Switch?

Trans-fat bans, fast-food restaurant bans, cell phone while driving bans, compulsory health insurance, dubious and/or counterproductive green technology, red meat and hard liquor frowning upon, cigarette pillorying, gun bans, red-light cameras, legislation via junk science, motorcycle helmets, off-roading restrictions, menu calorie counts, Happy Meal bans, dubious recycling policies....

There are several reasons behind the backlash. One is that campaigns to promote healthy behavior have a way of escalating from friendly persuasion to ham-fisted propaganda and prohibitionism. The war on tobacco is an obvious example (though the case for harsh anti-smoking laws was based on claims about the harm of second-hand smoke). Anti-drug zealotry in schools has caused teens to get in trouble for such crimes as sharing an aspirin with a friend who had a headache. It's not completely unreasonable to ask if cookie witch-hunts are next. Some states already prohibit bake sales at schools—even though it is very doubtful that they are a major cause of obesity—and the new child nutrition bill empowers the Department of Agriculture to restrict them if they are deemed too frequent. And some anti-obesity crusaders advocate using the power of the state in frankly coercive ways, from taxing unhealthy food to restricting its advertising.

When did it happen? Or, perhaps more accurately, how did it happen? How is it that once perfectly sensible, button-down, semi-sober, Reagan/Goldwater conservatives like ourselves go completely bat-crap crazy and start behaving like a bunch of card burning, protesting, long-haired, New Left hippies circa 1970?







And conversely, how is it that well-intended good government liberals started behaving like moral scolds, bossing everyone around under the premise of "it's for your safety/health" and "it's for the overall good of society" and even "it's a national security threat"?


The harangues from the pulpits of bogeymen like Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson ain't got nothing on the people who have actually been successful at codifying into law the tenets of their "religion".