I do not believe it is the job of the federal government to teach us anything. It is simply part of the apparatus of compulsion and coercion whose job it is, at most, to main the basics of social order. When we allow it to become our Teacher we are elevating it to a role for which it has no comparative moral authority. Why should its values be authoritative? Why not my values? Why not your values?Really, lets just knock off the bullshit here. The fact of the matter is, public health and childhood obesity is a matter of public interest. Even the military is concerned that childhood obesity will interfere with a viable and sizable pool of cannon fodder. Whether society decides to maintain our dependence on private for profit health insurance, with or without "Obamacare", or more preferably move towards genuine universal socialist healthcare, our collective health effects us all. The avoidable and unneccessary health problems associated with childhood and adult obesity will cost us all, no matter how we decide to pay for it. And in fact it will disproportionately hurt the poor and lower income working class more. On the other hand, the owners of America's fast and processed food industry will continue to get rich on people's poor eating habits.
Let's also face some other facts about values, politics, and government. These are already and intrinsically a battlefield for people's values. In fact, politics is all about "values". Its about fighting about whose values gets to win out collectively in society. Its about whether we value education, human health and welfare for all people. Or whether we value privileges and obscenely disproportionate wealth for a relative few, and military hardware for blowing people and their stuff up in far away places. Unfortunately the latter set of values have held sway for to long. So yes, it is time we start fighting to impose the former humanistic values on the greedy bastards who don't hold them.
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