Saturday, May 1, 2010

Salty Socialism

When I go grocery shopping, I often buy salt-free canned vegetables, in view of my high blood pressure. Salt-free or low-salt foodstuffs have been available for many years, BY THE INITIATIVE of food companies, WITHOUT the government needing to tell them to provide this alternative.

Recently, however, I heard about calls (WHAT a surprise, under the Obama regime) for direct federal oversight of salt content in foods. Big-government advocates are willfully ignoring the fact that there is ALREADY provision being made for those who need to lower their salt intake. And as a caller to a radio program pointed out, forced across-the-board salt reductions would NOT be making provision for persons with severely LOW blood pressure who actually need MORE salt than most of us do.

Count on big government to insist that one size fits all, as well as to insist that no one can do anything constructive unless government is in charge of it.

More recently, I heard Great Britain's Gordon Brown saying something in a debate which didn't make sense at first. Brown was passionately denouncing British conservatives for wanting, as he put it, to take large amounts of money "out of the economy." I knew that British conservatives, like American conservatives, wish to reduce tax burdens, which means common citizens having more money to spend, and money spent by consumers is very much IN the economy. But at last I realized that for Brown, the government and "the economy" ARE ONE AND THE SAME. For this neo-Marxist, money ISN'T in the economy at all, UNLESS it is in the hands of government, or at least having its use tightly controlled by government.

Gordon Brown's notion of what the word "economy" means is akin to our Democratic Party's notion that no one can possibly avoid being overdosed on salt unless government micromanages their diet. It's all part of the relentless push toward putting every last detail of our lives under ironclad supervision.

When you hear leftists talking up the benefits of more and more government control, be sure to take what they say with a grain of salt--if they'll still allow you to HAVE a grain of salt.

2 comments:

Alien In Exile said...

Yep! This is all VERY frustrating. One thing my mom wisely pointed out this afternoon is that for all the liberal's fear of GOD being in control of anything for fear of him being "too restrictive," THEY are more than happy to restrict every little thing and to grab more power and control. So, they're really just more competent than God. (Really?)

Joseph Ravitts said...

Thank you, Pamela. I should have included in my post something about how absurd it is to tell people (in census ads) that PURELY LOCAL functions like city bus lines CANNOT continue unless the FEDERAL government is running them.