Okay, civil libertarians, it’s about the time where the rubber hits the road. We’ve heard a lot of talk from some quarters about how our rights are being eroded right out from underneath us thanks to seven years of His Fascist Chimpitude. Now, I’ve yet to actually see one of these eroded rights, but I grant that they, like the Loch Ness Monster and Chessie, might well exist in some form or another.

Today, though, presents a far more solid target for our ire and action. Do we dare take the challenge as eagerly as some took the Patriot Act and the new FISA legislation?

The Maryland State Legislature is hearing a bill again this year that will make it illegal for an adult to smoke in a motor vehicle so long as there’s a child under six years old in there with them. it doesn’t matter if it’s your car or your child. You can be pulled over by a police officer and issued a ticket.

Doesn’t sound too bad, huh? We have to do things sometimes for the children, even if it means that we give up a little of our freedom (not that the lawmakers actually asked us or anything, but that’s a subject for another post). Who wants little kids with lungs like coal miners anyhow?

I’d expect that most folks can shrug off a $50 fine once in a while and that we’ll mostly nod our heads and smile when we hear it’s “for the children”. Most of us probably don’t smoke, which makes it a lot easier to stick it to the ones that do. Filty habit, that. And since it’s not a moving violation, it won’t go against your auto insurance. What could be bad?

What should give us reason to stop and think, though, is that once you are pulled over, you are subject to all sorts of privacy-invading shenanigans. The officer could ask you for consent to search your vehicle and I dare say that most folks have no clue that they can rightly answer “no”. But who says “no” to a police officer these days? Surely not the innocent citizen!

If you happen to have a bag of weed or a prostitute in the car in plain view of the officer, you’ll be going to jail. Did your spouse drop a prescription bottle in the passenger’s seat? Better make sure the last name on that bottle matches yours, or you could be explaining at length why you have that controlled dangerous substance in your car. How about a quick scan from a drug dog? That’s within the realm of possibility, too. All the officer has to do is be able to articulate the suspicion that he could have found something (and that suspicion might have nothing to do with you, but could be that your car is a common car from drug runners or you drive on a known drug corridor). He’ll run your name and your registration though the MVA and warrant databases just to check you out if he does nothing else.

That, friends, is real and tangible erasure of your civil liberties. One can easily think where such a successful law might lead. If your car is no longer sacrosanct, what about your house? Your church? Your place of business, assuming you don’t already work in a bar or restaurant, because you’re already gotten.

And if six is a good age to protect kids from your foul miasmas, how about ten? Twelve? Sixteen? Why cut it off at the age of majority? Why not just protect you from you?

Fascist states started with a lot less alarmism but just the same amount of concerns for your health and welfare and the health and welfare of the children. The desire to take children and place them under the increasingly intrusive but very mommy-like wing of government is a very strong impulse but it’s an impulse that never ends up well and too often ends up in totalitarianism.

(cross-posted to The Sundries Shack)