ZM/yNebraskan
Since 190]
Editor Sarah Baker
Opinion Page Editor Jake Glazeski
Managing Editor Bradley Davis
Put it out
Proposed smoking limits
latest case ofovergoveming
Anti-smokers in this state have reached a
new level of fanaticism. •
Such fanaticism isn’t unfamiliar in
Nebraska - refer to the same-sex marriage ban
or the more recent consideration of a law thal
would expand minor in possession applica
bility. But with LB227, the state threatens to go
too far (again).
The bill would prohibit smoking in all
restaurants except those that carry licenses to
sell alcohol. And even in those, it would only
allow smoking in physically separated areas.
This restriction makes no sense. It is moti
vated by irrational anti-smoking interests. It
infringes upon the rights of restaurant owners
more than existing clean-air laws already do.
It cannot be denied, first of all, that non
smokers have to breathe the same air as
smokers. Air is a common resource, and the
pollution of common resources should be
limited. Clean-air proponents are fond oi
claiming, “smoking is optional, breathing is
not.”
However, mere is a world or diiterence
between public spaces that a person, non
smoking or smoking, is required to occupy
and public spaces that are entered into volun
tarily.
To put it simply, dining is optional.
If a person does not want to patronize a
restaurant where smoking is allowed for
whatever reason, they do not have to patron
ize that restaurant. They are free to seek out
any restaurant they wish.
Thus, the process of people choosing
restaurants based on smoking preferences
provides an economic pressure on restau
rants.
Restaurants have already achieved an eco
nomic balance between smokers and non
smokers. Restaurants that cannot survive
without the business of sensitive nonsmokers
have changed to cater to them. People that
want to smoke with meals go to restaurants
where they may do so.
So what’s the deal?
Why do state legislators feel that it’s neces
sary to upset this balance by forcing restau
rants that don’t sell alcohol to prohibit smok
ing, when nonsmokers already don’t patron
ize those restaurants and probably never will?
Proponents of the bill may point to similar
experiments in California, claiming that the
prohibition is “good for businesses.”
But their evidence is suspect; business
could have improved for any number of rea
sons unrelated to the passage of laws like
LB227.
runner, is it good ior ousiness wnen you
give government the tools to micro-manage
and to make decisions that are appropriately
left to restaurant owners?
Proponents might cite a “right to patron
ize,” but no such right exists. A business must
not be forced by its potential customers to
cater to their individual preferences. That isn’t
the way business should work.
With no logical or philosophical backbone,
the campaign for LB227 thus takes on a
moralistic flavor. “Smoking is bad,” its propo
nents claim with no further rational justifica
tion.
And while smoking is unhealthy, the choice
of whether one smokes and whether one can
open a restaurant where its patrons can
smoke should be left to the individual, and the
individual alone.
Editorial Board
' Sarah Baker, Jeff Bloom, Bradley Davis, Jake Glazeski,
Matthew Hansen, Samuel McKewon, Kimberly Sweet
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Wey, Voh ain't
emReimm.
NealObermeyer/DN
Golden apples and nectar
To be “nobody-but-your
self,” as e.e. cummings says in
“A Poet's Advice,” flies in the
face of the demands and
expectations of the world
around you. It’s a world that,
he says again, “is doing its
Desi, nignt ana aay, to maxe ^—i
you everybody else.” Mark
It’s hard, heartbreaking . Baldridge
work and can become a kind ■
of protracted martyrdom.
“The World” stands in antithesis - as the old-time
preachers used to say - to the Soul.
And since the World is made of people, it follows
that not every person - in fact precious few of us - real
ly has a soul to speak of. Not so far as I can tell
It’s the ultimate elitism, no doubt, to separate
humanity into two species, only one of which is truly
sentient
It would also be grosslyinaccurate.
There are actually at least three species of human
ity, only one of which is truly sentient
. These are dogs, golems, and gods - and only the
last have souls.
The dogs are so-called because they are nothing
more, really, than talking animals.
They have, of course, a “point of view,” a “frame of
reference.” .
% But they are like the camera obscura, passively
receiving, reflecting, like die moon, a borrowed light.
They are the billiard balls on the great green table
of cause and effect
Golems, rather, exist in a twilight between the
dogs and the gods, and many of them are created (lift
ed from the merely "doggy”) by association with some
god or another
Like Frankenstein's monster, they think they are
alive, or want to be, and they strain against the inani
mate clay that imprisons and wholly comprises them.
Sleepers struggling to awake.
Sometimes, I really believe, a lightning bolt from
somewhere jolts them into genuine contemplation of
themselves and they arise, put off their clay and
become, in their inwardness, truly like gods.
Naturally, only the gods have souls.
To be a god is to have tasted of the fruit of the tree
of (self) knowledge. To know one’s self as a self. To
know what being “a self” means.
It is to carry one’s soul like a candle flame, protect
ing it against the hurricane.
People with souls are very, very few - and they
know it
I, of course, am one of them.
Proclaiming yourself a
But to be a. god, to know oneself a god, is to be well
acquainted with the ridiculous.
It is itself a kind of foolishness, a stubborn insis
tence on making one’s own way, taking a narrow path
in distinction to the wide way of the World.
How does one become a god?
First one has to sense that godhood is possible. It’s
helpful to have associated, in childhood or otherwise,
with areal live god.
To grow a soul, one must first see a soul growing,
even if only in the writings or other artifacts of god
hood.
Jesus says, “Do you not know ye are gods?” trying
to jump-start the divinity in the audience.
And I’d go along with Him in assuming that the
seeds of godhood lie dormant in many, most, even all
people.
I can already hear some dog a’howling, “Whooo’d
want to be a god ifyou got to be like this A-Hole?”
But that’s not the case, as should be obvious.
It’s a matter of becoming more like yourself, in
fact, and less like me or anyone else.
Gods are like each other only in their incorruptible
sense of themselves.
A second necessary step can be taken toward god
hood:
One must want to be a god. This is the "hunger
and thirst” kind of desire, a panting after the divine
within oneself.
Damn few people really want to be gods.
Even if we were talking about the “flying around
with lightning for a hairdo” sort of gods we’d find hard
ly any takers.
It seems “hardly human” - a testament to the
impoverished notions of humanity current among
the humanoids.
A final ingredient in this godly gumbo is an
absolute devotion to one’s own godliness.
This can be mistaken for selfishness or arrogance
and it may well be so.
(Gods, as you must have noticed, are perfectly
capable of all the deadly sins: “I, the Lord your God,
am a Jealous God.”)
But at all costs, those who have souls must fight to
preserve them.
Social pressures, the demands of job or family,
even morality and religion can make claims on the
Soul, leeching its divine energy to empower a pallid,
lifeless matrix.
Godhood demands sacrifice of those who would
be gods. The fact that they sacrifice on the altar of their
own self doesn't make it any less a sacrifice.
Sometimes it is one’s only begotten son (or cherished
beliefs or life’s work) that comes under the obsidian
knife.
goa is ridiculous; Tnose
who speak, do not
know”
It is hard.
And what is it for? Our Sadducean assumption is
that, even among the gods, there is nothing left over to
rise from the grave.
Once you’re dead, it’s far too late to rise from the
dead.
Come the end of time we will none of us sit up with
dirt in our faces.
But the mere absence of an afterlife is no excuse
for refusing to live now, today, in this life.
To rise out of the grave of numbing habit, to be res
urrected from the tomb of received
wisdom, to throw off the
shroud of a socially accept
able self- negation- that is
what it means to live as
a god.
It’s the only life
worthy of the
name.
Mother's
own quiet
good-bye
I stood on
the stage in-my
too-tight rental
tux, a bit awe
struck by the
whole scene.
A few steps
Josh
Knaub
in iront or me
was my 30-min
utes-from-mar
ried former
roommate. Nothing short of a falling
satellite bouncing off his head would
have broken his enraptured gaze.
The music he had picked played
in its full symphonic glory, but he
didn’t hear. He looked blissfully down
the aisle and out the door, past where
I could see without leaving my place.
The music shifted, causing the entire
room to shift with it. Then she
stepped into view.
Every head followed her progress
until she stopped just short of the
steps leading to where I stood. Every
eye stopped with her.
But no one saw her. They were too
busy looking past her, looking at the
young girl in the white dress. Too
caught up in the once-in-a-lifetime
moment the girl and the young man
were sharing to
bother looking at
the strength and
the sorrow and the
joy in this mother’s
face.
But I watched. I
watched as the
words that were
probably ndver
spoken sang out
louder than the
orchestral climax,
making the whole
scene surreal.
The two, the
girl and the
woman, stood
there for an eternal
moment as the
man of God wel
comed the guests
and spoke of com
mitment and
blessed union and
how a man shall
leave his mother
and...
The woman
stood, holding her
daughter's arm, as
if alone. Her shoul
ders squared, her
head high, the -?
friends and falnily
gathered in the seats behind her
would have seen a pillar of strength
had they taken notice.
But her eyes, safely hidden from
the seated guests, betrayed her. Her
tears welled up until a single, tiny
drop escaped and poured down
unhindered by stoic hands gently
cupped around an unnoticing elbow.
She cried in solitude, cried in remem
brance.
Still, her
tear
washed
down.
Down the
grooves
that joy
had worn
on her face,
reminding
her how
happy it
made her
to be
standing
straight
and tall
while a
daughter of
hers took a
new name.
thr/innn UrirwYtM/r
AtVltlVAA«UJkUAlVV VTA. 11V111V
her youngest daughter, of caring for
precious Emily through 21 years.
Remembrance of how small the girl
was when her daddy went to join his
father. Remembrance of the intro
duction to her daughter's Navy man,
barely a man at all.
Mother and daughter had not
always had an easy relationship.
Though they loved each other deeply,
they had also disagreed deeply.
But now that she had gone away
to school, Emily would ask for advice.
And the planning of the big day had
shown that both would work for the
other’s happiness.
Still, her tear washed down. Down
the grooves that joy had worn on her
face, reminding her how happy it
made her to be standing straight and
tall while a daughter of hers took a
new name. Of how good it was to see
the light in precious Emily's eyes
every time she spoke of her young
officer.
Now the man who had brought
her little girl such happiness would
be joined with her forever. Her
youngest daughter would give her
her first son. “And who gives this
woman to be married to this man,”
came the question from the man of
God.
Who gives this girl to move to
California and then follow her hus
band wherever the government wills
him to go? Who gives this youngest
child to be separated from her family
for better or for worse? Who gives
precious Emily to the life she has cho- ,
sen for herself?
“I do,” came the unwavering
reply. The guests heard, but before
the words were spoken their minds
were racing onward to the sermon or
the kiss or the reception.
And, her part finished, the
woman wiped her tears with a now
unoccupied hand, turned and silent
ly walked to her seat.