I was standing outside on a cold evening with a smoker who was complaining about the absurdity of making her stand outside. She explained that she had been born and grown up under Hitler. Her adult life was nearly all in East Germany under communism. She said that had either government been so harsh and restrictive as the Americans were about smoking, Germans would have rebelled.
I think she was right.
There is a reason we do not rebel against the daily intrusions on our freedom, especially in the Left insanity driven cities like San Francisco. Smoking is banned in private apartments, and department stores cannot give bags to customers, apartment buildings cannot be built with a parking space for each unit, high schools cannot offer ROTC, goose liver cannot be sold in restaurants, stores for poor people are banned (Walmart) etc. etc.
The reason the Left can restrict our choices so readily is that commerce has given us far too much freedom. We have so much freedom that we do not mind, we in fact welcome, decreases in our freedom. Intrusions on our private choices.
The Lefty mind is a mind that hates freedom. Lefties love GAza and Cuba. I had a friend who explained to me that people's lives are so empty that they will fill in with melodrama: unpleasantness, disagreements, fights, sex with the neighbors, sex with fellow employees.... anything to fill up their time and avoid the availability freedom.
Lefties take advantage of the enormous freedoms commerce gives us to take it away; out of their own selfish fears of life fully developed by other people. Life full of opportunity that other people find and enjoy is anti-Lefty.
The definition of Puritanism is: 'objecting to anyone else finding pleasure'. That is in fact the modern definition of Leftism.