Hat tip to Pericles, one of my most persistent critics, who in the thread on the smoking ban said this: “I have to give you credit on this one. You surprised me.”

Thanks, but I don’t necessarily know why that would be.

There seems to be this idea that because I’m a liberal, I necessarily come down on the “liberal” side of every argument. When it comes to the war in Iraq, I tell you what - I’m as liberal as liberal can be, if we define “liberal” as “thinking the war was the worst idea ever, and continuing to oppose the idea of spreading democracy at gunpoint.”

But because of my opposition to the war and this president, it’s automatically assumed that, say, I favor gun control.

I don’t. I don’t think that new laws taking guns away from law-abiding citizens is going to do one damned thing to reduce the number of criminals who have guns and who use guns. And I see no point in penalizing those who don’t commit crimes in order to take an impotent stab at harnessing those who do.

And then the smoking ban. There’s a difference between, say, a factory belching smoke next to a lower-class neighborhood where people frankly don’t have the wherewithal to leave and a restaurant where patrons can if they’re offended when others choose to light up in designated areas. This does not mean I oppose all regulatory efforts, and some I support pretty strongly. This does not mean I think the market is always the answer - in the area of health care, the market, in the way it’s set up, is the problem.

But we in this country want government to enforce our own preferences. I’ll say it again: If you go to a restaurant or bookstore or some such where people are smoking and it offends you and you fear for the safety of your children, you have the wherewithal to go somewhere else. Why should you have to? Because it isn’t your place, and the person who does own the establishment has the right to set the rules - or should.

Those who back the smoking ban to strip them of that right. And I just see no need for it.

Anyway, back to the original point. We want to live in this dichotomous society. We want to be able to pigeonhole everyone and everything. If I’m liberal, goes this thinking, I must be liberal on all subjects. But I’m not; on some subjects, I’m probably more conservative than you.

To the extent that I’ve opposed the Bush administration, it’s because I believe they have done palpable harm to the country; to the extent that I oppose populist Rush Limbaugh conservatism, it’s because I believe that political “philosophy” is entirely knee-jerk in nature; I oppose neoconservatism because I think the idea of believing in a moral imperative to spread democracy at gunpoint is idealistic madness.

But when you get back to the tenets of what used to be conservatism - I believe in a lot of those. I think it would serve the Republican Party well to get back to them - but I don’t think the party will do that, because conservatism has been so bastardized, it’s become something else entirely.

So pigeonhole me if you want, but if you do, you may continue to be surprised. And I kind of like the idea of that, anyway; one of the reasons for the success of Limbaugh, et al, has been their utter predictability. You know what they’re going to say on virtually every subject. Consumers like that dichotomous setup; they know exactly what they’re getting.

I prefer to mix it up. It’s may seem inexplicably contrarian at times. But I think, ultimately, it makes things more interesting.