Even includes the always classic "save the children" cliche slant.

Something else empowered him enough to write though.
These are the people who are coming out in droves as of late.

Read it and weep:

City should forbid alcohol at public festivals
Sunday, July 17, 2005


I am outraged that the city of Columbus permits the sale and consumption of alcohol at outdoor public events, on property owned by the city and paid for by our tax dollars. A good example is the 2005 Community Festival (ComFest), held recently in Goodale Park.

As a homeowner in the Short North-Victorian Village area, I am continually amazed at the number of people who leave ComFest too intoxicated to walk properly, let alone drive a vehicle. Just when I thought I had seen it all, along came a young man staggering down the street, pushing a baby stroller with one hand and holding an open container of beer in his other hand.

When his cell phone rang, he set the beer can down inside the stroller with the infant. How can our city condone and be complicit to such behavior? How can the Columbus City Council, which banned smoking in restaurants and bars, permit alcohol sales and consumption in our public parks?

Annually, more than 17,000 Americans are killed in drunken-driving accidents.

In the first three months of 2005, eight people were killed in wrong-way accidents in Columbus, with alcohol being a factor in many of those cases. Let us not forget the college students killed in house fires after nights of heavy drinking.

Do festival organizers, Victorian Village Society members and city administrators think that the revenues generated by alcohol sales at events such as Com-Fest are worth even one life lost to a drunken driver? In the immediate Short North area, there are more than 30 establishments that serve alcohol.

There is no need to have alcohol sales or consumption at ComFest. If the music, entertainment, food, arts and crafts are not sufficient to draw the desired attendance, is the festival worth holding? Phone calls, letters and e-mail to ComFest organizers and Victorian Village Society Executive Committee members have been ignored. Instead of bemoaning a tragedy after it happens, let’s do something to prevent it, by banning the sale or consumption of alcohol at public events such as Com-Fest.

JOHN PALERMINI

Columbus

well shit... over 30,000 Americans are killed by gun violence each year.

and Jesus Christ... in Iraq (since 2003) we've got over 22,800 Iraqi civilians dead, over 13,000 Americans wounded, and over 1,700 Americans dead. why? weapons of mass destruction?

why the hell are you worried about beer?!

And so the slippery slope gets steeper and more slippery. We've banned cigarettes in public places, so people are jumping at the opportunity to ban all things they don't agree with.

At what point is it the individuals responsibility and not the city's?

I agreed with the smoking ban, because people were directly affecting my lungs in the vast majority of public restaurants and bars and the proprietors were too pansy-ass to individually make the move to non-smoking --the decision for the majority was only going to be implemented by "forced participation" in the greater good for the greatest numbers (but let's not rehash the pages and pages of threads on that issue ).

The problem is, we are surrounded by stupid people doing stupid things, and that problem is exacerbated by the fact that most won't/don't take responsibility for their actions or decisions because we allow people to blame so much on external "powers that be." "It's not my fault, it's the government/society/my parents/a chemical imbalance in my brain/my genes/the weather/etc..."

I say we implement a test (I'd be happy to be responsible for the content), and if you don't pass, you get shipped to Arkansas (and lets fence that fucker in with electric razor wire).

Question: will the majority of American's fit in 53,182 sq. miles?

smoking ban was indoors, though.
comfest is outdoors.

Volumes have been written on the subject. A googling of "spontaneous order" would yield many.

as a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_order
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/L ... ryTSO.html