As I sat down to enjoy my semi-regular breakfast consisting of two eggs, cheese, & sausage on a honey wheat bagel with a large hazelnut iced coffee, I paused for a moment before biting into the steaming hot sandwich. I took a minute to appreciate and take stock of how fortunate I am to have the money to buy just about any food I want any time I want. I reflected on how lucky I am to have access to so many great breakfast, lunch, and dinner choices throughout New Hampshire. Above all, I thought about how lucky I am to have the freedom to choose what to eat and drink and where to eat it.
As always, I filled the top inch of my 32 ounce cup with half & half and then I poured in what I knew to be unhealthful amounts of sugar and sweeteners. Yes, I know that it may not be wise to consume tons of sugar, and yes I’m skeptical of the advantages of artificial sweeteners – but in this context, I did not care. I chose to consume it. And I love having that freedom.
Many Americans seemingly take the freedom to eat for granted, though. In so many countries ruled by ultra-authoritarian, socialist, & communist governments, people cannot afford to eat decently, even at home. Independent of financial stability, many producers and consumers face legal barriers to serving and eating food. One of the themes consistent with socialism and modern communism is that the government regulates what people eat and drink.
I remembered how NYC first eased people into accepting this new concept of government regulation of our diets. In 2006, NYC passed a law requiring certain restaurants to post the calorie count for each of their menu items. They justified this as “…an effort to combat the emerging epidemic of obesity and associated diseases, including, type 2 diabetes.” In 2015, NYC passed a law mandating that all chain restaurants with 15 or more locations must place an image of a salt shaker next to every high-sodium menu item. If you owned one of these restaurants and you did not comply with these laws, you would be considered a criminal. For now, this punishment only involves being fined. If the business does not pay the fine, might they be imprisoned? I don’t know. As Republicans and Democrats often say: “The law is the law!”
Don’t politicians of both parties pretend to support small business, the middle class, and all of those other demographics that make politicians sound compassionate during campaign speeches, though? What’s compassionate about using law enforcement to punish those who don’t label their foods according to your authoritarian standards?
New York City has experienced super-regulation of consumption by authoritarian socialist politicians before, though. In 2012, Mayor Bloomberg and his Board of Health passed a law prohibiting stores from selling soda or other sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces. The NY supreme court struck down the law in 2014, but that only seemed to encourage Bloomberg. The socialist mayor has since traveled all over the US in his effort to pass anti-sugar legislation. For the time being, he has seemingly settled for campaigning to tax sugar out of people’s diets. In his $3 million ad campaign to keep the Cook County soda tax, he used what seems to be a black, female doctor in a video ad to tell black and Hispanic parents that the big, evil, soda corporations are ‘targeting’ their children and making them drink soda and therefore making them become morbidly obese and unhealthy. Despite Bloomberg’s expensive effort to save the tax, it was repealed less than a year after it went into effect. Currently, four cities in California place an extra tax on sugary drinks, as do Philadelphia, Seattle, and Boulder.
”Will the government soon make it illegal for me to enjoy high-calorie, sweet meals like this one?”, I wondered, as I reached for my iced coffee.
As I gave my iced coffee a swirl to encourage the sugar to dissolve despite its cold solvent, I sipped the now perfectly blended super-sweet hazelnut iced coffee and savored the taste, knowing that it could realistically become contraband during my lifetime. I then remembered that even here in New Hampshire, many legislators seem to support the same policies as Bloomberg, Deblasio, and the Californian socialist politicians. In February, The Liberty Block named four New Hampshire representatives among the ‘Statists of the Month’ for their proposed bill which would begin the process of criminalizing sugary drinks in the ‘Live Free or Die’ state. The bill also sought to begin brainwashing NH residents into believing that only beverages approved by the New Hampshire government ought to be consumed. As usual, the sponsors position themselves as supportive of ‘the well-being of children’. House Bill 1668 lists the government approved beverages that can legally be offered along with kids meals. The list seems to include all beverages besides for soda. This represents the hypocritical war waged by nearly all politicians against even the low-skilled workers, the disabled, the elderly, and the teenagers who they pretend to support in their campaign speeches. If the bill proposed by representatives McBeath (Rock. 26), Murray (Rock. 24), Horrigan (Straf. 6) & Francese (Rock. 18) passes, those poor single moms and developmentally disabled NH residents who work in fast food restaurants would seemingly be punished by the force of the state (think: police, guns, handcuffs, fines, etc.) for offering soda to a child along with their kids’ meal. That memory disgusted me.
As I bit into the 2nd half of my bagel which was now the perfect temperature, I naturally thought about the slow and methodical manner in which politicians introduce restrictions on the freedoms that so many of us take for granted until they are criminalized. I remembered how authoritarians always seem to campaign; it is nothing short of brilliance. First, they ‘educate the public’ about the dangers of (insert any food, substance, behavior, tool, or anything else that they seek to criminalize, control, or tax). They then slowly and softly begin to ‘encourage’ the relevant businesses to behave in a certain way. They use every resource they have to convince naive people that the substance is horribly dangerous. They then slowly implement a tiny fine for those who do not follow the new law – which often only applies to ‘the children’ initially. We know their tactics. They appeal to people on as many emotional levels as possible, from pretending to care about the health of children to bringing disabled people to hearings to support bills by showing pictures of their children who just happen to be adorable and also suffer from crippling diseases, to having minority female doctors convince you that you must support their laws if you support social justice.
I don’t disagree that excessive glucose and sodium are harmful to people. But we possess the liberty to do anything to ourselves, regardless of how bad for us it may be. (Even if I weren’t incredibly fit, I would still support the liberty for everyone to eat whatever they want. This premise of individual responsibility goes hand in hand with the premise that I should not be responsible for paying the health care bills of people who purposely consume the most horrible, fattening foods they could find – but that’s another topic for another day) Almost every substance could be harmful to us. Experts in this area, however, understand that the science of nutrition evolves just like other sciences do. At various times, the US government has declared war against fats, sugars, and salts. Nutritional experts don’t always agree and the science changes frequently anyway. Regardless of whether legislators follow recommendations of nutritionists or doctors, do you want politicians and socialist crusaders manipulating you and passing laws controlling what you can eat? Keep in mind that the most powerful people in the government over the past 20 years consist of people like Clinton, Obama, Bush, Trump, McConnell, Bloomberg, Schumer, Feinstein, and Pelosi.
I took the final bite of my delicious sandwich, grabbed my drink, and through the trash away. As I left the bagel shop and continued on my way to work, I pondered; Why do so many people trust those evil and conniving politicians to control what they can eat? When will the war on iced coffee ruin my breakfast routine? Will bagels soon be taxed or prohibited?
We know their playbook. So, let’s call the right defense, make the appropriate audibles, and shut them down! The strategy on offense? Elect libertarians!
