Posted on 02/13/2008 5:03:14 AM PST by Kaslin
My February 2002 column, "They're Coming After You," warned that Americans who enthusiastically supported the anti-tobacco zealots' attack on smokers were, like decent Germans did during the 1920s and '30s, building the Trojan Horse that would one day enable a tyrant to take over. The whole issue of tobacco smoke nuisance is really a private property issue where the owner should decide how his private property shall be used, whether it's an office building, restaurant, bar or home. That's unless one group of people wishes to use the coercive powers of government, in the name of health or some other ruse, to impose their preferences upon others.
Anti-tobacco zealots don't have a monopoly on tyrannical designs. There are those who wish to control what we eat, and the successful attack on smokers has provided a template for their agenda. Chief among the food tyrants is the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). These tyrants want taxes on foods they deem as non-nutritious. They've even proposed a 5 percent tax on new television sets and video equipment and a $65 tax on each new car or an extra penny per gallon of gas. Why? They see watching television and videos, riding instead of walking, as contributing to obesity. Thus, in their view, just as tobacco companies were responsible for people smoking, television and video manufacturers are responsible for people being couch potatoes. Automobile companies are responsible for people riding instead of walking. The restaurant industry is responsible for American obesity.
Some people have told me that these tyrants would never get away with controlling what we eat. Here's the Mississippi Legislature House Bill 282, introduced this year by Rep. W.T. Mayhall, that in part reads: "An Act to prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese, based on criteria prescribed by the State Department of Health; to direct the Department to prepare written materials that describe and explain the criteria for determining whether a person is obese and to provide those materials to the food establishments; to direct the Department to monitor the food establishments for compliance with the provisions of this act." The bill proposes to revoke licenses of food establishments that violate the provisions of the act.
You shouldn't believe that if this measure is successful in Mississippi that it will stay in Mississippi. Moreover, it will be expanded upon because most people who are obese don't become so by eating at restaurants; mostly, it's food eaten at home. Thus, the food tyrants won't be satisfied with restaurant restrictions, just as the anti-tobacco zealots weren't satisfied with warning labels on cigarettes. They will push for legislation restricting the sale of foods at supermarkets. Since an obese person can get a svelte person to do his grocery shopping for him, legislators might propose sting operations to fine or arrest people giving an obese person high-calorie food.
The food tyrants have a compatriot in the person of Yale University's Professor Kelly D. Brownell, director of the Center for Eating and Weight Disorders. He thinks Americans eat too many hamburgers and French fries. Professor Brownell, who is fat himself, wants government to tax fatty foods and those with little nutritional content and use some of the tax proceeds to build bike and hiking trails. Suppose not enough Americans bike and hike. I bet he and his ilk would call for legislation that mandated some form of exercise.
Most evil done in the world is done in the name of promoting this or that supposed good. Americans turning away from rule of law and constitutional government are following in the footsteps of other people around the world who discovered their liberties gone and recovering them was next to impossible. But, what the heck. You might be among those Americans who don't smoke and are not obese, so why sweat it?
Yeah, freedom, such a messy concept.............
Yup, you got that right.
I went to Walmart last night after light bulbs. They have the majority of them in the hardware department but they have some in the grocery dept, too. So I was already in grocery so thought I would pick up the bulbs there. All they had were those screwy bulbs. 3 for 11 bucks. I was so mad! But anyway they still had the old fashioned ones in hardware but the clerk said they were phasing them out. As soon as those were gone, they weren’t going to have anymore of them. What a crock!
You’d be surprised. Even the most conservative politicians seem to turn rat when it comes to things “for the children”.
Walter Williams is the best.
Governer Phil Bredesen enacted a statewide smoking ban in Tennessee about 6 monthes ago. We have had 3 restuarants in our town close since then. Yesterday, our biggest best one closed. We can’t even smoke at Applebees and its a bar! aaaaaaaaaaaathe last few times we have been there, there wasn’t anybody in the bar. It was completely empty. There were a few people in the restuarant. It used to be packed all the time.
Sorry for the typo. I shouldn’t talk to my husband and type at the same time, especially when I pause with the “a” key held down! LOL
Sure wish that link worked!
I might not have seen that one yet...
As you mention first, 3 restaurants in your town have already closed.......that is the goal of places like Applebee's and why they support the smoking bans, they knock out the competition and because of the corporate size can handle the immediate downturn in business. Something the mom and pops can't do.
Yes, but they will be outside asking other customers to buy some for them and then the person buying for the fat person will be thrown in jail if caught!
Hence more revenue for the gov..
Everything the gov does is for revenue. Don’t ever forget that when you think the gov. is here to help you!
LOL!
I've been laughing for a week now...
I went on line last weekend to check the movies playing in town, and read a few of the movie descriptions...
One movie had a warning: extreme violence, sexual situations and smoking...
Then there were the three documentaries I watched subsequently on TV about our space program, and the history of the sspace program --- non stop smoking by the sharpest minds of their generation.
Don’t forget secondhand obesity,
“Why were people so surprised when the New England Journal of Medicine reported that obesity is a contagion you catch from your friends? The line from Don Quixote, “Tell me thy company, and I’ll tell thee what thou art,” suggests that friends have long been what your mother called a “bad influence.”
Related Articles
Study: Obesity is Contagious
Wondering why your waistline is expanding? Have a look at those of your friends. Your close friends ...
Or rather, a bad influenza. And it isn’t just the “fat flu” you can catch from friends. Good friends enable all manner of bad habits, even when they’re doing nothing at all. Around friends, we slip back into regional accents we’ve spent years trying to exorcise—redneck recidivism—or embroider our speech with the kind of epic profanity more common to 19th century lobstermen. (That’s the bad habit I revert to around my friends, all of whom swear like Friars Club roastmasters.)[excerpt from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1649321,00.html]
Hiya Gabz...and thanks.
Sounds good to me! : )
Just wait until they use the commerce clause to come after our guns.
ROFLMSS!!!!!!!!! I'm originally from Brooklyn, NY and my husband ALWAYS knows when I've spent some time on the phone with one of my high school friends. 25 years of living south of the Mason-Dixon line is wiped out by 30 minutes of talking with a Brooklynite!
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