BrianGarst.com

Who defends the freedoms of our freedom defenders?

Jack Smith, head of the Pentagon’s office of clinical and program policy, says he will recommend that Gates adopt proposals by a federal study that cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs as reasons for the ban.

The study by the Institute of Medicine, requested by the VA and Pentagon, calls for a phased-in ban over a period of years, perhaps up to 20. “We’ll certainly be taking that recommendation forward,” Smith says.

By itself, this is outrageous enough.  But there is a much bigger lesson that must be understood here.

The reason this ban is being called for is because military personnel have the kind of universal, taxpayer funded health care that many want to impose on all of us.  Once everyone’s health care is supplied by everyone else, we all gain a financial interest in dictating the behavior of others.  The inevitable result of this is reports like the one sent to the Pentagon brass, proclaiming that if we only prevented people from engaging in X behavior, taxpayers would be saved Y dollars in health care expenses.  And with runaway budget deficits, there will be more than a few politicians looking to cut expenses by using the force of law to change peoples behavior.  That is a recipe for the end of liberty.