Not long

ago, it was illegal in many parts of Georgia to open a

store or restaurant on Sunday.

Now Sunday

brunch is many a restaurant's most profitable offering,

and it's the churched, not the unchurched, who make it

so.

Times

change.

Times

changed recently when the state government, which outlaws

gambling in order to protect us from ourselves, set up

its own gambling operation. One must assume that the

state is still interested in protecting us from

ourselves, because gambling is still illegal.

But we also

must assume that the state views the dangers from

gambling differently when it is the state and not some

enterprising entrepreneur who is reaping the profit.

Oh, and

gambling for charity also is now legal.

The

argument against legalizing gambling in the state has

always been that it will destroy our society as so many

become addicted and indebt themselves beyond their

capacity to pay.

But it

appears that we don't care what happens to the gambler as

long as the money is going to the state for education or

to some charity.

I don't

know if I can even begin to unravel the philosophy behind

such a hypocritical farce as a state lottery in a state

in which gambling is illegal.

Let's

see... if the state reaps billions, many millions of that

going to the company owned by the governor's special

friends who somehow got the state contract to run the

lottery, that's good. If some convenience store owner

makes a few extra bucks paying $10 or $20 to people who

enjoy putting twice as much money into his card-playing

computers, that's bad.

I know some

local business owners wound up in the news recently when

they were arrested for paying off on computerized card

games, and I want you to understand with crystal clarity

that I do not assign any fault to the police who made

those arrests. Police are sworn to uphold whatever laws

are passed by the folks we send to the state legislature

or put on the local councils and commissions.

When they

do that, they deserve nothing but praise.

What we're

discussing here is our whole way of thinking as a

society.

I'm not

even necessarily advocating legalized gambling. I'm

advocating integrity and consistency in our blue laws.

One used to

hear that phrase, "blue laws," often, but it

seems to have dropped out of use lately. Its most narrow

definition, according to Webster, is "any law that

forbids certain practices, as doing business or dancing,

on Sunday," or more broadly as "any of the

puritanical laws of colonial New England regarding

personal conduct.

We have a

bunch of blue laws in Georgia. You can drink alcohol

anytime, anywhere, but you can't buy it after midnight or

on Sunday, except in a restaurant. Well, that depends on

what town you're in. There are a few counties in the

state that are still completely dry, and still others

that allow neither packaged nor poured alcohol sales on

Sunday, and still others, like Fayetteville, that choose

your poison for you by prohibiting liquor but allowing

beer and wine.

And some

towns cut you off at 11 or 11:30 p.m. so there's no

chance someone will accidentally make the buy at 12:01

because of a faulty clock.

Ridiculous.

If we think it's necessary to govern what an individual

chooses to take into his or her body, why is it less

necessary at 2 p.m. than at 1 a.m.?

method have we determined that people should be free to

consume alcohol but not marijuana? Both are horrifyingly

dangerous drugs if abused, yet we spend money to build

prison cells for people caught with a few pot seeds in

their car ashtrays, while thousands yearly drink

themselves to death having never once darkened a jail

door.

Well,

they've never darkened a jail door as long as they didn't

try to buy any of the stuff on Sunday, anyway.

Tell me

what you think, folks. Should we as individual people be

free to make our own choices, or not? If not, then who

gets to decide which choices we're free to make and which

are to be made by the state, and what are the

qualifications these overseers of our morals must have?

And what

are the criteria for filling in the following blank?

"Freedom is a good thing, except ______."