Friday, December 21, 2007

More Huckaworries

This reproduces a quote from a book Mike Huckabee wrote a few years ago, titled From Hope to Higher Ground. The quote has to do with Huckabee's view of how government can promote health. Its implication are a bit frightening: "History shows that we can, in fact, help Americans to change, not by force-feeding them government restrictions or requirements but by first changing the attitudes and atmosphere in which we live. Eventually, having shifted public opinion, we can solidify the attitude and atmospheric changes with government actions that define the will of the majority."

News flash, Mr. Huckabee: government actions, even if you claim they're for good health, even if you claim they reflect the will of the majority and will merely "solidify" that will, will amount to "restrictions." (how silly to try to play word games with such.) And I don't care if you can get a majority to say, for example, that Twinkies are bad for you and harm our health, it's not the government's business to be levying Twinkie taxes and thus infringing on our freedom to eat---and yet that is increasingly exactly the kind of thinking that your philosophy would undergird.