Big Mother Is Watching You...Drink Soda
And Boy Is She Mad

First, a confession: although I'm in a state of semi-constant outrage about conservative meddling in our lives, I tend to be more sanguine about liberal meddling.

But this stuff's starting to get ridiculous.

There are two basic problems with these efforts to regulate soda (Saletan alludes to them both). First, the science simply does not support the conclusions. I have it on excellent authority that the statistics on which passed studies of this kind have been based are disastrous. Furthermore, in many cases the authors of the studies refuse to reveal their data. Much of what passes for science in this area is, basically, not science at all. The second problem is that the government has no moral right to micromanage our private lives. Sodaphobes point to the fact that individual decisions to drink soda have public costs. But virtually everything one does has some kind of effect on others. If the fact that an action has some effect or other on other people is grounds for regulating it, then this licenses the government to regulate all our actions.

Liberals have tended to seek control over our lives on medical grounds, whereas conservatives have tended to seek it on (sometimes covertly) religious grounds. Conservatives basically just want us to shut up and do as we're told, but liberals tend to take a less overtly objectionable route through premises concerning the health and well-being of ourselves and others. Big Brother wants you to stay in line; Big Mother wants you to be safe. "Don't run with scissors" is sound advice, of course, but Big Mother is willing to pass legislation to back it up if you naughty children don't behave. "Don't drink soda," however, may not even be sound advice.

First Big Mother wanted our firearms. Then she wanted our cigarettes. Then our hamburgers. Now our soda. Even if you, like me, don't smoke and rarely drink soda...or even if you aren't interested in some others of these things...you still ought to be concerned about this general approach, which we might describe as "soft totalitarianism.". There are, of course, limits to the costs other people should be expected to bear for my stupidity. However (a) first we need actual scientific evidence to back up the relevant claims, not the laughable flawed-statistics-on-top-of-secret-data BS we generally get from the anti-soda crowd, and (b) we must resist efforts to micromanage people's lives. We may have to make laws in the most egregious cases, but once we allow the government to stop us from harming ourselves in any way, or allow them to meddle in any actions that have any effects on others, all is lost.

And if you still aren't convinced, note that things like anti-soda hysteria resonate with many independents and drive them across the aisle. Frivolous though it may seem (or even be), it's the kind of transparently irrational meddling in private decisions that absolutely infuriates many people who might otherwise be sympathetic with a more Democratic agenda.

It's time to stand up to Big Mother and let her know that we're all grown up and can make decisions for ourselves, even if that means we might occasionally get all crazy and drink a Coke.