En route to Notre Dame, my friends and I made an ill-advised stop at Turning Stone Casino in upstate New York. Having never gambled before, I was wary of putting any money down. Upon arrival, my friends sat down at a blackjack table and, with newfound alacrity, I put a $100 bill on the table. Fifteen minutes later, I had lost every dollar. Was I mad that I had lost that money? Furious. Should the government have prevented me from doing so? Absolutely not. (To any reader fatigued by the recent spate of gambling columns in The Heights, my apologies, but I assure you this one is at least slightly different.) Next Thursday, in continuation of the Boisi Center's recent conference on gambling in America, my esteemed Heights colleagues, Tim Mooney and Joshua Darr, will hold a debate on the merits of legalized gambling.
Mooney, as I expect from his columns, will be moderately pro-gambling, but only as it benefits the state; Darr will be anti-gambling.
What I find disappointing about this arrangement is its lack of a gung-ho pro-gambling, pro-individual rights debater. Both Darr and Mooney are quite smart and write interesting columns for The Heights, but they hardly serve as foils for one another; I do not think I am being unfair in calling them both left-leaning moderates. People do not need their same old arguments rehashed because, frankly, both of them are correct. Gambling may not help the town, as Darr believes, because the jobs pay little while likely taking business from local stores; it will, however, benefit the state, as Mooney believes, because of taxes on the mind-numbing, Bugs-Bunny's-eyes-popping-out-of-his-head revenues. (My friends and I lost about $400 in 60 minutes at Turning Stone. We are fairly responsible individuals, and we felt every dollar; it's not as if we would ante with a blithe swipe of our meal plan. One of us, Pat, is an economics major who often talks about how statistically futile scratch cards are. He sat down and promptly lost $100.)
But what about the individual? In essence, people are debating over whether or not you should ever be allowed to do something that they think is bad for you. If they can decide if gambling is bad for you, what else should they be able to decide? Every weekend I drink to excess (sorry, Mom and Dad), and quite often I have regrets more significant than the $100 I lost at Turning Stone - why should drinking be legal? Some of you smoke cigarettes. Must I even convince you that we shouldn't be allowed to smoke cigarettes? The only conceivable reason I can see as to why this is permissible is the government's profit from these cancer-inducing sticks of evil; comparably or significantly less noxious substances (like marijuana) are somehow anathema.
A recent Heights' editorial suggested that "[f]or the 1 to 2 percent of adults who are 'pathological gamblers,' casino money is corrosive, destroying families and ending dreams." Perhaps, but should we all wear helmets because this would save the 1 to 2 percent of clumsy people who may one day trip on a sidewalk and receive a concussion?
Well, all of this is for you to decide, since we live in a democracy. But consider the underlying philosophy: that the government can decide what you are allowed to do to yourself. By voting for these candidates, you are deciding what is good for me. I know the argument of a "slippery slope" seems silly and facile, but consider the recent actions of the New York City Council, who after conquering smoking in bars and trans-fat in fries, they then took on metal bats in high school baseball games. Or, perhaps, recall the controversy in the Massachusetts State House over fluff - fluff! - in public school lunches. If these mild dangers are within the purview of an American government, what is not? Why allow free refills on soda, or all-you-can-eat buffets?
I may never want to stuff my face with trans fat-filled fries until I reach obesity, I may never want to smoke weed until I think I am Master Chief, I may not want to smoke a cigarette or attend a bar where people are allowed to smoke. But these are moral and ethical decisions for me to make for myself and you to make for yourself. If we are not allowed to make choices, we are just puppets acting out the mandates of the state. We can hardly count ourselves to act morally if we act only in fear of prison and state-sponsored coercion. Are we not all afforded free will to be able to make choices for ourselves, right or wrong? If I value trans-fat, and I want to smoke a cigarette in a bar, who is anyone else to say I am wronging myself? I can hardly see how my innards should fall under the jurisdiction of the state. The view I have here espoused is a basis of what most people nowadays call libertarianism. If you have ever met a libertarian (and many of you may know some libertarian gadfly), you have probably heard variations on my theme, but I hope you seriously consider it. I dismissed libertarian ideas for years. They seemed like extremists to me, and I suppose I was right. As a libertarian in modern-day America, I may be an extremist, but the label implies neither right nor wrong, only the breadth of my disagreement.
And if you think the government should control our actions, then for my sake, petition your local congressman for a new prohibition. Apparently, you think I need it.
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