Updated: Fri., Dec. 17, 2010, 1:45 AM
Behind the broccoli
By MICHAEL A. WALSH
www.nypost.com
Posted: 11:11 PM, December 16, 2010What this country needs is a crop of healthy, hunger-free kids -- and now, thanks to the hectoring of Michelle Obama and the terrible swift presidential pen of her husband, it has one: the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. No more fat kids is now the law of the land: Eat the broccoli; leave the cannoli.
For nothing less than national security is at stake. "Military leaders tell us that when more than one in four young people are unqualified for military service because of their weight, childhood obesity isn't just a public health threat, it's not just an economic threat, it's a national security threat as well," quoth Michelle.
Never mind that we have an all-volunteer army and that turning fat bodies into fit bodies is one of its functions. No, Mama Obama is here to make sure you eat what's good for you. Who cares if Johnny can't read? At least he's not a porker.
Except he is.
Does anyone outside of the dwindling band of true believers on the left really think that an act of Congress can mandate healthy, hunger-free kids?
Or "affordable" health care, for that matter?
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli this week made the key point, after a federal judge ruled that ObamaCare's "individual mandate" was unconstitutional: "Realize this isn't just about health insurance and health care; it's about liberty. Because if they can order us to buy health insurance, they can order us to buy cars, they can order us to buy books, they can order us to buy guns or asparagus."
Most Americans say it's asparagus, and they say the hell with it.
From a land of yeoman farmers, not subjects but independent citizens of free will, the national ideal has been transformed by the left and its media stooges into a mewling aggregation of victimized, helpless special-interest groups. At what point will Americans finally rise up and say, "Enough!" to the political class of both parties?
ObamaCare and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 are the things that expose modern liberalism for the iron fist in the velvet glove. Can't feed yourself? Dinner's on us. Out of work? We'll pay you to stay unemployed. After all, you're too stupid to make your own best decisions in what used to be personal matters.
All we ask in exchange for your freedom is your vote.
Contrary to the leftist narrative, America today is not the helpless victim of a malevolent conspiracy bent on turning the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The nation's woes are the inevitable result of the left's own ethos, which celebrates weakness over strength, pathos over courage, ineptitude over mastery and atheism over faith.
When there's little more to life than base appetites and affordable health care, it's no wonder kids reach for the burgers and fries.
Where does it stop? Here in New York, Mayor Bloomberg is the scourge of trans fat and other lifestyle crimes. Los Angeles has banned the expansion of the fast-food industry in certain minority neighborhoods, and now Detroit is considering following suit. San Francisco outlawed Happy Meals unless they meet the diktats of the nutrition Nazis.
Forget private-property rights or the rumblings in your belly. In Obama's America, you will no longer be allowed to freely make economic and nutritional decisions about how to feed yourself and your family. Somebody else -- the city, the state, the first lady -- will do that for you. After all, it's a matter of national security.
Michael A. Walsh is the au thor of the thrillers "Hostile In tent" and "Early Warning" and, as David Kahane, "Rules for Radical Conservatives."
