FREEDOM

An Essay on the Virtue of Sin City. And of America.

Joshua Longobardy

That, as I've come to know it, was the force driving our predecessors out West, into the virgin desert—that identical, natural force which had compelled our country's forefathers to traverse the Atlantic Ocean and establish a whole new nation not at all on an ideology—neither Republican, Democratic, Libertarian, nor even Capitalist or Socialist—but rather, a simple condition: freedom.

That's all: freedom. A state of liberty in which men and women, created in the image of God, would recognize their innate ability as humans to do good, and to be responsible. So that, for example, when a woman had achieved the age of autonomy, whatever the consensus on that age might be, her fellow citizens acknowledged her inalienable right as an individual to chose what she wanted to do with her body, for better or worse, even if that meant giving it to a man (of age) under a contract bonded by money. That no one—not the woman's father, not her pastor, and in all certainty not her local assemblyman or assemblywoman—had the right to strip her of that choice, nor to absolve her of the responsibility consequent to that choice.

That was the dream exemplified. But something happened to it, the larger dream of individual liberty. In New York and Illinois and Alabama and even free-spirited California centuries ago, it dissipated, so that those individuals who still sought that condition even if they couldn't define it nor consciously discourse about it came out to Southern Nevada, a sort of sanctuary in America. But now we seem to be losing it too, year by year. This, I think, is evidence of what I'm talking about:

Geoff Schumacher, author of Sun, Sin & Suburbia: An Essential History of Modern Las Vegas and columnist for the Review-Journal, wrote in the November 12 edition, just after election season, applauding the "demise of ‘live and let live' Nevada." He asserted that Nevada has suffered from the old frontier philosophy of "rugged individualism," and that now, with growth, we are—thank God!—finally retiring from that "self-centered tradition" and moving beyond it in favor of the "public good," as evidenced by the passage of Questions 5, 6 and 7 on our last voter ballot.

As we all know by now, state Question 5 bans indoor smoking from every public place in Nevada except for, in essence, casinos and foodless bars; Question 6 compels Nevada businesses to up the minimum wage one dollar above the federal level; Question 7 maintains the prohibition on marijuana—and the voter approval of the three, according to Schumacher, shows that we Nevadans are "becoming more sophisticated."

I, for one, decline to believe this. For it's untenable to say that we, or those old pioneers who through sweat and sacrifice established this state, have ever been rudimentary civilians. And I'm not so sure sophistication can even derive from compulsory conduct, or in any case that sophistication is worth a damn if it does not come from self-discipline, the initiative taken from within an individual.

Question 7 would have never required passage if the dream still abounded. Because if it did, there would never had been any question about the topic: We would have already recognized a person's inalienable right to smoke to his own heart's content, as well as to his own decrepitude, too, if he so chooses. Just as long as he maintained an inflexible responsibility over his freedom—not distributing pot to children, not driving while high—he would be left alone, for everyone is at liberty to harm himself, but no one has the right to injure another. And if a man in Nevada has been permitted access to something as volatile as a case of beer, or an automobile, for sure he would be trusted with something proven as innocuous as marijuana.

Question 6 passed on the premise that (to use Schumacher's words) "people are entitled to a decent wage for their labor." Which might very well be true, but compelling one man to pay it against his will (instead of allowing the other man to will his way to earn it) is, for one, unproductive to both. A point which I don't even think is controvertible, for anyone who has suffered a peasant's wage finds his situation either tolerable or intolerable: If it's the former, then the only real consequence of raising his pay is to deepen the contentedness and thwart industriousness and assiduousness and sacrifice, which are poverty's magnetic opposites; but if it's the latter, then he's doing all he can anyway—working hard, making connections, going to school—to raise himself out of his despair, for he knows one dollar more an hour won't do it, nor does he want anyone else to do it for him, because that would reft him of the dignity and self-respect that come with earning one's daily bread. But of greater importance, compelling one man to pay the raise, while absolving the other of the responsibility to earn it, is antithetical to that sense of freedom which was once our preeminent dream. This has little to do with party politics: it's merely a condition I'm talking about.

A condition—as natural and vital as air and climate—in which some laws, no doubt, are necessary to ensure security and order do not fly away, just as gravity ensures we remain grounded. But also a condition in which the law-conceiving and law-enacting processes never forsake the basic unflagging belief in individuals—whether they be black or white or brown, male or female, privileged or underprivileged—to prevail over any and all circumstances.

I recall from my formative years reading a line from Jefferson (or maybe Franklin, or perhaps it was Lincoln) which read: One man's liberty must end where another man's begins. Even as a boy I knew what that meant—that in order for liberty to abound, we humans need to practice good judgment and mutual responsibility.

The passage of state Question 5 deprives us of that need when it comes to smoking in public. Provided that Surgeon General Richard Carmona's proclamation in a USA Today report last June was correct—that "The debate is over, the science is clear: secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard"—it was only natural to restrict smoking from day care centers and shopping malls and other public venues populated by youths, too young to practice discretion or to defend themselves against inimical elements. But to prohibit smoking from mature places like taverns that sell food is to reave individual adults of the need to practice discretion in choosing establishments they patronize and individual tavern owners of the responsibility to protect their nonsmokers, perhaps erecting barriers or themselves demanding smokers to puff outside.

Now, the majority who passed Question 5 contend that both sides have already failed to demonstrate good judgment and responsibility—hence, the need for a new law. But that too is a symptom of the dream lost. For even if people practice bad judgment and irresponsibility—which is inevitable, as human beings are by nature fallible, it must be suffered because the alternative is to limit freedom, one human shortcoming at a time. Which is exactly what appears to be happening in Las Vegas.

The examples are numerous. A relative handful of exotic dancers were busted for prostitution and now the city of Las Vegas has hindered its strippers with so many rules and regulations that one local dancer from Oregon, after the city's ordinance to ban "caressing and groping" was upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court in November 2006, went on record as saying: "This is Sin City, and if Oregon is more sinful than we are, that's weird." Prostitution itself had become a crime when the government in 1971 banned Clark County women from even the opportunity to entertain men in their bedrooms for money. And in 2002, with the passage of Question 2, banning gay marriage, the majority of Nevadans told women that neither did they have the choice to entertain another woman in their marital beds.

It seems to me that we no longer subscribe to many of those principles which comprise the condition. Either we've forgotten them, or we've repudiated them. I decline to believe the latter. I decline to believe we would turn our back on freedom. Instead, I tend to think we've forgotten them, forgotten the dream. For two reasons:

One is that we are spoiled. The dream, which once had to be worked for, fought for, even suffered and died for, has been bequeathed to so many generations before us that by now we take it for granted. We the sons of the old Westerners and the grandsons of the forefathers never had to earn it. In truth, all we were ever required to do was to remember why the condition was once deemed so paramount that it was fought for, suffered for, and that would have been enough. But like the progeny of the man who amassed his own fortune stone by stone, only so he could live with dignity and independence and die with the gratification of bequeathing his fortune to his kids, we have grown up with the impression that the dream would always be there, that we are entitled to it. And so we lost vigilance.

The second is that we've been deceived. Lacking vigilance we have allowed ourselves to be misguided. Commentators such as Schumacher, rallying majority support under irreproachable catchwords such as "sophistication" and "entitlement," and "public good," have told the masses: You need not worry any longer about the individual duty to practice discretion and responsibility, nor vigilance, for your government will take care of that for you. Which works, because all of us, if given the choice between moving and sitting, will stay put. And history confirms that we humans procrastinate bravery until we have no other choice; put off demonstrating our innate capability to do good and our capacity to be responsible until we absolutely must.

And that, as I see it, is the crux of the problem. We've been, are being, alleviated of that must—that duty as individuals to do good and be responsible, to prove our aptitude for freedom, lacking which we as individuals cannot demonstrate our inherent potential for greatness. (For what woman can prove her virtuosity when the law prohibits her from practicing unvirtuous sex? What disadvantaged youth can evince resilience when he receives tax money he didn't work for, or a state-mandated raise he didn't earn? And what smoker can showcase self-restraint and consideration if he can't even be in the same building as a non-smoker?)

Perhaps the dream is already lost here in Southern Nevada. Perhaps now it's just a matter of making sure that it's not too far gone to be retrieved. Because that, in my mind, would be a loss worth lamenting. For even if our motives up to this century have been built upon unconscious reasons purely carnal and self-indulgent, Southern Nevada's glory has been its long-standing existence as an oasis in which adults were given their right to choose between virtuousness and unvirtuousness, and that last remaining sense of paradise seems to be slipping with every election season and legislative session to pass. So that, who knows, in five years perhaps we will come to institute a 2 a.m. last call (for public safety); in 10 we'll rid ourselves of strip clubs all together (for reasons of sophistication); and in 15 we'll eradicate homosexuality, rock 'n' roll and homeless people (for everyone is entitled to a state of perpetual comfort)—leaving only that one wildly profitable and thus untouchable vice on which our town's virile economy is built—gambling—to justify the renowned moniker by which our town is known throughout the world.

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