Last month I watched a show with John Stossel and I just wanted to touch on a couple of points that were made on his show concerning people like Mimi Roth and others who want to use legislation to effect change in the foods that our society chooses to eat.

Below is the portion of the show that made the points that I want to cover. After you watch it, I would like to briefly discuss (or rant) about these points.

Point number one is the argument that some want to charge taxes on sodas and junk food to offset the cost of Medicare and Medicaid that your poor choices in diet costs others. Mimi Roth in an earlier segment made the point that she don’t want to control where you eat she just don’t want to be handed the receipt. Seems like a valid point. This point is actually, as stated in the segment above, an excellent argument against Government ran socialized medicine like Medicare and Medicaid. Why should Mimi or anyone else have to pay for other peoples poor food choices. So my question is why don’t people like Mimi Roth focus their efforts against socialized medicine rather than being a voice for taxing junk food?

We actually know that the proponents for regulating food would never side with less government involvement because the goal is to tackle the overall obesity in the U.S. with government regulation. How do we know…well because they often quote how successful their regulatory efforts were with their anti-smoking regulations in significantly reducing the number of smokers and they are now using this illustration as a lever to convince us that since it worked with smoking it will also work with food. Hence more government not less is the answer in their mind.

If their true concern is paying for my poor choices would it not make better since to attack the arm that forces you to pay for my choices rather than attack my right to free choice?

The second issue is the bleeding heart issue…the cause that no one can defend against…”We must do it for the sake of the children because parents are too stupid to make good decisions for them”. This is such a crock of crap that I don’t even know where to begin. I absolutely resent this line of reasoning and I see through it as if it were a squeaky clean glass. I hope that the days of falling for this bleeding heart parlor trick will soon be a thing of the past. Were all adults here…right? So we need to stand up against anyone who tells bleeding heart stories in order to effect the outcome of any issue that requires reason rather than sappy emotions….PLEASE!

Tell me one child who the government loves more than the parent. I guarantee you it’s not the case. Please don’t tell me that someone setting in any office in Washington D.C. cares about my son or daughter more than me! Am I saying here that there is no such thing as a bad parent…of course not. What I am saying is there is NO SUCH THING AS A BENEVOLENT GOVERNMENT.

If you ask me my children’s birth date, I don’t have to look it up in a computer to tell you that. If you ask me if my son or daughter likes spinach I can tell you that. I know almost every freckle on their body and yet they would have me to believe that a government official cares more for my child than I do….Ridiculous!

We know that some parents don’t care for their children the way they should. So does that mean that the rest of us should move over and give way to the Nanny state for the sake of the few, that we should give up more freedom of choice? I have long since realized it is fool hearted to think that man can be perfected through governance and no government (regardless of intention) can take care of me better than I can take care of myself or my children. I don’t need outside interference limiting my ability to provide in the form of a government or by some self appointed do gooder.

I personally believe that for politicians this is less about saving our children and more about using this issue as a vehicle to gain more power over the people of a free nation. And for the Mimi Roth’s of the world I think its a way to bring meaning to their lives, more related to purpose of life or career choice than to benevolence.

Nick Gillespie of Reason.com said people like Mimi Roth and some of the other guests of John Stossel believe “Fat people, poor people and other classes of people make bad decisions defined as I know the good decisions and if people aren’t following my decision making process then we need to nudge them, we need to control them, we need to regulate them”. So what do you say? Is our future better off in the hands of a few people who obviously think we are too stupid to make good decisions for ourselves or our children or are you the best resource of you and your children’s future?

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