Lindsay Perigo: No Dancing!

- Lindsay Perigo's daily editorials can be heard on his 'Politically Incorrect Show' weekdays at noon on Radio Pacific, or downloaded at http://www.freeradical.co.nz

Lindsay Perigo: No Dancing!

Every day I receive by e-mail a digest of news compiled by an organisation called the Freedom Foundation. This digest has links to freedom-related stories from all over the globe. It's a salutary daily reminder to me that the plague of politicians & bureaucrats is not confined to the Sheeple's Republic of Aotearoa. Overseas stories come in that reek of such mind-boggling petty-fascism that Aotearoa starts to look like the libertarian Promised Land. (Well ...)

An example was a story yesterday from a town in West Virginia, USA, called Pound. For years, Pound had an ordinance forbidding dancing in public without a permit. Permits were not to be granted "to anyone who is not a proper person, nor to a person who is not a person of good moral character." Then the owner of a restaurant, the Golden Pine, got the ordinance thrown out as unconstitutional - whereupon the Town Council enacted a new one that would pass constitutional muster, to the loud approval of the local God Squad. A Church of Christ evangelist, Tim Shepherd, quoted by Chris Kahn of Associated Press, says, "I can never see a time when dancing can be approved of, especially with people who are not married. Dancing is one of those things that entices. It imitates sexual contact."

Notwithstanding the ban, hundreds of people - college kids, coal-miners, old-timers - get together at the Golden Pine every Saturday night & dance the night away, smoking cigarettes as they do so. The authorities are preparing to pounce. The local police chief says, "We're planning something, but I can't go into detail right now." The town attorney says the owner of the Golden Pine can expect a court summons any day now.

Evidently there are similar bans in lots of other small towns, but they're found in antiquated sections of legal code that are, mercifully, never enforced. The zealous religionists of Pound are, it seems, intent on being the exception. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this can happen in America. When I was in Huntington Beach, California, one Independence Day, the local authorities had decided to honour the rights to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness laid down in the Declaration of Independence with a ban on drinking alcohol on one's front lawn. Some friends & I sat on their front lawn & drank ourselves silly. And I suppose I can contemplate these insanities & smugly say, "It would never happen here."

Can't I?

- For Lindsay Perigo's daily "Politically Incorrect Show" editorials, visit: http://www.freeradical.co.nz or listen to Radio Pacific from noon to 2pm weekdays.

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