Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Regulatory State Run Amok...

Drop that muffin! You're under arrest!

FDA now considers Walnuts to be drugs.

The government is now out to regulate food companies and suppliers who claim, often with some justification, that their products are 'better' for you and have beneficial health effects. If this is what ObamaCare has truly wrought, then we're in for a reign of petty tyranny, the likes of which we have not seen since the days of the Intolerable Acts.

We're probably also going to suffer under a government-run healthcare system which can spend it's time looking for legitimate businesses to sue and harass, while providing the typical Third-World style of government healthcare: you'll get that proverbial mosquito-netted cot on which to slowly die from some otherwise-treatable malady upon, safe from the prying eyes of the tourists and journalists.

Light bulbs. Low-flow Toilet bowls. CAFE standards. Salt, sugar and caloric intake. These are all, to some extent or another, regulated by the government, all under the auspices of 'it's good for us', so why shouldn't the government take the next, logical step and claim walnuts as a prescription drug, or unfiltered tap water a danger to Americans? Who's stopping them? Who is raising a ruckus over such an insignificant thing?

The thing is, though, these regulations are never about 'what's good for us'; they're about putting some nameless, faceless bureaucrat in charge of some aspect of your life, then taxing everything within an inch of it's life, and expanding the scope and power of government in ever-more subtle and destructive ways.

The insignificant has a way of becoming very significant under those conditions, and very quickly.

Revolutions have often begun this way.