FREEDOM, ANYONE?

Dear Editor:

If you really want to find out how free you are in Nova Scotia, this
"democratic" non-socialist heaven on Earth, try growing a little tobacco or
pot for your personal use or try marketing Aunt Carrie's medicinal
blueberry wine or, heaven forbid, manufacturing your own alcohol. Try
holding a weekend poker session with cash in the pot. Do all these things
and, in your exuberant enjoyment of freedom, let a few of your friends know
about it. Try fishing a few more smelts than will feed the cat or, for that
matter, fishing gaspereaux on a weekend.

In all of the above instances, you will be in jail by Monday because all
these areas of "freedom" are the exclusive domain of the provincial
government and its friends. Booze, tobacco and fish are the cash cows of
government and its corporate cohorts. Smelts are $3 a pound in your
favourite supermarket, no limit; while government sanctions casinos and
owns golf courses and high-profile inns, all in direct competition with
private enterprise.

All this, while the socialist hordes are effectively denied the opportunity
to inflict their horrors upon us. How lucky we are, how absolutely
mollified. Freedom, anyone?

John G. McKay, Amherst