Today New York City’s Board of Health approved a ban on the sale of large sodas and sugary drinks in many establishments. It is, as the New York Times pointed out, the first such law enacted in the country. The intent of this initiative pursued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg is to combat the epidemic of obesity in this country. But good intentions have always paved the road to hell or, more important, the path to tyranny. Bloomberg is right to say that New Yorkers ought to be watching their diets. He’s dead wrong in attempting to use the ubiquitous power of the state to impose his ideas about what they should be eating and drinking on them.
The mayor has said he doesn’t want to take away anyone’s right to drink as much soda as they want, but rather his goal is, as he said on the “Today” show, to “force you to understand” that what you are doing is wrong. But at the heart of the latest instance of the mayor’s attempt to become New York’s nanny-in-chief, is an idea put forward in the New York Times by one of his measure’s supporters. As filmmaker Casey Neistat wrote on Saturday, the issue is “that some people just aren’t responsible enough to feed themselves.” That is exactly the frame of reference of Bloomberg on this and all such measures where he and other do-gooders seek to govern the lives of fellow citizens. It is not that they oppose individual freedom per se but that they think the rest of us are too sick or too stupid to be allowed to exercise it freely.
The justification presented for this unprecedented government interference in both commerce and individual behavior is that the public and the government bear much of the cost of the illnesses that derive from obesity. But the logic of this argument breaks down when you realize that such reasoning would allow government to interfere in just about any sphere of private behavior including procreation. That is exactly the point that the Communist regime in Beijing has given in defense of its tyrannical one-child policy and the forced abortions that are performed in order to enforce it.
One needn’t paint the billionaire mayor as a would-be totalitarian to understand that a government that can tell you how much soda to drink or fat to eat because the sugar in your super-sized cup will eventually cost it something is one that can, in theory, tell you to do or not do just anything else you can think of.
America’s grand experiment with do-gooder government early in the 20th century was no less well intentioned than that undertaken by Bloomberg and his food and drink police. Indeed, the prohibition of the sale of alcohol addressed a far more urgent health problem facing the nation then (and now) as well as one that cost it, even in that era of small government, a lot of money. But Americans soon learned that legislating personal choices in such a manner is always a colossal mistake that tells us more about our faults than our virtues.
Personal choices, such as the consumption of sugar, do not fall under any reasonable definition of government responsibility. However serious our obesity problem may be, it cannot be solved by government fiat. Indeed, it isn’t likely that there will be a single less fat person in New York because of Bloomberg’s power play. But there will be a little less individual freedom in the city and elsewhere if his noxious idea spreads. The issue here is freedom, not sugar or obesity. The damage from this infringement on the fundamental values that are the foundation of democracy will hurt us far more than the extra few ounces of soda that the mayor begrudges New York’s citizens.
Mayor Bloomberg's stated intent was to "combat the epidemic of obesity in this country," yet he fails to factor in human behavior. Given that this law bans BIG GULP (32 oz) sized drinks, but not the regular (16 oz) size, who's to say that people won't just order TWO regular sized drinks instead? Similarly, the 'fat free' food marketing craze produced the OPPOSITE (if not predictable) result, instead of people losing weight, it ushered in the obesity epidemic. After all, if self-control and portion control actually worked in Bloomberg's imaginary Utopian society, then we wouldn't be scarfing down 5 servings of "no fat' Snack Wells, now would we? Liberalism is a pathological disorder. They make the storm and cry about the rain.
I can't buy a 24oz soda and yet most people with a DUI have more than one. Can someone explain that priority to me?
" It is not that they oppose individual freedom per se but that they think the rest of us are too sick or too stupid to be allowed to exercise it freely." nAs witness how many people voted for this nannycompoop and dozens more like him. But you don't see the rest of us trying to say that they shouldn't be allowed to exercise their freedom to vote because they can't be trusted not to exercise it in ways that are not self-destructive. n
Being fat is the next worst thing to smoking. Our nation has taken smokers and ostracized them to no end. At first smoking was fine just about anywhere. Then, we had separate seating for smokers and airlines had a smoking section of the plane. Office workers could smoke in their office, but not with others. n nThen, we had rooms in offices for smokers, airlines banned smoking but not on all flights, just the short ones. Restaurants could choose if they would allow smoking or not. Some did, others didn't. Then, it came. That wonderful study that second hand smoke was harmful to others and so the smoker affected not just his life, but the lives of people around him. Cities made smoking illegal in all restaurants; airlines forbid it anytime, any flight. States increased already outrageous taxes on cigarettes. Offices banned all smokers so that now they congregate outside in a sort of drug-like den of ill-repute. And, a condominium owner was told (this is not fiction!) that he could not smoke in his home because the ventilation system was tied to other condos. n nFat people will soon be like smokers. It starts just like Jonathan wrote and then we'll hear that fat people are a health burden to the svelte people. A fat person has greater health costs, or so we will be told, and with ObamaCare now the law of the land other taxpayers will not stand for the extra costs. n nWhat our nation did to smokers is a horrible blow to personal freedom and liberty (I am not a smoker but respect the rights of others to smoke if they choose to) and now that same faulty logic is turning to the overweight. It's disgusting overreach of the nanny state. n nWhat's next, forced labor camps because exercise is good for you?
Next in line are the obese. And then, there will be a war on women. A real one, not an imaginary phantom run amuck in Nancy Pelosi's single brain cell, but a real one. Obese people are a burden to society they will claim. When will forced abortions for Down Syndrome children, mothers/fathers that are risks for passing along traits such as autism, sickle cell, breast cancer, prostate cancer; the list is virtually limitless. Hillary Clinton's inspiration, Margaret Sanger, was motivated by this. She wanted to limit the reproductive proclivities of those she considered "unworthy". She meant Blacks. The elites mean everyone who doesn't think like them.
Obesity is a burden on the state because the state assumes responsibility for obesity. Banning sugary drinks is a response to the burden of obesity that the state has assumed. This is how the government leviathan grows. It assumes responsibility, discovers costs and 'problems', then expands by assuming more responsibility. n nAs Oscar Wilde put it: The needs of the bureaucracy are expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. n nNote also: why is it necessary to “force you to understand”? Do we not have government schools "educating" us to "understand"? Seems the obesity issue is a failure of government education.
Are pictures of open heart surgery on the fast food wrappers next?
The kids are fat because the school playgrounds have been turned into teacher's parking lots.