The argument that an increased federal involvement in the health care industry will over time lead to ever more intrusive regulations on our bodies “for our own good” is one I’ve been making for years now. For my troubles, I’ve been called “paranoid” and “foaming” — and been accused of backing the kind of dogmatic libertarianism that would allow businesses to poison customers while the market sorted things out.
Of course, such a complaint is ludicrous. My point has always been that giving the government such a vested financial interest is dangerous precisely because the feds wield the kind of regulatory power that can take away our freedoms, all the while justifying such decisions based on a combination of what they’d call sound fiscal responsibility and improving “public health.” The result? Liberal fascism.
Looks like others are starting to see the writing on the wall as well. Chris Stirewalt, Washington Examiner:
The regulatory battleground of the decades to come is going to be your body. How much sugar, salt, fat and everything else you put in your body will be a matter of great federal interest.
Barring the success of lawsuits or huge gains by Republicans this fall, the president’s health program will be imposed in pieces over the next four years. By the end, the government will have a fiduciary interest in the waistlines and cholesterol counts of every American.
As the most unaffordable aspects of the Obama plan come on line, expect more dietary restrictions as the government looks for ways to control the enormous costs related to unhealthy habits.
For decades, insurance companies have tried to get their customers to quit drinking and smoking and to slim down and exercise.
But imagine what they could have done if they had the power to simply outlaw behavior that drove up costs.
Taking away your bacon will be deemed a small price for helping cover the Obamacare deficit.
It’s what the Chinese would do. Well, that, and maybe mandatory morning calisthenics for the lumpenproles.
Tom Friedman must be so very proud.
“One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.”
That’s the kind of indistrial grade stupid that comes in a 55 gallon drum.
Well, look for ways to control costs that don’t involve ceding control of anything else.
Government intruding on decisions that affect your health?
Ask me if I give a fuck………………
Hey, at least mandatory morning calisthenics would have an actual benefit to those imposed upon.
First they came for my tobacco…..
Nudge, nudge, nudge.
Salt is pretty innocuous to many/most people. From someplace (link at my place if you’re really interested):
No, they’re going to have to start limiting calories if they really want to make inroads. Mandatory P90X. I hope folks like pull-ups.
Right. If you have high blood pressure, you need to watch your salt intake. If you don’t, you don’t. Eat it by the bucket, and it really won’t matter.
I can’t wait for them to start adjusting the food allowed to be sold in order to protect diabetics from themselves. Then maybe celiacs. Oh boy.
P90x?
This is the government, silly.
We’ll be doing Richard Simmons and yoga.
So get your KFC fried chicken bacon cheese sandwich while you can.
“One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people…”
And now you know why guys like Friedman and Brooks are perfectly fine with statists like the Obama bunch-or any of the Democrat lite Rinos. These are people taht believe it’s their role to tell the rest of us what exactly is in our interests, and have no problem with any legislation that enforces their maxims.
Of the 30 studies on spousal smoking referred to in the EPA report, only 6 found any statistically significant association between ETS and cancer in nonsmokers married to smokers, and none found a strong relative risk. The studies actually used by the EPA were limited to 11 studies done in the United States. Using the EPA’s own Guidelines for Carcinogenic Risk Assessment, none of these showed a statistically significant risk. These guidelines call for a 95% Confidence Interval. By lowering it to 90%, only one of the 11 studies showed a statistically significant risk. More importantly, the two largest and most recent studies, one of which was partially funded by the National Cancer Institute, were omitted from consideration altogether. Had these two been included, no statistically significant risk would have been found even after lowering the Confidence Interval to 90%. Even after violating its own guidelines, in other words,the EPA could still show no statistically significant risk without selecting data to fit its hypothesis. This cooked data is the EPA’s only basis for declaring ETS to be a “Group A” carcinogen. (“Group A”, incidentally, does not mean “extra deadly”. It simply means “human”.)
Yep, thank goodness science will save us from totalitarian policy decisions
At #9:
Yeah, I saw those. That deserves to immediately go up on the “This is Why You’re Fat” hall of fame.
Without fat and salt, there’s not much point in having folks over to watch the game.
A Teh Right People™ sighting? Finally?!
In China!
Why, that’s one hundred persons per cite!
But, former smoker, smoking is bad. And people can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves regarding bad things. Smoking ban in Michigan goes into effect May 1st. I can’t wait for all the clean air I now will have access too.
[thinks for a moment about the last time I was accosted by smoke and couldn’t just walk away]
Well, I’m sure they meant well.
Remember that new IRS form? I broke the news first.
Apparently all Teh Smrt Peepul we have in charge now didn’t realize “Demolition Man” was satire, not public policy gospel.
Everything is Taco Bell! Have a joy-joy day!
No, they’re going to have to start limiting calories
I suspect that’s going to take care of itself. Just ask the former residents of the Ukraine.
For decades, insurance companies have tried to get their customers to quit drinking and smoking and to slim down and exercise
This is exactly why the Leftist sneer at ObamaCare opponents “wadda ya mean ya don’t want Gov making your healthcare decisions? The Insurance companies are already!” is dishonest on its face.
The only “power” of the insurance company has is to either charge you more or not take your business.
Big Government has guns.
Can you imagine what Iowa’s economy is going to look like when the bacon bans go into effect? Not the official economy, mind you, but the black market.
The grain barges heading down the Mississippi are gonna have a lot of secret compartments, lemme tell ya.
They’ve always regarded dystopic science fiction as a how-to manual. See also Orwell, George and Huxley, Aldous.
eating bacon is same as stealing
JD ate two he said.
two
JD probably ate his with mayo, which only makes it worse.
I’d thought we’d already gone all brickbats over that Friedman article. China is only “reasonably enlightened” in some relative sense, the standard being China of four decades ago. Or the USSR of four decades ago; pretty much the same thing, enlightenment-wise, only with more nukes.
2. My stomach still is not really right. But it was worth it.
My stomach still is not really right.
At least your hips don’t lie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUT5rEU6pqM
That is me in drag.
How is it that the grilled version has more salt than the breaded one?
By the way, I just got an email informing me that our old pal Pat is back at the intentionalism posting again. I can’t get to his site, so if somebody who can will be kind enough to email me the post and comments, I’m happy to address them and leave the comments open for debate.
As you all know, even could I get to his site I wouldn’t be allowed to argue my points there, under the post, in context, where it might do his readers some good. But I suppose it’s possible some of them might venture over here — or even that some of you would like further clarifications.
Thanks in advance.
Incidentally, I’m still pretty sick, so if I don’t post much today, that’s why.
Hey – you know what’s really unhealthy? I mean, more so than salty foods and tobacco? What Andrew Sullivan does on an average Friday night. Regulate that, bitches.
It’s obvious that someone has never been to Western Samoa.
Who let thor back in? Watching that fuck pollute a site is about as much fun as watching Nishit pleasure herself to pictures of “O”. Eye bleach required.
Like Kryptonite to insight, that one is.
Oh. Nevermind. I was able to get there now.
Not much to say, really. The question seems to be does some foreknowledge of how others have interpreted a swastika commit one to a cognizance about wearing one in certain situations. It’s a loaded example, but let’s go with it. The answer is, of course it does. You can decide to wear it for whatever your effect is — and defend your intent; or you can choose not to and avoid some messy confrontation in which you are forced to explain your intent to those who might simply ignore it and kick your ass — at which point some folks would say you had it coming.
What this adds to intentionalism I’m not certain — other than the knowledge that somewhere sometime someone used a symbol that you use one way (as a Buddhist, say, or a Native American), or a word that use in one way (say, “tar baby” or “boy”) may impact your choice of expression. That is, in certain rhetorical situations, you may want to choose your words more carefully, so as not to give offense to those you believe might genuinely misinterpret your expression.
What it doesn’t do is load your sign with the meaning that others are able to attach to it. Instead, it allows them to privilege their own signs, and take out their outrage on you. Those who are looking to misinterpret you to put you on the defensive or to demonize you will do so no matter what — either by taking your quote out of context, or by ignoring disclaimers, etc. (see, eg., Bill Bennett on Freakanomics). So it’s your choice: play their game, in which case they are dictating your rhetorical stance, and so potentially constraining the power of your message by forcing you to modify it beyond their desire to decontextualize it; or refuse to play, tell them that you meant something else entirely, explain why, and move on.
No need to bring children, elderly black men, and escaped dogs into this.
Well, that depends on what your ends are, doesn’t it?
A few weeks ago Pat was also blasting what “some bloggers” say about intentionalism and applying it to written law, specifically ObamaCare (yes, I’ll use that “loaded term”), and pointing out that it doesn’t matter what the legislators “intended” to put into law, it matters what actually ended up on paper.
Which, duh.
It also doesn’t matter what a computer programmer “intended” the software to do, it matters what code ends up in the program, as all of us can understand, having forgotten to close an italics tag more than once.
Therein may lie the problem with Pat: written law functions more like computer code—it’s not an act of communication, it’s programming, something meant to have a particular mechanical effect on the legal landscape.
But because humans cannot read law the way a machine reads code, “interpretation” comes into play, and how the code must be executed will vary depending on that interpretation.
Poetry, on the other hand, novels, conversation, and blog posts are not functional language to be executed by a human processor—they’re acts of communication, and as such, the locus of meaning is in the intent of the speaker rather than the interpretation of the listener.
Two different uses of language: two different sets of rules.
And the timestamp on this post is worrisome, Jeff. I’m just sayin’
I think the case of the swastika also provides a clear example of why it’s so important to fight the corruption of symbols. Here, we have an ancient symbol used around the world as a token of good fortune, corrupted to the point where nobody can use it any more.
But just because this particular cause was lost ages ago, doesn’t mean we should capitulate to the further corruption of other words, symbols, and ideas that are critical to explaining and defending our philosophy.
Another disappointing effort from a man of words who really should have a better understanding of the Orwellian path he treads.
Insurance companies nudge, it’s all a corporation can do, legally, for now.
Governments may nudge but behind the nudge is the fact, often un-thought of because uncomfortable, that the nudge, if not acquiesced to, can be made easily into a poke, a hard poke, very hard indeed. It need not be done hard often. Just enough so that the image is there, subconsciously, to “nudge” that decision on that bacon double cheeseburger to the “correct” way of thinking.
Take the prudent path, it’s only sensible to avoid bestirring the sleeping psychopath in the corner.
As we all know, ‘regulate’ used to mean making something reliable. ‘Liberal’ meant one who defended liberty. ‘Tolerant’ meant putting up with ideas and behaviors even though you didn’t really approve of them. Is it too late to reclaim these terms? In each case, those who mean to control their neighbors use the goodwill behind the classic definitions to give power to their corrupted uses of them. Do we just lie down and accept this, for fear of being branded as reactionary?
Yes, dicentra. I’ve been sick since returning from Chicago and I’m too congested to sleep. So I was up early.
Oh. And next time “some bloggers” begin trying to apply intentionalism to written law as it exists as a kind of performative (that is, it enacts consequences), somebody please let me know.
Meantime, Frey let me back in to comment on his newest post, so I did so. I’ll post my response as a separate item soon.
eating bacon is same as stealing
Shut up, you sick fucking psycho.
I don’t visit Pat’s anymore. But I have noticed that Karl’s stuff at Hot Air doesn’t say, “cross posted at Patterico’s pontifications”, anymore. I wonder what’s up with that?
Good example, diabetes isn’t all that restrictive if you use a little common sense. I’m diabetic and I get along just fine, all it takes is a little knowledge and willpower. If I want ice cream for dessert it’s a small portion and I have to skip the second helping of mashed potatoes (pasta etc.).
My mil and sil are celiac, this takes a lot of work. They must read every label, making a mistake will make them violently ill. Would they want the market regulated so they didn’t have to read the labels, in a word , no. It’s easy to regognize the gluten containing products in an ingredient list, if I can do it when cooking for them anyone can.
Bob, it’s most likely because Hot Air has some new owners who don’t want any cross-posting of the content they own.
It’s easy to regognize the gluten containing products in an ingredient list, if I can do it when cooking for them anyone can.
That’s where you’re wrong. Our overlords in Washington are convinced that we all lack the mental horsepower to make such judgments. And their allies in the teachers’ and scriptwriters’ unions are doing their damnedest to make it so.
Oh. And next time “some bloggers” begin trying to apply intentionalism to written law as it exists as a kind of performative (that is, it enacts consequences), somebody please let me know.
Yeah. I was all eager to reopen that can of worms. I decided to let discretion be the better part of valor and left it alone.
Lying. Sleeping dogs. No assembly required.
Gluten avoidence is easy if you shop only at the gluten-free store. Where a loaf of bread costs $9.
I went gluten-free for a week and I nearly died from the sticker shock.
My wife’s a celiac, Dicentra… welcome to our world.
So under this plan, Ted Kennedy would have had to give up drinking and whoring?
So under this plan, Ted Kennedy would have had to give up drinking and whoring?
Yeah, and Timmy Geithner would have to pay taxes.
C’mon, Matt — everyone knows that rules are for the little people!
Jeffy…
Blood is salt…salt is blood :-)
epistimilogical closure…lol.
can’t teach a fish to swim…
horses are evil…lol
can’t you understand
nyuk nyuk…lawl
This post has been linked for the HOT5 Daily 4/23/2010, at The Unreligious Right
Saturday morning links…
Dr. Roy Spencer’s new book. Related: Global warming scare industry suppresses benefits of CO2 The New Coke in Bolivia Paul Ryan: Obama Leading America on ‘Dangerous Path’ to Welfare State Theory: South Korean ship sunk by crack squad of ‘h…