MICHELLE OBAMA is campaigning for better dietary habits for America’s children, a seemingly virtuous and uncontroversial undertaking if there ever was one. But it is really one more instance of overweening paternalism. She recently lectured the Grocery Manufacturers Association:

“We need you not just to tweak around the edges, but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children. That starts with revamping, or ramping up, your efforts to reformulate your products, particularly those aimed at kids, so that they have less fat, salt, and sugar, and more of the nutrients that kids need.”

Food companies are businesses. They do not act with maternal solicitude toward their customers, but who knows? Maybe Obama can force them to churn out low-fat granola or enact a law that every child must eat Caesar salad for lunch or pay a fine. Mrs. Obama would better aim her words at the mothers of America. They are the ones who determine their children’s diets.

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Cutbacks in government spending on libraries and after-school programs are to blame for the flash mobs of black teenagers converging on the streets of Philadelphia in predominantly white business districts, according to the director of a major youth advocacy group,

Shelly Yanoff, of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, said spending reductions have led to this youthful restlessness, which includes the game of “Catch and Wreck” in which children as young as eleven target street people to pummel and rob. The word is spread through text messaging and mobs converge in Center City. In a mob last Sunday, teenagers chanted “black boys” and “burn the city,” according to the New York Times.

If more libraries were open and there hadn’t been dramatic cutbacks in youth violence prevention programs, these teenagers might be sitting quietly reading Mark Twain. The city’s black mayor disagrees.

According to the Times, a senior editor at Harpers is “credited” with introducing the idea of a flash mob.

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  THERE ARE TWO institutions that almost every American encounters in his life. They are the hospital and the school, the doctor's office and the classroom. Our central government already holds the school captive. Whatever local autonomy still exists for communities and their school boards is just window dressing. Real autonomy has been swept away by monopolistic government control. It's true we are not forced to send our children to government schools, but we are still forced to pay for them and we are denied the free market and funds in which to cultivate alternatives. We are also compelled to live in a society shaped by the ideology taught in our schools. It creeps into every facet of our world, an invasive weed in every garden. There is no more powerful influence on the minds and character of our neighbors. That's why the government takeover of American health care is so significant. Here is the other major industry we must all encounter in a very personal way. Here is the other place where we interact as citizens and express our shared values. There will be almost no escaping it. Even those who can buy their way out of government-controlled medicine will still be affected by its values. The most important objection to nationalized health care is irrelevant to our physical health. Whether we can get the same kind of care from doctors amd hospitals is an important issue, but not the most dire one. The most pressing objection concerns not body, but…

  LAWRENCE AUSTER expresses what many of us know in an interview with Richard Spencer at AltRight Radio. Our national existence is at stake in the fight over Obamacare. "Everything we think of as American identity, all the things that animate the common spirit of Americans, is lost if Obamacare stands," he states. There must be "absolute determination to overturn it." The other important affairs and issues are dwarfed by the magnitude of this event, an egregious violation of our founding principles. What really matters? In Auster's words: How can I care about Coulter in Canada, about Wilders, about Guantanamo, about non-discrimination, about Islam, when my foundation has been cut away and I'm standing in space? I must get my foundation back. Nothing else can matter.  The identity, the core of oneself, individually and collectively, from which one looks at the world, and responds to the world, has been taken away. To keep reacting to and discussing various issues when my core has been taken away is to be acting in a void.

MOMMIES take generous maternity leaves. They return to work and receive part-time assignments or lightened schedules, imposing heavier burdens on other workers and creating frequent interruptions in the workplace. What do the mommies do in return? They sue their employers. Welcome to the wonderful world of feminist corporate welfare.

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  THERE ARE distinct moments when the scales fall from our eyes. Since liberalism is in the air we breathe, it takes these epiphanies to see the light. For instance, I will never forget the moment when I went to my mailbox and found a certified letter from our local school district. When I opened the letter, which threatened to formally charge my husband and me with parental negligence for keeping our seriously ill son home from school, I was dispossessed of any lingering idealism toward our bullying educational leviathan.  Here is a fascinating look at one doctor's awakening to the evil of government-controlled medicine.

NATIONALIZED MEDICINE,  just like nationalized compulsory schooling, is likely to be much more favorable to female workers than to male. In general, working for the government, which provides security and does not require initiative, is more attractive to women.

In fact, the new law adopted by Congress last weekend equates doctors, who are more likely to be men, with nurses, who are more likely to be women. As the blogger Dr.Rich notes: (more…)

James P. writes: 

The comments in “How Socialism Affects Character” are too passive in formulation. Socialism is not something that happens via some mysterious natural process, like a hurricane or an earthquake. Evil people are doing this to us. “Socialism,” as such, is not changing our character; leftist politicians are quite deliberately trying to change human nature, partly because this serves their political interests, and partly because their beliefs are profoundly misguided.

With respect to Clark Coleman’s comment, leftists want the government to take over health care precisely because this will kill the unique spirit of America, and cause the people to look to government for solutions, and foster the European mindset. For our leftist overlords, these character changes are a positive and intended feature, not an unintended side-effect. (more…)

CLARK COLEMAN WRITES AT VFR:

The philosophical argument that I have been waiting for someone to make (not just politicians, but conservative bloggers and radio hosts) is that a government takeover of health care will kill the unique spirit of America. Instead of freedom reigning in the hearts of Americans, they will look to government for solutions. Instead of controlling their own destinies, they will adopt the European mindset of thinking “the government needs to do something” about every problem. When you are an empowered, informed consumer of healthcare, ….  you have an independent spirit. You can change insurance companies or hospitals or doctors when you have a problem. When your only recourse is to write your congressman and seek his “constituent services” to deal with your bureaucratic impasse, you become a passive Euro-wimp. It affects your whole approach to life.

For the last 12 months, who has been saying that in public?

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LYDIA SHERMAN WRITES:

Speaking of fathers, have you noticed that our Founding Fathers are now referred to as “Founders“? Nancy Pelosi referred to them as the Founders today after the health care bill was pushed passed the consent of the governed. Everywhere you look, someone is calling them the “Founders.” This is a politically contrived term to leave out their male-ness. 

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NEW YORK is easily one of the worst cities for normal women who are not married by the age of 30, as Gavin McInnes cleverly argues. Sex and the City put a pretty face on an ugly situation, covering up desperation with female bravado and stylish shoes. The only compensations for the New York woman are the lucrative jobs and good restaurants in which to have lachrymose, wine-drenched meals with her fellow unmarried girlfriends.

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  AMERICA is not one, but two nations. Lawrence Auster reflects on our uncertain future: As for the health care bill, the fact is that we are at the beginning of a struggle that will go on for years, since conservatives can no more accept this supposed law than they could accept the imposition of a Soviet government in this country. Not that Obamacare is the same as a Soviet government, but that both are completely outside our historic society and Constitution.

  NON-COMPLIANCE with the U.S. Census is so high, the Census Bureau will spend $340 million (hey, we can afford that!) to increase the mailback rate for the 2010 census. A major factor is growing concern about privacy and government intrusion. Nationalized medicine raises additional concerns about government misuse of census data. Instead of ad campaigns to restore confidence, the Citizens' Council on Health Care recommends returning the census to its original purpose:  Turning away from intrusive data collection, restoring the Census to its constitutional purpose of a simple head count,eliminating the American Community Survey, and repealing all penalties for non-compliance may help to restore American trust and compliance with the U.S. Census.  

Steve McCann at the American Thinker sums up the health bill:

We know that this bill will be nearly impossible to fully repeal, but more importantly, it will pit the government against the individual, foment class warfare, create additional unemployment, shackle the economy, and exacerbate the national debt crisis, while ultimately rationing health care to the most vulnerable in society.

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IT IS POSSIBLE to feel a deeper bond today with our forebears, those who saw the natural ties with their mother country dissolve. Our government no longer represents us, no longer speaks for us, and is hostile to our interests. The Wall Street Journal calls the takeover of the American health industry “transformative.” It is indeed. It transforms disgust into full-blooded outrage and contempt. It transforms America into a land of continual civil unrest or of entrenched mediocrity.

Here at the American Thinker is the appropriate “Declaration of Dependency.” It says:

We hold these truths to be morally relative; that all men are not created equal, but we can make them equal by instituting laws to ensure social, racial, and economic equality

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THE FEDERAL takeover of health care, passed into law this weekend, is the almost inevitable outcome of government intrusion decades ago. Entitlement programs for the elderly and poor, along with the rise of the HMO, were destined to lead us here without a principled retreat from socialized medicine. Twila Brase, of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care, writes:

The proliferation of managed-care organizations (MCOs) in general, and HMOs in particular, resulted from the 1965 enactment of Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor. Literally overnight, on July 1, 1966, millions of Americans lost all financial responsibility for their health-care decisions.  (more…)

THE NEW YORK TIMES wedding and engagement anouncements have for a long time trumpeted careerism in women and treated a nuptial as the merger of resumés. They make excruciatingly boring reading, detailing the bride’s career, the groom’s career, the fathers’ careers, the mothers’ careers, the stepfathers’ careers and the stepmothers’ careers.

A wedding announcement for today’s paper accidentally included comments in its Internet version from an editor who was miffed by the scanty work history of a housewife. What to do? The paper finally omitted the mother altogether. According to  Gawker:

The final edition leaves poor Mrs. Segal out entirely, because if one does not have an easily identifiable job, philanthropic hobby, or tony employer, one does not exist at all to the Vows page. 

To be fair to its feminist leanings, the paper should have listed Mrs. Segal as the inmate in a concentration camp or as a household slave.

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NATASSIA WRITES:

I came across this article at Fox News, and I found it to be interesting because I remember when I was trying to be “Super-Mom” (and giving myself an anxiety disorder in the process), I felt a twinge of incompetence when my husband was “too helpful” with the babies (a toddler and an infant.) When he loaded the dishwasher (even before we had children), I felt like I wasn’t doing my job, despite the fact that I was in school full-time (or working or both.) I tried to tell myself I was being stupid and unrealistic about my abilities (and I was), but that still didn’t stop the gut-feelings that I had. 

Talk about turning oneself into a neurotic.

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