Or should we title this: "Get government out of the bedroom ... and the kitchen"?
Don't miss the "Brave New Diet" op ed piece by Sally C. Pipes in today's Washington Post . To give you a flavor, she points out that basketball superstar Kobe Bryant and undefeated New England Patriot's QB Tom Brady -- to say nothing of "Hollywood hearttrobs" Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Tom Cruise and George Clooney" -- are all "fatties." They're overweight using today's metrics. Besides some useful facts on government games-playing on the obesity issue, the political insight about dietary guidelines is particularly timely -- and planned -- for this holiday season with its parties and feasts. Ms. Pipes notes that
"underlying this ["common political refrain that America faces a childhood obesity epidemic"] is the premise that we're helpless before gingerbread cookies and honey-roasted hams -- unable to resist these and other foods and incapable of putting down our forks. We can be cured, it seems, only by government intervention such as the banning of trans-fats and sodas from public schools.
But is it the food, or is it us? Is it a proper role of government to tell us what we can or can't eat?
She poses some questions she'd like answered "[b]efore we let Uncle Sam into our kitchens, at school or at home" and concludes:
People make choices. And government should protect -- not restrict -- the freedom to make those choices so long as we're not harming others.
While we may not always like the choices others might make, it is essential that we all have the freedom to choose for ourselves. Once we accept the idea that the Nanny State should step in when it's "for our own good," we've taken a very big step down the road to something like the scene painted in George Orwell's "1984" -- when citizens wake each day to mandatory exercise classes on the Telescreen.
Most of us would prefer to choose for ourselves whether to exercise or have an extra helping of apple pie. And if we gain an extra pound over the holidays -- so what? That's why we have New Year's resolutions.
