"Impulses" vs Principles

Over at Townhall.com is a perfect example of what is wrong with so many of the various self-proclaimed "libertarians" and "small-government conservatives" out there. Although Maggie Gallagher calls herself a "small government conservative", when she discusses the debate over whether New York City ought to ban trans fats, she demonstrates that the fundamental basis for her belief in small government is ....

Get ready!

"Impulses".

[T]here is no level of consumption of trans fats that is good for you. Ideally, we should all consume zero.

But here's the really key second difference: Trans fats are not exactly a food. They are a byproduct of an industrial process (hydrogenation) introduced to help stabilize the shelf life of cooking oil.

...

Why should industrialists be permitted to adopt a process that gives some people heart attacks? [Perhaps because people are willing to pay them to do so? --ed]

My libertarian impulses include the feeling that informed people who really want to undertake the risks of trans fats should be allowed to do so. In a perfect world, a small mom-and-pop restaurant would be able to pay a "vice tax" and receive a license to use trans fats, provided they prominently display that they are doing so. ...

Let's leave aside the fact that you'd just about have to live under a rock these days to be unaware of the small risk due to trans fats in your diet. Let's also set aside the fact that nobody is holding a gun to anyone's head and marching him into McDonald's. Nor are there tanks ready to crush the collarbones of the teeming masses -- led by the courageous figure of Maggie Gallagher, of course -- protesting the widespread use of trans fats.

Instead, let us consider what, precisely, Ms Gallagher is saying.

Because trans fats can cause some to have heart attacks, she proposes banning them. In other words, the government is to prevent countless people from performing a voluntary behavior -- the purchase of food containing trans fats -- allegedly for their own good.

Let's look into this more deeply. Ms Gallagher has paid too much attention to the "trans fats" term in this equation and too little to the "government" and "man" terms.

The government is the one entity in a free society that may legally wield force. In fact, this is the delegated right to the use of retaliatory force of all citizens, which each is entitled to do in his self-defense when others harm him by the initiation of force or the threat thereof. The initiation of force is the fundamental way one man can harm another. This can be through direct, physical harm, or it through the prevention of a man -- a rational animal -- from enjoying the fruits of his applied intellectual effort, from using reason, his tool of survival.

What Marie Gallagher proposes, then, is that the government use force to prevent men from the exercise of their minds in certain areas of their lives. In this case, the government is to override the decision that many people would make (as she even admits) to take the trade-off of a better-tasting meal for some small increase in their risk for a heart attack.

But which areas would these be, Miss Gallagher? When should the government override our decisions? Even if we say, for the sake of argument, that there is no such thing as a "safe" trans fat, this ban is wrong precisely because it places such decisions not in the hands of the individuals who must make them, but in the hands of the government. Setting aside whether you might agree with the kinds of trade-offs I would make, it is the height of naivete to trust the government to have objective criteria for what it decides to ban next "for our own good".

This is, after all, what we are in a war about, for Pete's sake! What are the "peaceful" Moslems doing but "inviting" us to follow what they deem to be the path to enlightenment? And what is sharia law but the implementation of this "impulse" to glorify God, to protect us from detracting from His glory and, in the process, lead our immortal souls to heaven? This is even more important than our own good, Ms. Gallagher. It is because God wills it! Why stop at protecting our earthly bodies, Miss Gallagher, when our very immortal souls are in peril?

You don't agree, Miss Gallagher? But you were the one who wanted to place government force in the hands of moralizing busybodies.

While there is a long slope from banning trans fats to banning (among many other things) public view of the female face, it is a slippery one. But it is easy to start the climb down when one fails to think in terms of principles as Miss Gallagher does. The fact that trans fats are dangerous does not in any way alter the fact that to ban them is an unwarranted intrusion of government force into our daily lives.

Limited government is a good thing for specific reasons of far greater moment than the "impulses" of some batty convert to the nanny state. And one selectively ignores those reasons at his own peril.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: I just noticed that this is my 1000th post!