I simply do not see why the government needs to be in the business of protecting people from their own stupidity.

There are many problems with the thought process that caused this ban, one of which being the complete disregard for personal responsibility. While I would certainly advocate restaurants fully disclosing everything they use in food preparation, once that disclosure has been made, it is up to the individual to make the correct decision. It is extremely unlikely that anyone who eats fast food on a regular basis or even one who eats at 4 star restaurants routinely could possibly think that they are getting the healthiest food possible. That being said, I simply do not see why the government needs to be in the business of protecting people from their own stupidity. Sure, it may be easier to pick up food at the drive through than to go home and cook. Sure, it may be cheaper to buy a case of Little Debbie Snack Cakes than to make sugar cookies from scratch, but these are personal decisions. If you choose to sacrifice quality for the sake of convenience then you have decided that your health is worth saving those twenty extra minutes everyday. This is a personal problem and certainly not worthy of government regulation that affects everyone else.

Secondly that something leads to eventual health problems makes it a candidate for being banned makes no sense whatsoever. While I am sure we could all list things we do everyday that are going to make life harder for us in the long run, is that not what enjoying life is all about? We know that cigarettes are horrible for one’s health, yet no one is advocating taking cigarettes off the market, but rather confining the cigarette smoke to places that affect the individual. Overindulgence of alcohol causes many problems, including cirrhosis of the liver, but we already tried prohibition once. If living to be 100 years old is the most important thing in your life, make decisions to get yourself there, and stop expecting the government to do it for you.

Is the day coming when we will all be vegans?.

Lastly, does this decision combined with Chicago’s decision a few months ago to ban foie gras mark the beginning of a new era called the American Food Police State? The ban in Chicago was based largely on the fact that many find the technique used to obtain foie gras to be inhumane. That line of thinking combined with the idea that a city, in order to keep people healthier, can ban a product that is completely legal begs the question is the day coming when we will all be vegans? Ironically people that call themselves health fanatics or animal rights activists seem to forget that once something is banned and you no longer have a say so in the matter, you are no longer making a moral decision, because the ability to make any decision at all has been stripped from you. Why should someone else do all the work for you? If you feel that it is important for you to eat healthy food, to avoid food that is linked to animal cruelty, or to avoid supporting restaurants that you allege poison consumers to save a few bucks, then do so and let others do what they so choose.

While I would certainly not fault the blind for trying to make their daily lives easier, Americans seem to have begun to throw the word discrimination around at every sign of inconvenience. According to dictionary.com, discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person or thing based on the group, class, or category to which that person or thing belongs rather than on individual merit. I highly doubt that at the time our currency was designed there were people in the room that said, “Blind people are worthless individuals that do not deserve the right to be able to tell the difference between a $5 bill and a $100 bill.” It seems that for something to be labeled discrimination, the act should involve a certain level of malice and aforethought and I am extremely hard pressed to see how that could have happened here.

Clearly the airlines were discriminatory when they designed the size of the seats in favor of those that are not fat.

The attorney for the blind hit the nail on the head when he said “It’s just frankly unfair that blind people should have to rely on the good faith of people they have never met in knowing whether they’ve been given the correct change.” The word unfair is obviously much more appropriate here. We all learn from a very early age, however, that life is simply unfair. Not only is it unfair that the visually impaired cannot see as well as everyone else can, it is just as unfair that they are unable to drive. Are we going to come up with a novel form of sonar for all American cars to correct this act of discrimination? After all, I think that the interstates are a government program. While I generally believe that slippery slope arguments are specious ones, it does seem appopriate here to ask if we can call the simple act of the treasury printing money discrimination, where is the line? Is it discrimination against thin males that Gap, no longer carries extra small shirts or pants with 28-inch waists in their stores? After all, the svelte among us are now forced to spend more money on clothing that is closer to European tailoring if we do not want to wear muumuus all the time. This combined with the fact that Gap carries XXL clearly shows that they are favoring the overweight. How about the fact that some obese Americans have to buy two seats when they fly in coach? Certainly the airlines were discriminatory when they designed the size of the seats in favor of those that are not fat. In my eyes neither of these situations is discriminatory, but rather unfair and inconvenient. This is not to make light of the day to day hardship endured by the blind and visually impaired, but to say that perhaps their tribulations are not really the result of discrimination.

It seems that this case is another episode of the hit new series Sue Happy Americans Gone Wild.

This case also brings up another interesting issue. If one does truly believe that the government is being willfully discriminatory, why is the easiest way to rectify the problem a federal court? It seems that this case is another episode of the hit new series Sue Happy Americans Gone Wild. From what I have read, it does not seem that anyone ever bothered adressing this issue with Congress. Why did the blind advocacy groups not start lobbying Congress to change the law or to place pressure on the treasury to fix the problems. Is it symptomatic of a problematic legislative process that a four-year legal battle paid for by taxpayers was the best way for the blind to achieve what they perceive to be equality? Is it really fair that one judge rather than a body of elected officials has the ability to make a decision that will affect each and every American?

I don’t have the answers, so we’d like to hear from you.

What better way is there to spread freedom and democracy than to incrementally take it away from people that already have it?

Always championing new tools in the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration said on Monday that immigrants arrested on suspicion of terrorism may be held indefinitely and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts. The Justice Department has filed papers explaining that a new anti-terrorism law signed last month to hold detainees at Guatanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured on US soil. This means that non-citizens—like Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri a citizen of Qatar, who was a student in the US when he was arrested in 2001—who are in the country legally, can be labeled enemy combatants and basically stripped of basic rights afforded to most anyone. This of course makes perfect sense, because what better way is there to spread freedom and democracy than to incrementally take it away from people that already have it?

Have we grown actually to hate freedom ourselves?

A few days after September 11, President Bush explained to America that we had “entered a new type of war. It’s a war against people that hate freedom. We’re fighting for freedom and liberty.” Yet since then we’ve seen our “war time” President suspend habeas corpus for the first time since the American Civil War, justify warrantless eavesdropping on our phone calls for the sake of protecting the American people, and he’s even tried to justify torture, all in the name of freedom. And that’s just to name a few of his tactics. For many, this does not seem problematic, but others are asking where will we stop? How many of our own freedoms are we willing to give up protecting ourselves from those who “hate it?” Have we grown actually to hate freedom ourselves? After all, if we care about it enough to be in a war to keep it, it seems that we’d want to stop taking it away from ourselves.

Right now, anyone could be named an enemy combatant. While thus far, most have been non-citizens or foreigners, what is going to happen when “ordinary” Americans are accused of being enemy combatants? What if you have a friend in Pakistan that calls you asking for money and you send it to him? Since the government clearly has the right to listen to your phone conversation, and perhaps look at overseas bank transactions, and because there are clearly many Pakistanis who are terrorists, you are clearly helping the enemy, and you clearly deserve to not have rights. Clearly this makes no sense whatsoever, yet it is sadly now not beyond the realm of reality.

How can we expect anyone to respect our liberty when we don’t respect that of others and hardly respect our own?

Michael Ignatieff, who was once the head of Harvard’s Center for Human Rights said, “It is the response to terrorism, rather than terrorism itself, that does democracy the most harm.” At this moment, his statements could not be anymore true. It is a paradox at best and completely hypocritical at worst that we would abandon the very values we are seeking to protect for the sake of liberty. Like it or not, there are people that hate America. Like it or not, there are people that wish to do America harm. But like it or not, they are still people. How can we expect anyone to respect our liberty when we don’t respect that of others, and seemingly more and more each day, hardly respect our own? If we purpose to ensure that American people are entitled to their basic rights without fear of them being taken away from outside forces, perhaps we need to first focusing on the inside forces that are committed to taking them away. After all, five years after September 11, it is the Bush administration, and not the terrorists, that have been most injurious to democracy here in America.

Sixteen year olds are capable of making adult decisions.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days you at least know the basic story. Mark Foley, a Republican congressman from Florida who time and time again denounced sex predators as “animals” was accused of having acted as one. Correspondence between Foley and teen boys in the Page program as well as allegations that the House leadership kept it all a secret surfaced. Amidst all the scandal and all the calls for renewed protection of America’s children, Foley resigned and checked himself into rehab for alcoholism and related behavior problems.

Of course I had the same reaction as most other people when it comes to accusations of child exploitation or an older man preying on younger boys: “This guy is a pervert and something needs to be done! Poor kid, I hope he grows up to be alright, I feel sorry for him.” I was steadfast in these sentiments until the whole debacle became even more soap operatic when ABC news released transcripts of one of the alleged instant message conservations. I took the time to read the full nine page ordeal.

While we won’t get into all the lurid details and I will leave it to you to read the text yourself, I am now extremely hard pressed to view a sixteen-year-old boy who talks for nearly an hour and in great detail about his sexual habits as a victim on the one hand and as a child in need of protection on the other. Sure what Foley did was dumb, inappropriate, and maybe even sick. But what about this sixteen year old who had the equivalent of cyber sex with a 54 year old man? He certainly is not without fault.

Many issues come to mind here. Based on the boy’s own words, that particular conversation was hardly the first time the two had discussed such things. Anyone who has instant messenger knows how to block someone. Why didn’t he do it? Why didn’t he report things the first time? Why did he save the conversations for as long as he did? Most importantly, why does no one in the mainstream media ever ask these questions?

While we could debate ad infinitum about when our country says adulthood starts, let’s just put a couple of things out there. In most states, the age of consent is sixteen. In many cases, criminals as young as fourteen are charged as adults and often face life in prison. To me, these two points alone are enough to say that our country accepts the idea that sixteen year olds are indeed capable of making adult decisions. End of discussion. It is not much of a jump then to say if you are old enough to make adult decisions, you are old enough to take adult responsibility for your actions.

Could Foley have continued to have these conversations with the boy had the boy simply blocked him? Not likely. Would Foley have persisted the way he did in the conversation had the boy not explicitly described his various sexual behaviors? Perhaps he would have, but this is irrelevant. The point is that if this boy wants to claim that he is a victim, he has to accept as much responsibility for his victimization as Foley has to accept for victimizing him.

No one wants to say this however. Our society has long stuck to the idea that there is nothing more repugnant than the sexual exploitation of children. And rightly so. There is not much out there that is more heinous that taking someone’s childhood away in that manner. Accordingly, terms such as pedophilia and child pornography arouse such anger and passion within us that to even question what the role the child may have played is unfathomable.

This sixteen-year-old, however, is hardly a child. He needs to take responsibility for what he did. Perhaps we all like to live in a delusional word where sixteen-year-olds do not have sexual thoughts or perhaps they do not have the ability to adequately think through those thoughts. At best, this idea is a farce. While I am not a psychologist and will not proclaim to be, I will again say that had this same sixteen-year-old shot someone, no one would be calling him a child and not a single politician would be saying our children need more protection.

What our children do need, however, is to learn to accept responsibility for what they do. How can they, however? If you’re fat, it’s because McDonald’s made you that way, not because you got your fat ass in your car and drove there twice a day three days a week for twenty years. Clearly they should have done a better job of warning you. You got an F on your test? Obviously your teacher is a racist and is singling you out and your mom needs to schedule a conference. It could not at all be the fact that you were out funneling beer until 3am and instead of spending those next five hours studying, you spent two vomiting and the next three putting pictures of the whole ordeal on Facebook. More germane to this, however, old men are hitting on you on the internet? Clearly he’s to blame for seeking out children. You being a sixteen-year-old wanton whore who posts pictures of you and your girlfriends wearing your Abercrombie G-strings and tank tops with the caption “do you like that ass?” has nothing to do with it. He should be taken out back and shot for exploiting our children.

Get a grip America. Yes, Mark Foley clearly has issues, but he has accepted responsibility for what he did. When will the rest of America take that lesson from his political playbook?

This is a new blog and we want your comments. Let us know what you think.