Quote by: tivodan1116  I eat transfats on a pretty regular basis. Prove to me that transfats will be directly responsible for my death or even contribute in any significant measure.
Your words are mere fluff. More importantly, and the key to why this law is ridiculous, is that you cannot show me a single person who died of any ailment that could possibly be related to transfats who did not choose to consume them of their own free will. Many people engage in self destructive behavior of all kinds, that is their right.
Your logical disconnect really comes in thinking that somehow this is terrible, evil restaurant owners thrusting trans fats on their consumers. There is a simple solution - if you don't want to eat trans fats, stay away from restaurants that use them. No one is forcing anyone to do anything (except if trans fats are outlawed).
I would be okay with a law that, say, requires restaurants to put symbol next to any item on their menu that contains trans fats... Anything beyond that, and you go from the realm of informed consent to nanny-statism. Your argument that trans fats should be outlawed because people don't know what they get at restaurants is identical to saying people shouldn't have the right to make their own medical decisions because their doctor knows what's best for them. Both concepts are equally chilling.
Your comparisons to running stop signs and other behaviors that directly harm others (through no concious decision of theirs) are patently ridiculous and have already been debunked, so i will not address them.
Yes, that pesky Constitution - thwarting do-gooders and busybodies for over 200 years... :rolleyes:
Hmm, perhaps you should do some actual learning about the Constitution before you make such a judgment... Lawrence v. Texas says that, "right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them [citizens and the petitioners in the case] the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention."
In other cases, the Supreme Court has also said that the Constitution includes as part of the right to life found in the 14th Amendment the right to refuse medical treatment. That is, a person has a right to make a concious decision which may end their life prematurely - identical to the choice to consume trans fats, if you believe the science.
Wrong again. The rights protected in the Constitution have been incorporated to the states by the 14th Amendment. Since local governments exist under charter of their respective states, they, too, are subject.
Whether or not the nation is obese is irrelevant. There are a great many problems that could be solved at the cost of our rights - pretty much all crime, the environment, unemployment, health care, etc. The point is we have struck a balance between rights and control, and when this country was founded, they thought the better balance was in favor of the right of the individual to make their own decisions.
That is a horribly ironic statement... You spend the whole thread arguing that we need a government to tell us what to eat, and then you say that people could just do the right thing?
The argument that this is government doing the will of the majority is also illogical. Government may do the will of the majority only so long as it does not trample the rights of individuals. In 1955 the majority of people thought that blacks should go to separate schools and interracial marriage should be illegal. Absolute majority rule only leads to the tyranny of the masses, as Madison said in Federalist #47.
Really, I think everyone in the country should be required to take a class in Constitutional law. It would save a lot of silly laws like this one... |