Strap on your seat belt, snuff out that cigarette and head over to your stockbroker's to tell him to take all of your money out of the market and put it under the mattress of someone unreliable. When you finish doing that, you should have just enough time to not stop off at happy hour for a drink. As we slowly vote more and more of our freedoms away, I figure we're only about six months from a national bedtime. In our collective desire to legislate against the possibility of anyone having a bad day, we've rarely considered whether our laws impinge on our rights as individuals.

Americans simply love telling each other what to do. If your neighbor picks his nose, rather than simply not looking at him, we pass a law outlawing his action. Then, assuming that since our friend can't manage the affairs of his own nose, he can't possibly handle bigger decisions, we make rules governing the rest of his actions.

We're not crushing the freedom of our fellow man, we're just stopping one poor slob from hurting himself. Of course, in making that law, or the ones that "protect" us from smoking, drinking or poor financial planning, we slowly erode our basic right to free will.

If the majority of us consider something bad or harmful, why not make a law about it? As soon as an activity falls out of favor with the public, let's pass a statute making it illegal.

Smoking causes cancer, driving without a seat belt causes death and everyone knows that without mandatory social security contributions, most people would end up spending their retirement years selling pencils on a street corner.

If you choose to do something harmful even though you~re aware of the risks, let's criminalize that behavior and lock you up for even trying it. We can't do this because as soon as we make rules governing other people's stupidity, we give them the right to do the same to us. You may not have any of the aforementioned bad habits, but you could certainly eat better, your cholesterol has gotten awfully high and wearing that shirt with those pants should be considered a crime.

Making laws about stuff you don't like would be wonderful if you could always be the person in charge. Given those parameters, I'd ban bananas, Whoopi Goldberg and anyone who even makes a reference to "Livin' La Vida Loca." I'm also leaning toward outlawing television shows about mismatched roommates and placing restrictions on people who wear sweat pants in public.

Unfortunately, as soon as I passed the laws forbidding the stuff I don't like, you would make rules about my favorite stuff. That means an end to all bands who sound like mid-80s REM, no more "Sports Night" on ABC and fines for complaining about relatively insignificant problems.

Luckily, we still have enough freedom to stop each other from doing this.

Since I don't trust you, and we know you don't trust me, the only real answer is to let you do whatever you want, as long as I have the same right.