip Morris!

I hope that, when I write about tobacco issues, people understand that I am a lifelong non-smoker. Perhaps, because I grew up in a smoking household (both of my parents were smokers), I have an unusual tolerance for those who use tobacco products in my presence. My libertarian instincts, however, play a major role in my belief that the government should not increase its regulations over tobacco sale and use and leave it to individuals to decide whether to partake and leave it to private businesses whether to allow tobacco smoking on their property.

It seems that my instincts are also held by a majority of Americans, who believe the government has overreached in turning over regulation of tobacco to the Food & Drug Administration and virtually prohibiting the advertising of tobacco products. (Is it any surprise that this new regime was supported by the largest tobacco producer, Philip Morris, since control of its market share will now be secure against encroachments by smaller players in the industry?)

According to UPI, a Gallup Poll shows that a majority of Americans say they disapprove of the new laws -- signed today by President Barack Obama in a Rose Garden ceremony -- that expand regulations over tobacco:

By 52 percent to 46 percent, more respondents said they don't like the idea of government having greater authority over tobacco products, a Gallup Poll released Monday indicated. Congress last week passed such a measure last week. [sic]

The poll indicated 69 percent of smokers said they disapproved, while 28 percent said they favored the broader government oversight. Views among non-smokers were closer, with 50 percent indicating approval and 48 percent indicating disapproval, the poll said.

CQ Politics summarized the results of the poll, which was conducted last week, like this:

The strongest opposition - 60 percent to 36 percent - comes from those with a high school education or less. College graduates favor the legislation by 56 percent to 43 percent.

Republicans oppose the move by 62 percent to 37 percent and independents by 51 percent to 46 percent, while Democrats favor it 54 percent to 45 percent.

Only 17 percent of those surveyed would support a smoking ban.

One has to wonder whether those 17 percent also favor the death and destruction that inevitably would follow tobacco Prohibition. Organized crime is already involved in tobacco smuggling for the purpose of avoiding taxes. A ban would provide new opportunities for drug cartels and enrich mobsters and corrupt police officers around the world.

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Wrong Answer

By my own conscientious choice, I am a lifelong non-smoker, but I am nonetheless disturbed that Virginia must now live with its freedom-eroding law to ban smoking in restaurants.

While the arguments for and against the legislation, which was negotiated by Governor Tim Kaine and Speaker of the House William Howell during the General Assembly session that just ended, focused largely on the effects on bars and restaurants with a broad-based clientele, there is (as with all new laws) an unintended consequence that affects a particular group of business owners.

I have earlier written about the financial losses incurred by restaurants in other jurisdictions that imposed a smoking ban. What those studies may have overlooked, however, is the extra burden taken on by restaurants that fill an unusual cultural niche.

What I mean is, among the casualties of this misguided legislation are various establishments that cater to ethnic groups (mostly, but not entirely, Arabs) and adherents to the Muslim faith (who are generally teetotallers) by providing facilities for hookah smoking.

As Brigid Schulte reported in the Washington Post just after the General Assembly voted for the "compromise" (what kind of blanket ban is a "compromise"?):

The vote left some, like Ramzi Iskandar, owner of Tarbouch Mediterranean Grill in Arlington County, wondering whether they could survive.

For three years, Iskandar struggled to run a Lebanese food takeout restaurant. Last year, he brought in hookahs, and business has never been better. Day and night, the air in his place is thick with smoke from the hookahs smoked by his mainly Middle Eastern clientele. To them, he explained, smoking hookah after a meal is as natural as Italians having a glass of wine with their pasta. "If hookahs go away, there's no reason for me to operate, for sure. I've already decided on that," he said. "The reason people are eating here is because I have hookah."

An article in the Washington Times several days later found more restaurateurs in situations similar to Iskandar's:

Maher Elmasri put little stock in talk that Virginia - a state with historic ties to tobacco - would ban smoking in bars and restaurants.

However, he now worries that his livelihood could be wiped out. Mr. Elmasri's restaurant, Lebnan Zaman, in Vienna, owes its popularity to the hookah, a water pipe popular in Middle Eastern culture. Virginia's newly passed smoking ban, which awaits the governor's signature, unlike some others across the country, makes no exception for hookahs.

He says the ban kills an old cultural tradition.

"It's not just about the smoking," said Mr. Elmasri, a Palestinian immigrant. "It's about people getting together, getting a sense of back home."

The fact that other jurisdictions that have imposed smoking bans have made exceptions for hookah bars raises the question of whether ethnic or religious prejudice is behind the legislation in Virginia, and whether Governor Tim Kaine's stubborn insistence that he will not amend the bill to allow the exception for restaurants whose clientele is largely Arab or Muslim is also motivated by bigotry.

Charlottesville is not untouched by the cultural blinders of this anti-smoking legislation. At least two local restaurants will be adversely affected once the law makes it to the statute books. Brian McNeill reported on the front page of Saturday's Daily Progress:

Two Charlottesville establishments may be forced to extinguish their hookahs once a statewide restaurant smoking ban goes into effect later this year....

As a result, hookah lounges in Northern Virginia and Richmond are reportedly in danger of closing.

In Charlottesville, hookahs are available at the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar on the Downtown Mall and at the newly opened Alhamraa restaurant in the Frank Ix Building.

Gwendolyn Hall, owner of Twisted Branch, said she is investigating the possibility of designating the entire front end of the restaurant as the smoking section, while a small back room would be the non-smoking section. Hall is skeptical, however, that her plan would fly with the state. If not, she said, she might be forced to cease hookah sales.

“It depends on how the regulations play out,” she said. “I’m hoping we can keep [hookahs]. It’s a pretty big part of our earnings here. I wouldn’t want to say goodbye to it. We’ll try to figure something out.”

What I find especially troubling in McNeill's article is the disappointing answer given by Delegate Rob Bell (R-58) when asked why he voted for the anti-smoking bill:

“I personally prefer to let the market determine these sorts of things, but my constituents were very clear that they wanted quicker action on smoking in restaurants,” Bell said. “A lot of work went into crafting a bipartisan compromise and I voted for it. It will require restaurants that want smoking to establish an entirely separate smoking area. It also allows smoking in private clubs and in outdoor areas.”

Bell claims to stand for certain principles, one of which is the superiority of free markets over government coercion (the Virginia Republican Creed says: "That the free enterprise system is the most productive supplier of human needs and economic justice..."), yet he yields to the pressure of his constituents rather than vote according to those principles.

More than half the restaurants in Virginia have already chosen, voluntarily, to go smoke-free. It is clear that the free market has been working in this regard. People who don't want to smoke in restaurants that allow smoking can already choose to eat in restaurants that don't allow smoking, just as vegetarians can choose to eat in restaurants that don't serve meat and those who choose not to drink alcoholic beverages can eat in restaurants (IHOP, for instance) that don't serve alcohol.

Delegate Bell has forsaken the principle of representative government that says elected officials should exercise their own best judgment rather than simply reflect the changing winds of public opinion when they shape and approve legislation. This principle was best articulated almost 250 years ago by Edmund Burke, in his famous "Speech to the Electors of Bristol":

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Business owners should be free to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking on their premises or not. Customers should be free to choose whether to buy things from businesses that allow smoking or not. Legislators who claim to stand for free-market principles should choose to act on those principles, and not against them.

Delegate Rob Bell chose the wrong answer.

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The Nanny State Creeps On

Last November, I posted a terrifically entertaining and informative video from Reason.tv about anti-smoking ordinances around the country.

The focus of the video was of several California communities and I never guessed that the nanny-state approach to smoking would ever become law in Virginia.

Call me naive. It turns out that, in a policy reversal, Speaker of the House Bill Howell has announced a "compromise" that will ban smoking in virtually all restaurants in the Commonwealth. (I am trying to figure out how a blanket ban is a "compromise" of any sort, since a "compromise" implies that each side in a disputed policy debate gives something up in return for something given up by the other. It appears here that the only side giving something up was the free-market side. The nannies gave up nothing.)

A real compromise would have respected the rights of property owners by giving them a choice in the matter. For instance, a law could have been drafted to require restaurateurs to post signs in VERY LARGE TYPE at the entrance to their establishments, stating whether it was a "Smoking Allowed" or "Smoking Prohibited" facility.

We know from experience in other states that when restaurant smoking bans are put in place, restaurants lose business. Smokers decide that, rather than going out for a meal and a few drinks, they will buy a six-pack or a fifth of vodka, some easy-to-cook food, and stay home to eat and drink. (Pizza delivery restaurants are not adversely affected by smoking bans.)

For example, a study by two economists from the University of North Texas in Denton, Terry L. Clower and Bernard L. Weinstein, found that in the year after the city of Dallas imposed a smoking ban on restaurants within its jurisdiction:

...the Dallas smoking ban ordinance

• Contributed to a decline in alcohol sales in the City of Dallas
• Negatively impacted revenue at many restaurants in Dallas
• Caused at least four restaurant closings
• Appears to be changing the business models used by hospitality business owners in Dallas.

The findings also track the trend experienced in Carrollton, Texas where a government imposed smoking ban led to a decline in alcohol sales and a loss of restaurant development and tax dollars in the city.

Clower and Weinstein note that, after the smoking ban was imposed:

Comparing 2003 to 2002, year over year sales of alcoholic beverage at eating and drinking establishments in Dallas fell $11.8 million – almost three times the decrease in sales between 2001 and 2002.

Later in their study, the economists add:

...restaurant owners have seen alcoholic beverage sales decline anywhere from 9 percent to over 50 percent since the Dallas smoking ban went into effect. Owners and managers of these establishments report mixed results in food sales, with one restaurant indicating no impact on food sales while others claim as much as a 25 percent loss in food sales. No responding restaurant indicated they had gained revenues since the smoking ban’s inception.

Regardless of whether restaurants lose sales as a result of smoking bans, they surely bear a regulatory burden that can be monetized. (A regulation is a form of taxation.)

University of Missouri law professor Thomas Lambert wrote in the Washington Post in 2006, based on a longer article he published in the scholarly journal, Regulation:

The case for smoking bans thus fails. Contrary to ban advocates' claims, the costs of smoking's externalities are ultimately borne by the owners of smoking-allowed establishments who, as a group, have incentives to efficiently accommodate smokers and nonsmokers. Efforts to shape people's preferences regarding smoking run into individual choice issues and may be counterproductive. Scientific evidence on the risk of ETS may be overstated and never addresses the important point that some people are willing to take that risk.

A better approach would be a hands-off policy permitting business owners to set their own smoking policies. Motivated by the pursuit of profits, the owners would have the proper incentive to maximize social welfare. The market would be far more likely than government regulation to accommodate the various preferences of nonsmokers and smokers alike.

Let the market decide. That, Speaker Howell, is the conservative (and the morally correct) solution. If you want us to vote for Republicans in November, you shouldn't be imposing policies that are bred by liberal Democrats.

The Ever-Expanding Reach of the Nanny State

The folks at ReasonTV have hit another home run with this video about smoking bans -- including an ordinance in Belmont, California, that prohibits people from smoking in their own homes.

The arrogance of nanny-statists knows no bounds. Will somebody please tell the 130-plus-million people who voted last Tuesday that local elections, not presidential elections, are far more important in terms of affecting our daily lives?

New York Gov't Encourages Growth of Organized Crime

The big news from New York today is that a new cigarette tax has become mandatory. As Paul Merrill reports for Albany TV station WXXA:

A statewide tax increase of $1.25 per pack of packaged cigarettes went into effect on Tuesday, bringing the total tax on a pack of cigarettes in New York State to $2.75.

The increase is estimated to bring the state's total tax revenue from cigarettes to approximately $1.3 billion.

That total is not increasing directly proportionally to the tax increase per pack because the state realizes many smokers will find other ways of getting their cigarettes or simply kick the habit altogether.

A pack of cigarettes in the Capital Region now costs about $6.

Additional taxes in New York City put the cost of a pack of cigarettes there closer to the $10 mark.

Some argue that this latest tax increase will push smokers to Native American stores, the Internet, or bootleggers who transport cigarettes across state lines.

We'll get back to that last point momentarily. But Jon Dougherty of WTVH-TV in Syracuse notes another effect (the grammatical error in the first sentence is his, not mine):

The average price of a pack of cigarettes is pushing $7.00, and independent smoke shop owners are seeing less customers because of it. Smokers buying cigarettes will have to pay up to $2.00 more per pack. At Tobacconist in Armory Square, a pack that cost $5.00 yesterday, will cost you over $6.50 today. The owner says that's going to hurt business.

A few blocks away, smokers were hesitant to buy cigarettes at the Downtown Smoke Shop in Syracuse today. The higher price left business slower than normal.

Smoke shop owners are afraid of losing customers to Indian Reservations, where there are no taxes on cigarettes. We spoke to the Onondaga Nation Smoke Shop. They say they've received more phone calls from customers wanting to know their price for cigarettes. The store sells pack $2.00 to $3.00 cheaper than in the city. For small smoke shops, that's hard to compete with.

While smoke shop owners off the reservation might be sad and smoke shop owners on the reservation might be glad, those laughing most heartily today are mobsters and terrorists who rely on cigarette smuggling for large portions of their tax-free, cash income.

It's not like this effect is unknown. I wrote about it more than a decade ago for The Metro Herald, which published the following article on April 17, 1998:

Higher Cigarette Taxes Set Stage for New Crime Wave
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.

(Arlington, Va.) --- The proposed federal settlement with the tobacco companies -- now in limbo as the tobacco companies have, at least for the moment, backed out -- includes a provision that federal excise taxes on cigarettes will rise from $1.10 (the congressional proposal) to $1.50 (the president's preference) a pack over the next several years. Experience in many states and foreign countries teaches us that such a tax increase will lead to more cigarette smuggling by organized criminals, with the likelihood of gang violence as various crime syndicates battle for "turf" in the contraband cigarette market.

In congressional testimony last December, Robert A. Robinson of the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that "smuggling cigarettes from low- to high- tax states, or interstate smuggling, prominent in the 1970s, may now be a reemerging problem . . . In fact, recent estimates suggest that smuggling is responsible for states collectively losing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual tax revenues." The problem is also international in scope, as Robinson explained:

"International smuggling has occurred recently between Canada and the United States. According to the Canadian government, sharp increases in Canadian federal and provincial cigarette taxes in the late 1980s and early 1990s led to large-scale smuggling between the United States and Canada conducted almost entirely by organized crime. Violence increased, merchants suffered, and in one year alone, Canada and its provinces lost over $2 billion (in Canadian dollars) in tax revenues. Canada responded in 1994 by sharply reducing federal and provincial cigarette taxes . . . Since then, smuggling has declined considerably."

Writing in Reason magazine in 1995, Ed Carson explained how Canada's rising tobacco taxes set into motion the law of unintended consequences. "The result was an invitation to organized crime. Mohawk Indians from tribes along the U.S.-Canada border, biker gangs, and Asian Triads smuggled cigarettes across the border in boats, airplanes, trucks, legitimate courier companies, and snowmobiles. By the end of 1993, nearly one in three cigarettes was contraband."

In February of this year, Erin Schiller of the Pacific Research Institute noted the perverse, unexpected effects of Canada's cigarette tax. Despite the steep tax hike, Schiller wrote in the Washington Times, "youth smoking did not decrease and many officials ironically argued that high taxes made it more difficult to control youth smoking."

How could this be? Notes the GAO, "According to the Canadian Prime Minister, as the portion of the Canadian market supplied by smuggled tobacco increased, the average price paid for cigarettes dropped. Access to cheap contraband tobacco undermined the government's health policy objectives of reducing tobacco consumption, particularly among youth."

In perhaps the most delicious irony, U.S. college students living near the Canadian border made a practice of going on "drinking holidays" to Canada, where the drinking age is lower. To pay for their vacations, they would take carloads of low-priced U.S. cigarettes to sell or trade for liquor.

Canada is not alone. Washington Times correspondent Erik Kirschbaum reported in early 1996 that a similar smuggling problem was occurring in Germany. Cigarette smuggling led to "a surge in gangland-style executions and turf wars [that] made Berlin streets more dangerous than at any time since World War II," he wrote. "Authorities fear that cigarette trafficking is leading to crime empires dealing in extortion, prostitution, stolen cars, drugs, and weapons." Kirschbaum quoted a Berlin police detective as saying that "people are being executed in cold blood in their apartments and in broad daylight on the streets, on subway platforms, in front of hundreds of witnesses."

Weeks later, Paul Geitner reported in USA Today that "turf battles between the Vietnamese gangs that control street-level sales have been blamed for the deaths of 40 Vietnamese, 15 in Berlin alone [in 1996]." These killings, he said, are "the latest episode in a bloody gang war over Berlin's lucrative trade in smuggled cigarettes." The reason? Just one truck loaded with 50,000 cartons can net a smuggler $550,000 in profits.

According to former Treasury Department official Bruce Bartlett, all across Europe, high taxes are resulting in a bonanza for smugglers. "One-fourth of the world's cigarettes are now smuggled across national borders to evade taxes and tariffs," he wrote last August. "Governments are already losing $16 billion per year in tax revenues -- a figure likely to rise as organized crime becomes a larger player in the business of smuggling smokes. In Italy alone, organized crime is said to make $500 million per year smuggling cigarettes."

As long as tobacco remains a legal commodity, efforts to control its consumption through regulation or taxation are doomed to fail. This was the case during the blundering "noble experiment" of alcohol prohibition, when possession of alcohol was legal but the sale and importation of it were not. This created an instant black market for criminal kingpins like Al Capone and Joseph P. Kennedy, giving birth to organized crime in this country. With excessive cigarette tax rates, the Mob will have just one more outlet for criminal entrepreneurship.

It's obviously time to rethink the tobacco settlement -- particularly the misguided idea of raising cigarette taxes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Richard Sincere, a nonsmoker, chairs the Virginia chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus (www.rlc.org).

If you think the link between cigarette smuggling and terrorism -- a more salient issue today than in 1998 -- is nebulous, consider what Jim Waters of the Bluegrass Institute, a think tank based in Kentucky, wrote in the Times-Tribune on May 9:

The notion that cigarette smuggling, driven by higher taxes, created a big-enough business to fund terrorists seemed goofy.

But the truth here is at least as strange as the fiction. A report released April 29 by New York Rep. Peter King shows how terrorists benefit from high cigarette taxes.

“In total, law enforcement officials in New York state estimate that well-organized cigarette smuggling networks generate between $200,000 (and) $300,000 per week,” the report stated. “A large percentage of the money is believed to be sent back to the Middle East, where it directly or indirectly finances groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al Qaeda.”

Two primary strategies used by these smugglers of terror involve either smuggling cigarettes from other states with much-lower taxes. Or they make peace with Indian reservations, where cigarettes aren’t taxed.

James Damask wrote for the Mackinac Center that “fully one-fourth of all cigarettes sold worldwide are now smuggled from low-tax areas to high-tax areas to reap the criminal’s reward for government intervention in matters best left to the private sector.”

These activities are not limited to North America, with funds going to the Middle East, either. Consider this story from Sunday's Moscow Times (that's Moscow, Russia, not Idaho):

Bulgaria, an EU newcomer under pressure from the bloc to clean up its act, said Friday that it had broken up on a criminal network suspected of financing rebel groups in Chechnya.

The gang of mainly Chechens was involved in racketeering, blackmail, arms deals, money laundering and cigarette smuggling, the national security agency said in a statement. "The group is suspected of financing terrorist formations in Chechnya," it said.

Cigarette smuggling has been a staple of organized crime activity in the Balkans for years, perhaps predating the fall of the Soviet Union and the break up of Yugoslavia. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project titled one of its recent reports "Cigarette Smugglers Trade in Murder" and began it by saying:

In the Balkans, death and cigarettes are closely related.But it's not always the carcinogens that are the problem.

The illegal tobacco trade takes its share of lives.

High-profile killings connected to illicit tobacco networks in the Balkans have claimed journalists, intelligence officers, politicians and the criminals themselves. In the fight to control this multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise, gangsters often use the most ruthless methods to assert their authority and send a reminder of their power to the public at large.

In one of the more chilling examples of cigarette smugglers' disregard for life, Dusko Jovanović was shot and killed outside the paper he worked at in Montenegro, a regional cigarette smuggling hub. The then editor-in-chief of Dan, the Montenegrin daily, was gunned down in 2004 shortly after publishing a series of articles on the illicit tobacco smuggling activities of underworld kingpins.

The killing was among the most vicious in a particularly bloody period in the recent history of Montenegrin cigarette smuggling. It followed the slaying on May 30th, 2000, of Goran Zurgić, a security advisor to then Montenegrin president Milo Đukanović. Zurgić, at the time cooperating with western intelligence agencies investigating Đukanović’s business dealings, was believed to be murdered by Darko Raspopović, then head of Montenegro’s anti-terrorism unit at its Interior Ministry. Raspopović himself was shot and killed in Podgorica the following January.

Those are just a few examples of how cigarette smuggling -- which is done almost entirely to avoid tariffs and taxes, since tobacco is a legal product in most countries -- benefits the mob.

Raising taxes on cigarettes may serve some short-term goals, such as increasing revenues for governments to misspend, but in the long run, it causes more harm than good.

Listen to Your Radio

On "The Schilling Show" today on WINA radio (1070 AM), Jim Lark of the Jefferson Area Libertarians will be one of the guests discussing whether Virginia should ban smoking in restaurants and other public spaces. (Can you guess which side Jim will be on?)

Tomorrow morning "The Schilling Show" will repeat the segment from several weeks ago, when I debated David Swanson on the question of voting machine security. Rob Schilling says that it looked like the two of us would have started a boxing match right there on the air. This segment should be on during the 7:00 a.m. hour of the 3-hour "Saturday Special."

"The Schilling Show," hosted by former Charlottesville City Councilman Rob Schilling, can be heard from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. on weekdays and 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. on Saturdays.

You can see video segments from "The Schilling Show" -- if Don Imus and Howard Stern can do it, why not Rob Schilling? -- here and here.

Definition of Irony, Part 342

Isn't it ironic that, just as Cuba is on the verge of freedom after a half century of brutal Communist dictatorship, it has become illegal virtually everywhere in the United States to smoke cigars in public?

I'm just asking.

Innovation to Circumvent Injustice

As we tread steadily toward a nationwide ban on smoking in public, a resort owner in Minnesota has come up with an innovative way to circumvent that state's law that prohibits indoor smoking.

Noting that the smoking ban had reduced its business, Barnacle's resort in Lake Mille Lacs found a loophole in the law: it permits smoking by actors in a theatrical performance.

The AP reports:

Barnacle's Resort in Lake Mille Lacs turned its normal Saturday night business into a play, testing a loophole in Minnesota's smoking ban. The production included programs and buttons that said "Act Now!"

"You are looking at a stage. You are looking at a playhouse," said Mark Benjamin, a nonsmoking lawyer who worked the bar dressed in Shakespearian garb. "Those are not cigarettes -- those are props."

The law allows actors and actresses to light up in theatrical performances -- but it doesn't define what that means. The idea of stretching the definition came to Benjamin at the Renaissance Festival, an annual event where people dress up in costumes.

Barnacle's usual winter boom went missing this winter, after smoking was outlawed in bars, restaurants and other indoor workplaces in October. Resort co-owner Sheila Kromer said she tried to stop the ban by testifying against it at the Capitol, but that didn't work.

So she was interested in Benjamin's idea, and said local police told her they won't step in unless someone complains.

"Several of the legislators said, 'You know, you've got to be innovative. Come up with something to get the people in your bar.' Right? OK. What's wrong with a theater night? Is that not being creative?" Kromer said.

The proprietors at Barnacle's plan to continue the Saturday night performances weekly for as long as they bring in customers -- or until somebody complains to the authorities and shuts them down.

To paraphrase an old saying, When the legislature closes a door, good ol' American ingenuity opens a window.

My, How Things Have Changed!

I came across some retro commercials today, all from the original run of The Flintstones back in the early 1960s.

Anyone born past 1971 may find this hard to believe, but there was a time when cigarettes (and other tobacco products) were advertised openly on television and radio. Not product placements snuck into a movie or TV show, but real, honest-to-goodness commercials that touted the wonderful characteristics of the product.

It turns out that one of the early sponsors of The Flintstones was Winston, with its memorable slogan that drove grammar mavens up the wall, "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should."

Here's the first ad, which shows Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble in character:

Next comes a visit by Fred to the Stone Age equivalent of Quikimart, though instead of Apu we have a clerk who sounds suspiciously like character actor Herb Vigran:

The third ad brings us back into the Flintstone household, with Fred and Barney trying to get the record player to work properly:

Perhaps as penance for all these cigarette ads, we next see Fred and Barney and Wilma and Betty in a PSA for the American Cancer Society:

Finally, we can see how the sponsor's name was embedded in the closing credits to the show. It's funny, but I don't remember The Flintstones ever being in black and white. Are the earliest episodes lost to the ages?

Well, at least thanks to YouTube, we can get a taste of what prehistoric life was like ... in the 1960s.