Blue laws stifle commerce
Regarding your editorial “Opting out of Sunday closings” (Nov. 16): I cannot agree with you that the mayor “and the residents of Paramus have every right to keep their retail stores closed on Sundays.” To begin with, those stores are not actually “theirs.” They do not belong to the people of Paramus, they are private property and belong to their owners.
Like everyone else, I find traffic unbelievably annoying. But traffic – perhaps especially the traffic at issue here – is a direct consequence of people living their lives. If traffic is truly a problem, the solution shouldn’t be less freedom, it should be more progress. Let’s solve the traffic problem with reason and ingenuity. We can build more and better roads. We can design more intelligent traffic control systems. We can build an amazing public transportation system. We can wisely implement incentives and disincentives.
The founders of our nation did not declare independence from Great Britain so that they might exchange King George for another tyrant. They did so in order that they might secure for the people their unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Surely the right to conduct business, to pursue a better life for oneself and one’s family, is foundational to our democracy and ought not be subject to the whims of a King George, the traffic-weariness of the People’s Republic of Paramus, or even the supposedly more enlightened communities in the rest of Bergen County.
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Having abnegated your right to freely engage in commerce, it seems petty to quibble over which tyrant will relieve you of that right.
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