Go Ahead. Take His Foie Gras.

In my 4/4 post, I finally got around to mentioning this excellent column by Walter E. Williams. I Facebooked it when I came across it last month, but it deserves a blog post. Williams, if you have not heard of him, is a conservative professor, syndicated columnist, and occasional guest host for Rush Limbaugh.

In this particular column, Williams drives home the point that overly compliant Americans, parents in particular, have allowed the nanny state to grow into a mommy-and-daddy state (without any of the warmth those names imply).

“Part of the problem is that people who act as instruments of government do not pay a personal price for usurping parental authority. The reason is Americans, unlike Americans of yesteryear, have become timid and, as such, come to accept all manner of intrusive governmental acts. Can you imagine what a rugged American, such as one portrayed by John Wayne, would have done to a government tyrant who confiscated his daughter’s lunch or facilitated her abortion without his permission?”

To our shame, he’s right. We live in a society where the president warns citizens that a Republican-run would leave us “on our own” and the media can portray a self-reliance-believing, Constitution-minded grassroots movement like the Tea Party as weird extremists. Too many people have lost sight of the fact that a democratic government exists to serve and represent the people, not the other way around.

Williams also writes, “I believe that the anti-tobacco movement partially accounts for today's compliant American. Tobacco zealots started out with ‘reasonable’ demands, such as the surgeon general's warning on cigarette packs.* Then they demanded nonsmoking sections on airplanes. Emboldened by that success, they demanded no smoking at all on airplanes and then airports and then restaurants and then workplaces—all in the name of health.” We are seeing the same thing happen now to soda, as local governments limit access to soda, use stimulus funds for anti-soda propaganda, and try to pass soda taxes.

Would you dare take this man's foie gras?

It’s not going to be easy to push this genie back in the bottle. But, in my favorite part of the column, Williams shows us how to throw down the gauntlet. “Here's my challenge to these people: Don't be a coward and use the state to accomplish your agenda. If you see Williams eating foie gras, just come up and take it off his plate.”

Williams is probably referring to the California foie gras ban, which was signed into law in 2004 and takes effect this July. Chefs in the state which is home to many of the country’s finest restaurants will be restricted from serving a classic French dish all because some animal-rights activists think that force-feeding the ducks to enlarge their livers is too cruel. (Ummm, hello, is it crueler than killing them afterwards?) We all know it would be wrong to walk over and take someone’s food away, so we should we let the state get away with it, even incrementally?

I wouldn't dare touch Williams’ duck liver but I’ll definitely grab more his columns going forward—I’ll be a better blogger and food-freedom warrior for it.

*The Surgeon General’s warning was just the beginning. The FDA now wants to put graphic images, including a dead body, on cigarette packs, if they can get it through the courts. If they succeed, I would imagine that dead-guy burger and soda labels would not be very far behind.
(Foie gras photo: myrecipes.com; Williams photo: gmu.edu)