I grew up in Wisconsin in the 1960s. My father, a retired union organizer, ran a tavern. In those days a teenager could buy beer at the University of Wisconsin’s student union in Madison and virtually anywhere else in the state. Hard liquor, however, was another story. Eighteen year-olds were deemed mature enough to buy and drink beer and did so with gusto, but you had to be 21 to buy hard liquor or wine.

We were told, of course, that the distinction was needed because beer was somehow less dangerous than other alcoholic beverages. That lesson was lost on the half dozen or so of my friends who managed to get drunk and wrap themselves around trees on their way home from their favorite “beer joints.”

The real reason for the distinction was not that beer was less likely to get you drunk, but that it was brewed in the Badger State rather than in such exotic places as Kentucky, Tennessee or even Europe.

I mention this because in recent days, the liquor industry has ended its 50-year voluntary ban on network advertising and cut a deal with NBC to begin hawking its wares over the airwaves in competition with those damned Budweiser frogs. The antis are enraged and threatening to do something about the irresponsibility of both the distillers and the networks.

The First Amendment, which the Supreme Court insists applies to commercial speech as well as pornographers, and applied even to political speech until last week, doesn’t impress many in Congress. Indeed, they seem ready to restrict speech whenever and wherever they can argue that doing so is for our own good.

They argue that advertising distilled liquor will lead to more drinking among — you got it! — our kids. Beer ads and talking frogs apparently don’t carry the same risks ... or maybe the brewers have better lobbyists than the distillers.

The distinction is silly and it’s hard to imagine that they make it with a straight face, but they do. And in making it, they spook just about everyone in the neighborhood. Prohibitionists and do-gooders are bad enough, but when they wield government power they’re downright dangerous.

Thus, NBC has set restrictions on the sorts of ads it will accept, who can be in the ads (no athletes, celebrities or anyone under 30), when they can be run (after 9:00 at night) and what they can portray (no drinking or claims that the stuff being advertised is fun or good for you). What’s more, anyone who wants to place such an ad has to first spend a fortune running “socially responsible” ads on the network for four months and then devote 20 percent of their ad budget to such ads once they begin running their product ads.

This is, of course, a good deal for NBC as it will require distillers to spend more money than they might simply to advertise their products.

It’s hard to blame NBC for this. The network wants some of the money that is now being lavished on print advertising and on cable systems that never agreed to a voluntary ban.

Whether they’ll succeed or not remains to be seen. Former Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) head Joe Califano and other quasi-prohibitionists won’t be mollified. Their answer is simple enough and just what NBC fears: a government ban on such advertising.

Most of this misses the point. If distilled beverages are legal, why shouldn’t those who produce and market them have the right to advertise — particularly when their competitors are all over the airwaves? It’s a simple question, but one that few seem willing to address. Doing so would require an argument over whether the do-gooders in and out of government know better than the rest of us what’s good for us — and whether they should be able to use the power of the state to enforce their values on the rest of us.

So, it’s better to assume that everyone accepts the underlying philosophy that they do know what’s best and should wield state power. I don’t happen to be much of a drinker in spite of my upbringing and exposure to millions of dollars worth of advertising directed at me and others — and I don’t think I’m much smarter than most of the others who’ve been exposed to the same things.

Maybe the difference is that, like most people who don’t live in this city, I try to take responsibility for my own decisions and believe others are capable of doing the same. I know that’s a view that makes people like Mr. Califano uncomfortable, but then they make me uncomfortable too.

David Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union and a Washington-based government affairs consultant.