That Damn Nanny State

While watching last nights Colbert Report, I learned that The Heritage Foundation has described the FDA's proposed ban on trans fats as "an attack on Freedom." I went to their website and verified that assertion. They say consumers can make "informed and voluntary choices" as to whether to consume trans fats.

There is nothing surprising about that, of course. The right wingers have been complaining about the "food police" for some time and asserting their right to choose to eat whatever junk food they want. I mean some of these people got their shorts in a bind when Michelle Obama said we should drink more water. How totalitarian of her!

Have you noticed, by the way, how many things are an attack on freedom to some of these crackpots? Obamacare is an attack on my freedom to hang around the emergency rooms and watch the uninsured ask for help.

Of course most right wingers probably don't eat much junk food anyway, but they want poor people, who frequently have no choice, to...uh...not have that no choice taken away from them.

While watching Colbert, I wondered what the Heritage Foundation had to say about the campaigns around the country to require foods containing GMOs to be labeled. I knew, of course, that most of the right wing fully supported the Monsanto Pary line, but what about the Heritage Foundation? Yep, turns out they did too.

Keep in mind that what was at issue was whether or not to require labeling so that consumers could know what they were choosing (or not choosing). Or as The Heritage Foundation put it in the case of trans fats, so that consumers could make an "informed and voluntary" choice.

So it seems that the Heritage Foundation wants consumers to have a choice, except when they don't want them to have a choice.

I think maybe I'd like to have a little asbestos in my hamburger. I sure wish the nanny state would just get the hell outta the way.