save us from the fanatics!

Leonie is 82, remembers Hitler and the Fascist thugs that set out to change the world according to their fanatic beliefs, and while no longer much of a smoker herself, she defends the right of those who choose to exercise their civil liberty to do so and she's fuming at Belmont City Council's unanimous vote to prohibit smoking anywhere in the Californian city except for single-family detached residences.

"Can you believe the hide of these fanatics!" says Leonie. "They're going to ban smoking on the street, in a park and even in one’s car and back yard! What a nice money-earner that's going to be for the fat cats at Belmont City Council, but what a cruel blow for smokers and their civil liberties."

"I'm old enough to understand the delicate human condition," says Leonie. "To be human means to be flawed, nobody's perfect, and I do my best to follow the golden rule, treat others as I want them to treat me, being respectful of differences and tolerant of flaws."

"But there are three flaws I cannot respect or tolerate -- child abuse, brutality and fanaticism -- and when people possessing one or more of these deadly flaws end up in positions of power or influence over the rest of us I become really angry."

"Our legal system generally takes care of the child abusers and brutes among us, but what about the fanatics?"

"Who is keeping an eye on those among us with fanatical delusions of superiority who aim to change society to their liking -- to stop us taking drugs, smoking, drinking alcohol, owning firearms, chopping trees, committing suicide, having an abortion, driving SUVs, eating fast food, wearing headscarves and generally following any of our myriad human inclinations?"

"The list of their dos and don'ts is endless and generally encompasses everything some of us want to do at some point in our lives, so we're all at risk of being targeted."

"That most of the regulated dos and don'ts of the fanatics are ostensibly for our own good, or the good of society, seem to make them widely acceptable," adds Leonie, "but has everyone forgotten the lunatic prohibition on alcohol in the 1920s? What good did that do? The drinkers went underground, exacerbating crime and drunkeness, and those that gave up drinking merely substituted their cravings with something else. That's when heroin and cocaine crept into our homes."

"Naturally, we'd prefer that our kids didn't do any drugs at all, but we all have cravings of one sort or another -- even for chocolate -- and, knowing that the good people at Belmont City Council have similar cravings, how dare they tell us what we can and cannot do, and how dare they publicly revile people for their human frailties!"

"There are only three hateful crimes that need to be proscribed: child abuse, brutality and fanaticism," says Leonie. "Everything else is a matter of following the golden rule and taking sensible precautions."

"Accidents happen and careless or foolish people will always get fleeced or hurt, and when such misfortunes happen the matter should be a private one between the victim and the perpetrator."

"Our courts and prisons are so clogged with petty matters and petty criminals that gross crimes involving child abuse, brutality and fanaticism often go unnoticed and the perpetrators enjoy untouched lives in society."

"By proposing to criminalize smoking, Belmont City Council is deliberately or otherwise taking the searchlight off real crimes and real criminals and encouraging people to get their kicks with far more dangerous drugs than nicotine."

"After the WWII horrors of Nazi Germany under Hitler when -- for the good of the fatherland -- Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, the disabled and other so-called undesirables were publicly reviled and exterminated, the world's watchdogs made a solemn promise to keep the human fanatic monitor on full alert, but somehow they fell asleep on the job when the fanatics were perpetrating similar atrocities in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and other places."

"Why?"

"Is the combined human fanatic monitor so flawed that we can't see these people coming -- in any area of human life -- and stop them before they do too much harm?" asks Leonie. "If we can't rely on the highly paid UN watchdogs to protect the basic human rights and civil liberties of people in the third world then these rights don't exist and everyone, everywhere, is totally at the mercy of fanatics."

"What are we going to get next?" sighs Leonie. "Another Senator Joe McCarthy and a commission to expose smokers in our society?"

"For God's sake America, wake up before it's too late," says Leonie. "Men and women of my generation and the generation before mine gave up their lives to defend freedom and civil liberties -- and most of them smoked, too! -- and you're allowing the evil monsters back into power."

"Whatever happened to the golden rule?"

"Shame on all of you who treat smokers like criminals!"