LIFESTYLE POLICE
                                       
   From: cyclops@ktb.net (Ray Domkus)
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   Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 16:06:22 -0700 (PDT)
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LIFESTYLE POLICE: Enough Already

by Tony Snow

From what we eat to what we smoke or drink, these professional busy
bodies can’t leave well enough alone.

Beware: No matter where you are, no matter what you do, no matter how
we try each of us falls into the grinding incisors of America’s
Lifestyle Police.

Our country has spawned a teeming subculture of professional nags and
improvers who insist on telling us how to live. Last week for
Instance, the Center for Science in the Public Interest published it’s
attack on our culinary habits. The group’s squadron of crack
dietitians declared that chocolate croissants, butter laden pastries
and other toothsome sweets contain heart-clogging amounts of fat.

Spokesbeings warned that bad diet is a bad thing and insinuated that
vendors might want to begin attaching warning labels to their
baguettes and assorted delicacies. What began as a polite lecture on
digestion quickly turned into a covert bid for expanding Federal
power.

That’s typical of the Food and Drug Administration, weary of its
failed attempts to warn people away from tobacco, has decided on a
covert strategy for outlawing cigarettes. It wants to redefine smokes
as narcotics-delivery devices.

So in an age when clinics dispense syringes, FDA Commissioner and
Lifestyle Czar David Kessler wants to stamp out cigarettes by decree
rather than letting voters and/or consumers make the choice.

The business of getting involved in everybody’s business has infested
every sector of our society. Hollywood hunk Pierce Brosnan recently
urged the Minnesota chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation not to let
17 year old Eric Ness fulfill his dying desire, which was to bag a
grizzly in Alaska. Brosnan doesn’t live in Minnesota, of course, the
issue merely came to his attention.

Indeed, entertainers have devised ribbons to advocate everything but
individual liberty.

The point is common scolds assert themselves everywhere and like
Dickens’ Mrs. Jellyby, they obey a law of inverse proportion. The more
minor the sin and the farther away it occurs, the more it incites
their outrages.

These nags have established firm beachheads in Washington. Drive along
the Capital’s thoroughfares, and you’ll see monuments to our inability
to leave well enough alone: the FDA, the FCC, the EPA – a tureen of
alphabet agencies that devote their time and energy to protecting the
"public health."

The Lifestyle Police never run out of causes because each of us is
born in sin. But when virtuecrats tell us what we can see, say and
eat, they presume a familiarity they have not earned. I let my wife,
kids and relatives pick on me because I know they do so out of love.
Not so with the Etiquette Patrols. They hound us not out of affection
but out of lust for power.

No matter how pure their hearts or noble their intentions, these
designated nannies have made a mess of everything. They destroy common
sense by treating minor trespasses as crimes against humanity, while
excusing truly heinous crimes as indirect pleas for self-esteem. As a
result, there are serial murderers in this country, who have more
defenders than Marge Schott.

The Utopians also set us against each other. After all when everything
is a crime, nobody is innocent and everybody can find a reason to sue
somebody else.

Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of "diversity" insist on absolute
conformity. They want to turn us into veggie munching meat hating
teetotaling public-tv watching power-walking euphemism-talking
zombies. How amazing that our flower Children have become to etiquette
that Pol Pot was to his Hmong tribesmen and none of them gets the
joke.

Yet history offers some comfort in our annoyance. Every society faces
inconveniences of this sort. Eve was the first person to assume
responsibility for somebody else’s welfare, and a bazillion imitators
kept her lead over the ages.

So if the scolding classes want to tell us what is good for us and
what is not, fine. Information is a good and useful thing. But when
they try to make us surrender backyard barbecues, chocolate croissants
and other toothsome junk, they are going too far!