From state-wide smoking bans to diet sodas in schools to a proposed tax on video games, “do-goods” are looking out for you whether you want them to or not.

Most of the time, the effects they have on our lives are so subtle we hardly notice them. More often than not, our own shortsightedness prevents us from seeing the bigger picture. When our society no longer cares that a group of its people are marginalized – supposedly for their own good – we all suffer.

I’m not arguing that positive changes aren’t worth pursuing. I think that social activism can be a great thing, and I feel it’s a duty of every responsible citizen. Essentially though, there are two potential outcomes when do-goods succeed: A law will be enacted that either limits individual freedom or expands it, the latter being much less likely.

My concern stems from the actions of the overly eager, would-be social crusaders that become so hell-bent on making their wishes law that they develop a mentality, if only for a time, that justifies anything and everything they do. Do-goods have always used the strategy of divide and conquer to achieve their ends and why shouldn’t they? It works. Recent campaigns carried out by do-goods have put the kibosh on all kinds of stuff and they threaten to do more.

Smoking in public places for example is no longer just rude or inherently anti-social, it’s illegal. Smokers, after all, emit offensive and deadly gases. Do-good logic follows that they should therefore be isolated and studied. But it doesn’t stop there.

Fat kids are troubling as well. It’s not only because of the health problems associated with obesity; the cost of treating those conditions is staggering. Do-good logic would have you believe that someday you’ll be paying for that kid’s condition. It might be monetarily, or it could be when we ask them to defend the motherland from a foreign power. Either way, do-goods have declared that it’s in society’s best interests to isolate them from the mainstream and study them so that we can save them from themselves.

Non-smoking athletes aren’t immune from do-good meddling either. Consumers of video games may be the next group set aside as a social pariah. An initiative in New Mexico called “No Child Left Inside” has been gaining momentum with lawmakers, national park buffs and the Sierra Club. It calls for a special tax on video games intended to get couch potato gamers outside into fresh air and sunlight. I wonder if the state will provide them with sun block.

Right about now, eyes are glazing over with boredom, and that’s my point. Do-goods count on you not caring; if you did, you might stop them from completing their agenda. At the very least you might expose them as the frauds they so often are.

Author C.S. Lewis argues most succinctly “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

The next time you or someone you know becomes filled with the urge to save someone from himself, pause for a moment and entertain the possibility that the person you plan to save is just as rational as you are. Barring any immediate life-threatening catastrophes, consider letting the issue slide rather than forming a coalition of like-minded zealots.