I salute this article! I, too, consider myself fairly liberal but I'm increasingly alarmed by the expanding agenda of the food police. I am also disturbed by the tone of the comments that articles on this subject invariably spur---extreme hostility toward the overweight, coupled with an aura of self-congratulation that is really obnoxious. You would think that being thin and fit was a moral triumph on the level of pulling a child from a burning building or developing a cure for cancer.

Food is the new sex and enjoying your food is the new sin. I think David Kessler has run off the rails with his contention that the problem with modern food is that it tastes too good. Didn't someone define Puritanism as the fear that someone, somewhere, is enjoying themselves?

I think it's also worth noting that there is no evidence---zero---that taxes of this sort would have any impact on the obesity epidemic. After all, there are many other sources of calories out there. You can't heavily tax all of them----at least, not yet.

I don't care that people wish to be unhealthy as long as they don't cost ME more in taxes. If the government is going to have to provide healthcare than taxpayers have the right to demand that risk factors impact the amount of health insurance premiums. Living a healthy lifestyle is a choice and if one decides that choice isn't for them, they should be OK with paying more in insurance premiums.

Thin does not necessarily equal healthy. Slightly or moderately overweight does not necessarily equal unhealthy. I think all would agree that morbidly obese DOES usually equal unhealthy.

It also does not necessarily follow that exercising and eating a healthy diet will make a person thin. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn't. Whatever a person's weight, however, eating the right foods and getting some exercise will improve health. If that is your point, then I agree with you.

I have serious reservations about the efficacy of a soda and junk food tax in promoting either weight loss or a healthy lifestyle.

So tax the junk food, but drop the tax on healthy foods. If the real intent is to promote healthier alternatives that is. Otherwise it's just a tax. And your point about only eating healthy foods not leading to thinness is true too. As is the opposite. When I was younger, I was extremely skinny. I ate bags of candy, slice after slice of cake, etc. Of course, that was then... As we age, it doesn't seem to matter how healthy you eat, you just don't burn off that fat and all of those extra parts around the middle. Then there's the whole gravity thing...

Spenmore -- Yours has been the only intelligent comment on this subject I've seen so far. Thank you!

So you will have no problem with paying the healthcare expenses of someone who seriously injures himself as long as it happened by his engaging in a 'healthy' activity, such as skiing, running, or perhaps working on the very farm that brings you your healthy food? Or will everyone who takes any risk other than the recommended 30 minutes of exercise three times a week be incurred some type of penalty due to the choices they make? Are you going to withhold treatment from someone injured at work because he or she chose that particular job? Or what about the person with a healthy lifestyle, but because of genetics, still has a bad cholesterol level or hypertension? The outcome can be the same - meds, doctor visits, possible heart attack, hospitalizations, surgeries -but its all okay because her or she didn't bring it on by choice? If it only comes down to dollars and cents, then your logic doesn't work.

The New Puritanism is "fear that someone, somewhere, is enjoying themselves in a way that I (the New Puritan) don't approve of."

I really appreciate all the thoughtful comments on my original post.

Another factor here, I suspect, is that governments at all levels are broke and digging in the couch cushions for spare change. The temptation to levy more of these specialized sales taxes on items deemed deleterious to the "public interest" is going to be great, especially when the people targeted by the taxes can be demonized.

The original post is actually even more correct than the poster apparently realizes: It's not just "puritanism redux" -- it's puritanism, period. Progressivism is puritanism. It's all part of the same New England lineage. There's a straight line from the Puritanism of the 17th Century to the progressivism of today. It tracks through some good stuff (abolitionism), some bad stuff (prohibition), and right on up through the New Deal/Great Society nation we live in today.

What do you think Harvard is, anyway? A Catholic school?

It's kind of funny how today's left thinks of "conservatives" as the modern-day equivalent of Puritans, when the progressives are actually descended from them, with the underlying worldview and impulses intact. Well, it would be funny if it weren't ultimately so dangerous to liberty.

 

TolliverT:

This is off-topic but I have to set the record straight.

Having graduate and undergraduate degrees in American history, with an emphasis on social and intellectual history, I am well aware of the tenets of Puritanism and its lingering influence on our culture. I must differ with your "progressivism IS Puritanism" characterization. While some "do-gooder" progressive impulses MAY have their roots in Puritanism, perhaps its most lasting legacy is the so-called Puritan work ethic. The Puritans believed in predestination: each person is either saved or damned from birth. While the individual could not change his predetermined status, the Puritans believed that God showed his favor to the Elect in various ways, including material prosperity. This idea provided a powerful spur to hard work and created a strong association between moral virtue and wealth.

You see this idea everywhere in modern conservatism, from the notion that people are poor because they deserve to be (they made "bad choices") and that helping them would disrupt the moral order, to the Prosperity Gospel. The straightest line is not from the Puritans to the progressives, but from the Puritans to the religious right.

Greetings, Spenmore.

You're referring to perceived similarities between Christian religious tenets. I'm talking about actual intellectual/political lineage. 

New England Puritanism became Unitarianism became progressivism. New England Puritanism did not become Southern Evangelicalism.

Take progressivism/New Dealism, add a touch of the Frankfurt School and postmodern thought*, and you've got the modern American left. New England remains the intellectual -- and thus ideological -- central nervous system of America.

(* That's why the "religious" angle to all this is now basically unrecognizable. But the essential framework is intact.)

My apologies for dragging the thread off-topic.

TolliverT:

Thanks for your thoughts. I do see your point. I would say, however, that American culture is such a stew of diverse influences that drawing a straight line from Point A to Point B is difficult. Just as some elements of Puritanism influenced abolitionism and other progressive "isms", so the Puritan drive to control private behavior (particularly sexual behavior) and the emphasis on prosperity as a measure of virtue have influenced modern conservatism.

And now everyone is free to resume arguing about the soda tax!

Thank you for the interesting exchange. Best to you, and see you around these forums.

-TT