“IDLH” is a common acronym in handling hazardous materials and wastes.  It means “Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health” and refers to atmospheres or chemical exposures (especially absorption through the skin) that will permanently damage your health or kill you in 30 minutes or less.

In the same way, there are certain conditions in society that are immediately dangerous to liberty or humans – human life and rights and peace.

In the old days, before all the monitors of today, miners used canaries to warn them of  IDLH atmospheres – especially a shortage of oxygen.  The small birds are far more susceptible to lack of oxygen than humans, giving a warning that allowed the miners to escape.

It appears that we have such a “warning device” today when it comes to Liberty.

New York City Council Plans E-Cig ban
(NY Daily News)

As feds ponder future of e-cigarettes, some colleges move against them
(Miami Herald) “While the federal government decides how to regulate electronic cigarettes, many university officials across the country are moving ahead with their own rules about e-cigs on campus. Several universities have already prohibited e-cigs or are set to ban them in upcoming years. At Idaho State University, Missouri State University and the University of Texas at Austin, for example, officials have updated their smoking policies to ban e-cigs. The products soon will be prohibited at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and all campuses in the University of California system.” (11/26/13)

Nathan: E-cigarettes, which contain NO tobacco and do not need to contain nicotine, are in the cross-hairs.  This trend illustrates more than anything I’ve seen recently that this sort of thing is NOT about health (private or public) or secondhand smoke or littering or even aesthetics.  It appears to be nothing but the latest example of that most immoral and perverse of human attitudes and actions: the desire to CONTROL others, directly or vicariously.

They prohibit actions and products and behavior for the most simple of reasons:  “we prohibit this because we CAN prohibit it.”  It seems that every month a new object or behavior is presented to some jurisdiction or the nation as the latest threat to society which must be banned, to which prohibition (that so-evil and discredited strategy) must be immediately applied, complete with G-men toting M4s and clad in black armor, together with the monarchical judge and the holding cells and rehabilitation courses and retraining classes and public shaming.  It is as if for every behavior once considered immoral and damaging to society and dangerous (homosexuality, polygamy, death cults, prohibitions on preaching and free speech) we must find a new “evil” (as defined by the special interest groups and “voters” or at least “authorities”) to substitute:  sugary soft drinks (or soft drinks in general), fatty foods (especially those evil transfatty acids), anything which is claimed to resemble marijuana (even while the real thing is increasingly decriminalized), and this.

The attitude is like that of the dictator, who having “won” the “free election” by a margin of 95% to 5%, must then round up and pen, torture, mind-rape, maim, and kill the remaining 5%.

As Reason points out in a recent story, there is NO justification for this except that old fallback of the statist and the reactionary: “But according to the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association’s Greg Conley, calls for regulation are “a perverse interpretation of the precautionary principle.” The precautionary principle holds that until all possible risks are assessed, new technologies shouldn’t be allowed to move forward.”

This reveals it for one of the things these schools and cities and towns and counties – and the states and fedgov all have in common: a need and the power to dictate the minutiae of life, not just waking but sleeping hours.  It should remind us all of the environist’s tricks.  Like those who believe that ANYthing which is not specifically allowed must be prohibited, these people long for the simplicity of life in XV Dynasty Egypt, when the ruler was a god and the elite (less than 1%) were godlings and half-gods or priests, and the other 99%+ were trash, peasants and slaves and unable to do anything but work, sleep, eat, and procreate for the glory of the gods.  It is an attitude that makes that of the Roman arena and the Haitian plantation slave pen look reasonable by contrast; that makes even the lager of the Dritte Reich seem almost sane.  How did colleges go from being places of adventure and learning and rationality to places that seem nothing more than test laboratories for the next cycle of the world’s concentration camps and totalitarian dictatorships?  And why have we allowed this to happen?  Eventually, as has already happened with tobacco products, someone will be killed by a cop for “smoking” an e-cig in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Similarly, it is not enough to just REFRAIN from criticizing the homosexual, the odd religionist (Muslim or Buddhist or Odinist or whatever), or the welfare parasite.  Now, we must praise them, embrace their perversion, celebrate their (often bogus) achievement and hold them up as icons for youth.  This is not an overnight development: we have seen it in the lavish praise heaped upon (certain) politicians, movie and television stars and singers, and sports “heroes,” and now to people just labeled as “celebrities” because they have money, or look good, or did something that attracted people to them.  And we allowed this to happen.

Eventually, if this is unchecked, if the pendulum does not swing back, just as with smoking and eating and preaching and now e-cigarettes, we will see the brute force of government (however “softened” by padded gloves) used to enforce the worship of deviancy by prohibiting its criticism: starting with politicians but continuing with sports and music and video celebrities and more.  It is time to stop it – no longer enough to “say it is enough” but time to take action to eliminate the power of government and the elites over the rest of us.