I am about to breach PSRD.
(For the uninitiated, I don’t normally talk about Politics, Sex, Religion or Drugs on this blog. But I’m about to.)
Click the link to continue reading. Or don’t, if you’d rather not.
Okay, this is one of the saddest articles I’ve ever read. Having to put the calories of a food item in the same place and in the same font size as the name of the food item itself? What…what killjoys!
But then I think that’s the point. They literally want to kill the joy of eating various foods they disapprove of. For our own good, of course.
I’m a rather strong individualist. My weight problems are no one’s fault but my own…which means that when I finally conquer them, the credit will be mine and mine alone. That will feel good.
It won’t be because the government made it illegal to sell me food that might make me fat. I mean, what the hell? What business does the government have here?
None. It’s a bunch of nanny-staters using “it’s for your own good” to increase the power of government over people’s lives.
Jonah Goldberg wrote a book on this very subject called Liberal Fascism. When I read it, I liked the in-depth history of the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy, but wasn’t sure about his premise that modern Fascism is going to come from the left in the form of “mommy-Fascism” instead of from the right in the form of “daddy-Fascism”. This article makes me believe his premise more.
It doesn’t matter how or for what reasons government control over the individual is expanded. Either way, we become less free.
And I know it’s so gauche, but yes, I’m going to use a quote from 1984:
“When you make love…afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that.”
Substitute “eat chocolate” or “smoke a cigarette” for “make love” in that quote and it describes Bloomberg’s nannies perfectly
And if they could regulate sex, they’d do it. For your own good, of course.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
I couldn’t agree more, and I don’t see how any sane person would think this is a good idea. This is just another small step towards gaining more and more control over our lives. It’s in the same vein as the tobacco tax. Whether you’re a smoker or not (personally I am not) it’s hard to argue that the tax on tobacco is anything but an abuse of the tax system, “for our own good”. Any use of the tax system for any purpose other than to raise money is an abuse of the system. When you use it to impose moral agendas, that is an abuse of the tax system. They are social engineering human behavior for their own agendas, because they think we’re self-indulging fools who don’t know any better. Because we should behave the way they behave and not engage in behavior they find disagreeable.
If the only person I’m affecting is myself, keep your moral agenda out of my government policies. I’ve struggled a bit with my weight for most of my own adult life now. I know I am solely responsible for the behavior and decisions that have lead to that. If I want to smoke, or drink, or order the triple bypass burger with extra cheese, or put any other junk into my body, that’s my choice. Not the government’s. And yes, I’ll take fries with that burger, thank you very much.
It’s a slippery slope, it really is. If we don’t draw the line somewhere, then where does it end?