Eminent Domain

A few days ago, I mentioned that I was reading Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children by David Harsanyi. I toyed with the idea of doing a review after I finished the book, but I decided against it. Instead, I'm going to periodically post about things in the book that I find interesting. I'm a little over 100 pages into it, and I've already found a lot that I'd like to discuss.

Chapter 1, Twinkie Fascists, is all about food. I'm sure you all are aware of the concerted effort by a few busybodies to get us eating healthier. Creative people who hate your personal freedom and menu choices have come up with a wide variety of legislative fixes to your expanding waistline. Harsanyi mentions things like trans fat bans, laws regulating portion sizes at restaurants, and body mass index taxes. These are all very interesting and horrible, but one really takes the cake (literally). It happened in Texas of all places...

She [Texas agriculture commissioner Susan Combs] went out and banned all foods of "minimal nutritional value" at schools. Food and beverages like "carbonated drinks, frozen flavored ices (sicles), chewing gum, and candies (including hard candy, jellies, and gums, marshmallow, fondants, licorice, spun candy, and candy coated popcorn)."

This scatter gun ban also got rid of cupcakes, a birthday treat favorite of kids even back when I was in grade school. Then came one of the most absurd blocks of text I have ever seen in print...

To undo some of the damage, the Texas legislature attempted to pass a law that allowed cupcakes just for birthday parties. "We have an opportunity to really make the children happy here," said Representative Jim Dunnam, whose school-age daughter, Lauren, had asked him if he could make cupcakes legal again. Soon enough, Combs relented, offering a "cupcake clarification" to allow cakes at school birthday parties.

When I read this, the only thought in my head was "Are you f*cking sh*tting me?!" Is this really what government is for? Do you think Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and friends would be pleased with this? It would be one thing if these were just stupid regulations on the books somewhere that really didn't mean anything. But Combs was actually enforcing them and dished out more than $8,000 in fines to public schools.

I'm not against eating healthy or against offering healthy choices, especially with kids involved. However, these bans and zero tolerance policies are just stupid. Part of becoming an adult is learning to take responsibility for your own choices and actions. Sheltering kids from things like Crystal Lite and chewing gum isn't going to do anything to impart those life lessons. Beyond that, if a kid wants to have a candy bar at lunch, who the hell are you to say no? It's not like eating strychnine. This is just bad government and bad lawmaking.

When Fritos are outlawed, only outlaws will eat Fritos.