America the fat
In a piece entitled, “Why we’re getting fatter—and what to do about it,” David Frum does a good job on the first part:
The problem for the country echoes the problem for individuals: Willpower is not enough. “(It’s a) basic instinct, even stronger than the sexual instinct, to store calories to survive the next period of starvation. And we live in an environment where there’s food every half mile. It’s tasty, cheap, convenient, and you can eat it with one hand.”…Weight gain is driven by two trends: increases in calories consumed and decrease in calories expended. Modern America induces both.
But then there’s that second part—“what to do about it”:
If you as an individual want to change your weight, you must change your whole life. Likewise, to reduce obesity in modern society, we will have to alter the way society is organized…It’s no small project. It would involve the redesign of cities, the relocation of schools, the reinvention of our modes of eating and amusement…[I]f we are to succeed, we should understand: The campaign against obesity will have to look a lot less like the campaign against smoking (which involves just one decision, to smoke or not to smoke) and much more like the generation-long campaign against highway fatalities, which required the redesign of cars, the redesign of highways, and changes in personal behavior like seat-belt use and drunk driving.
Nanny state, anyone?
Now we need a balancing leftist article on “fighting hunger in America,” that meme so beloved of lefties. When’s the last time anyone saw someone who looked malnourished?
I vote we address the Fat Head syndrome that’s coming out of academia. Apparently a situation where knowledge calories get stored but turn immediately into fat from lack of any exercises in wisdom.
Ace had a nice piece on this article. He linked in this al Reuters piece about the obesity rate declining.
And pointed out a Gary Taubes NYTimes piece.
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests.
In every country [and time] these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” —Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive” C.S. Lewis
Gluttony is known for ages as cardinal sin, but nation of hedonists can not discipline and restrain her instincts. This trait of modern culture makes all attempts at self-restraint futile.
I am extremely wary of visionaries, be they left or right, who sport grandiose plans for remaking society (in their “own image” after their likeness, of course) — and imposing their vision on innocent citizens.
Society is imperfect in myriad ways, some of them tragic, but none of us has the intelligence to order everyone else’s lives.
The law of unintended consequences sees to it that what sounds and feels good can far too easily fall on its smug face.
At least a few of us know what we don’t know, and are avoiding falling prey to what F. A. Hayek termed the “fatal conceit”.
Geoffrey Britain:
Or in a slightly more modern formulation:
This is unbelievable. Why on earth does Frum think that it is the government’s job to redesign society in order to stop people from being fat?
Heck, we could even blame the government itself for all this fatness when, back in 1998, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) updated the BMI guidelines so that 25 million people became “obese” overnight.
And Frum calling this different from smoking in laughable. The government at every level has made it a crusade to banish smoking from just about everywhere, punish tobacco companies with lawsuits, and punish smokers via taxes.
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on Primal/Paleo diets that say it’s not how much we eat, or even calories expended, but rather what we eat. We evolved over millions of years eating meat, vegetables and fruit. Our bodies were designed to burn fat, not carbs. Our modern diet is loaded with carbs, sugar, fructose and fake oils, which do not get metabolized properly, raise insulin levels, and cause obesity and high cholesterol. I’m hoping it’s true, because
A modest proposal, and one lefties should like: tax food.
It’s a natural consequence of the health-care debate. If the government can make you buy health insurance, they can make you eat healthier — or at least what they choose to call ‘healthier’ — for insurance purposes.
And then it gets interesting… because the government is not without vested interests here. It’s one thing if a private insurance company wants to raise your rates because you’re obese. It’s another thing entirely if the insurance company turns out to own a line of weight-loss products.
We see this all over the place. The federal government claims the right to define standards for automobiles, which car manufacturers (and consumers) must heed. That wouldn’t be so bad, perhaps, if the government didn’t own a controlling interest in certain car companies…
Those wanting to force people to do what they think is right would have more humility about making that determination if they reflected for a moment on things on which current thinking entirely conflicts with previous thinking.
Tonsils would be one case in point, but there is a plethora of others. Smoking was once purportedly thought to be good, homosexuality was considered a mental disease, lobotomies and electroshock therapy were considered sound practice. (The inventor of the lobotomy received a Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology, IIRC.)
The point is that dirigiste impulses regarding “what’s good for people” are all too often misguided. And, in the last analysis, people have a right to be stupid, or what others consider to be stupid. Three years ago, 52% of the population vigorously asserted that right.
If you take the long view, the primary solution is a health promotion program targeting kids. That prevents a hazardous, stubborn health condition from gaining a lifetime purchase.
It doesn’t need to be a full-throated leftist agenda if you leave the current generation to their hardened arteries.
And then again, we may be harboring very efficient bacteria. See this abstract:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/abs/nature05414.html
It wasn’t all that long ago that everyone knew bacteria didn’t cause ulcers. Then a couple of hard-headed Australians found Heliobacter.
…And with the fines and tax increases in recent years, the government now makes more money on each pack of cigarettes sold than do the tobacco companies. The tobacco industry has been all but nationalized.
Far be it from me to opine about nutrition, but I can’t help noticing that when I was a kid we learned about the “four basic food groups” (meat, dairy, grains, fruit/vegetables) and were encouraged to include something from each category in every meal. Later the government started promoting the “food pyramid” which de-emphasized the role of meat. I think that was in the 80s or 90s, and as I recall, it was partly a response to vegetarians who complained that the American diet was too “meat centric”.
It was only after the food pyramid had become standard for a few years that I started hearing about the obesity epidemic. Maybe that’s just a coincidence, but I have my doubts.
As for the paleo diet, Rand Simberg has posted about it a few times, and just happens to have a new postright now that mentions it.
rickl,
It’s not just the food pyramid either. It’s also mothers not cooking for their families and no longer knowing almost instinctively how to get the little ones to eat those vegies.
It doesn’t need to be a full-throated leftist agenda if you leave the current generation to their hardened arteries.
No, it doesn’t. But an anti-arteriosclerosis agenda necessitates identifying the etiology of arteriosclerosis, and implementing a policy that has a beneficial effect.
Now granted, we think we know diet and sedentary lifestyle cause arteriosclerosis, and we can prevent it by suitable lifestyle changes. But then, we thought we knew that tonsils caused throat infections and therefore should be removed prophylactically, and that stress, not H. pylorii, caused ulcers. The point is, we could be wrong again. (In this context I note that some have suggested bacteria may be an etiological agent in arteriosclerosis.)
I believe in encouraging – but not compelling – people to follow current medical recommendations, in the full knowledge that many people will not, and thereby serve as a voluntary control group. Call it epidemiological federalism.
Who used to buy and make food? That, actually, is what it comes down to. America has had access to excessive food for decades, probably centuries now, mostly without obesity as a problem. One person, in the family, used to shop for, buy, and prepare food, then dole it out based on economic and dietary concerns. That person is more missing than even the family. Most wives are no longer actually mothers, other than in giving birth, sometimes. Until she returns don’t expect change. Men can’t do it. I can cook, I just have no sense of diet, proportions, or economy regarding meals.
Don’ look at me like that, Lucy. You know I am truthin’.
Simply put, Frum is willing to compel people “for their own good”. That makes him an agent of tyranny, whether he admits to it or not.
“The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” – John Stuart Mill
“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” – John Stuart Mill
“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.” – John Stuart Mill
rickl,
Thanks for the great Heinlein quote, my all time favorite Sci-Fi author.
The problem is that when the government provides and pays for healthcare, then some think that gives the government the right to force citizens to live so as to minimize the government’s expense. This is the insidious and iniquitous aspect of government healthcare (and, I suspect, a philosophical underpinning for the hard-left’s enthusiasm for it, the other being its from its marketing appeal.)
“”Heck, we could even blame the government itself for all this fatness””
Libby
You are more correct than you know. It occurs to me the people riding around the grocery store parking lot for 20 minutes to get a 30 foot closer parking space are the very entitlement minded people govt has created.
The generally accepted principal axiom would suggest that he is wrong. It is freewill, our conscious mind, that overcomes instinct driven behavior. It is purportedly what separates humans from other life forms. To suggest otherwise should be regarded as denigrating individual dignity and the self-moderating ability it imparts.
From a divine perspective, a similar assessment can be considered. The reason for our existence is a test of individual conscience. It is a test if we can overcome our primitive directives.
From both perspectives, we develop our ability to control freewill and overcome our instincts, including baser appetites (e.g. material consumption), through knowledge and experience. As we grow older, this is the premise for wisdom.
It is strictly antithetical to the spirit of the conservative philosophy to not recognize individual dignity as the premier force which directs our actions. The alternative is the philosophy embraced by individuals who defer their dignity to mortal gods, typically to excuse their shortcomings, or to curry favor with individuals who are materially more successful than they are.
It would be a mistake to normalize the thought process and concepts put forth by Frum in his introduction. This is exactly the order of priorities proposed by left-wing ideologues. We should take care not to confirm their suspicions. Because if they are right, then there is no meaningful distinction between voluntary and involuntary exploitation. There is only a natural order which twists and turns until we are heard no more.
It occurs to me the people riding around the grocery store parking lot for 20 minutes to get a 30 foot closer parking space are the very entitlement minded people govt has created.
I love people who will angle to get a parking space right in front of a gym, then go in and run on a treadmill for half an hour. This is presumably why those looking for intelligent life point telescopes into the sky instead of laterally.
Sergey:
Without the ability to self-moderate behavior, there is no possibility for liberty. I would propose that is the root cause of the general malaise that afflicts our society. People are operating under the assumption they have liberty, but without the self-control required to ensure its viability. So, as a necessary and predictable consequence, we have introduced and promoted progressive corruption of individuals and society. It has been a self-realizing fate, which if not corrected assures a progressive decay and eventual collapse of our civilization.
It has been dreams of physical, material, and ego instant gratification, principally through redistributive and retributive change, but also through fraudulent exploitation, which has sabotaged our society. The irony is that the path was at each step followed through voluntary concessions.
rickl :
A corollary to Heinlein’s insight is a division between individuals who recognize and reject individual dignity, theirs and others; with the latter, the masochists and sadists, respectively.
I will only add that the characterization should be qualified by degrees. There is no one, not even libertarians, who desire anarchy, and conservatives less so.
Libby:
With the passage of the so-called “health care reform”, and its associated Executive Order, it has become the government’s job to modify behavior in order to ensure long-term viability of that entitlement.
This is, of course, a predictable and necessary consequence. The challenge is to coerce universal participation, especially by individuals who are voluntarily marginally productive and better. The individuals who choose to fail will have their support bought and paid for. While never suspecting that their dignity has been betrayed and development has been sabotaged in exchange for a few trinkets.
Question for those who would coerce behavior on public health grounds: which generates a greater incidence of morbidity and mortality, obesity or homosexuality?
It’s a rhetorical question, obviously.
Daniel in Brookline:
Exactly. Perhaps more than any time in history, the incestuous relationships between individuals and cooperatives in our society, and the conflicts of interests which so often arise from them, have become very evident.
Occam’s Beard:
Until we mature and acquire wisdom, we are all predisposed to be rebels with a cause and without a clue. The deviant behaviors and outcomes that you have listed could be considered as effects of the cause that you cited.
The Soviet morons figured it out, eventually. Surely, the enlightened Americans can too. Then again, maybe not. A large and progressive minority of Americans have become so enamored with their entitled liberty, that with each vote they sell their liberty and dignity in exchange for promises of instant gratification.
Making one’s continued employment contingent upon maintaining proper weight can be a powerful motivator to keep weight under control. How do I know this? Because that was what motivated me. As a pilot I had to take two physicals a year. Any number of things could be disqualifying, but cardio-vascular and diabetes problems were two of the most common. Physicals were often referred to as the every six month lottery when you “bet your license.” High blood pressure, a bad EKG, high blood sugar, etc. were all cause for grounding – often never to return to work.
I was 28 when my weight began creeping up. My uniforms were getting tight and, at my physical, the flight surgeon counseled me about my weight gain. So, I bought a book , “CALORIES DON’T COUNT,” by Dr. Herman Taller. That was the first of the high protein, high fat, low carb diets to come out. I tried it and, voila, it worked for me. After that I would go along eating normally until I gained about 15-20 pounds then back on the high protein, high fat, low carbs. I also began to realize that I needed to get more exercise. Pilots earn their money basically sitting in a chair. The cheapest thing I could do was jog. I began jogging in 1963 when jogging wasn’t considered cool. Later, I got into climbing mountains as my preferred exercise, but by age 55 I had enough money to afford going a gym.
Over the years I have gained and lost those 15-20 pounds many times. I always had good results on my physicals. In fact, my cholesterol has always been below 180 and my resting pulse rate around 55. Whenever I would want to slack off on maintaining my weight and exercise program, I would picture myself working as a customer service rep for the airline or something even worse – total unemployment. Worked for me.
Gary Taubes work on high protein, low carb diets has vindicated both Drs. Taller and Atkinson in their approach to losing weight. For more see: garytaubes.com
I probably would have abandoned the high protein, high fat, low carb approach because of all the anti-high protein propaganda and the government food pyramid except that:
1. It worked for me.
2. My physicals indicated that I was staying healthy.
I understand that Safeway has had good results by offering lower health insurance premiums to employees who work to maintain their weight and get on an exercise program. Financial incentives work for some. Government edict – might work for those who love the regimented life and accepting direction from on high. Some, however, will never do it no matter the incentive – witness all those who use drugs, smoke, and drink too much even though the health consequences are quite well known. It is a problem that might be amenable to school years education, but the high protein, high fat, low carb regimen will never be accepted by the powers that be and……….it may not work for some. I think neo has mentioned it doesn’t work for her. So, like so many things, there are no easy solutions at hand.
J.J.,
I thought that’s what co pilots were invented for. So you could both eat, drink and smoke as you pleased, given the astronomical odds against both of you keeling over in the cockpit at the same time. 🙂
What if we redesigned society to make Frum less stupid?
Every single problem in the world can be solved by leftists remaking society. They hide behind intellectual degrees, nice sounding ‘theories’ and then spout their typical drivel. Disagree, and you are anti-science.
I despise these people with every ounce of my being.
My theory about American obesity is that Americans drink too many soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi.
Can you imagine the government starting an anti-Pepsi campaign after Pepsi (Obamacola) designed their logo to look like Obama’s logo?
I’m thinking about opening an on-line pizza delivery service.
A large, combo, deluxe, supreme pizza for only $19.95.
No “carbs”, no fat, no calories–it can be delivered via email. (If it tastes like air, you’re not using your imagination!)
Interested LisaM?
Nothing can be a solution unless it provides jobs for millions of power-hungry David Frums.
So who is the glutton, now?
Pace Heinlein, I think the world divides into those who want to control others, and those who just want to be left alone.
It makes financial sense, in a way.
Take motorcycle helmets: If a guy gets messed up by not having a helmet, he’s going to cost either the insurance industry or the state a couple of hundred K. Thus, laws to require helmets make financial sense.
Ditto fat.
This is especially true if the state is the insurance company, because that means we taxpayers are paying the claims (premiums).
If everything is the business of the state, then everything is the business of the state. If some things are the business of the state then it follows that some other things must necessarily be the business of the state. Which is an exponential process.
And someone interested in individual freedom is an enemy of the state.
I figure you can approach the helmet law by passing a law saying anybody messed up about teh head due to not wearing a helmet has, automatically, a deductible of $200,000. Or bankruptcy, whichever comes first. That will serve as an incentive, a cost-saver for the rest of us, and allow the guy his freedom.
As for fat. Charge more for life, health, disability income and long term care insurance. Wait. We already do, except where that’s mean ol’ discrimination.
Anyway, recall the ratchet.
Paleo and high-protein (such as Atkins) diets work for some people. They definitely do not work for me.
As-SalÄmu `Alaykum!
60% of Americans are overweight
5% of Americans have hypothyroidism (“slow metabolism”)
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States)
The average American gets 1/3 of calories from junk food
(www.ehow.com/about_5433908_typical-average-american-diet.html)
The average American watches between 2.8 hrs and 5 hrs of TV a day (depending on the source)
(www.bls.gov/tus/charts/,
blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/americans-watching-more-tv-than-ever)
The average American gets 17 minutes of exercise a day
(www.bls.gov/tus/charts/)
Social networks play a powerful role in determining an individual’s chances of gaining weight
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/25/AR2007072501353.html)
Charge more for life, health, disability income and long term care insurance. Wait. We already do, except where that’s mean ol’ discrimination.
Wait until the liberals figure out that minorities and the poor are especially liable to be obese. Then the … uh … fat will be in the fire.
You know, if you want to talk numbers, you might want to be prepared for others to talk numbers.
Smoking, for instance, increases the likelihood of heart disease and cancer, which cost money. So? All kinds of dying cost money, including those not associated with smoking. How about a non-smoker with the heart of a draft horse and…Alzheimers? That free?
Happens that smokers die younger than average, thus saving huge amounts of pension money from private pensions and Social Security and military pensions and so forth.
So, with smokers, do we net out ahead or behind? Heard some folks say ahead, but I’ve never done the math.
Point is, don’t play with numbers unless you’ve done them all, because, sure as God made little green apples, somebody else has.
When you have a hammer, everything’s a nail. “Total societal reorganization.” I’m sure we’ll need a lot of pseudo-conservative writers in our new reorganized world.
There’s been all sorts of games with numbers. With the change in the BMI, the government redefined what is obese & overweight, and then they use statistics on the % of people who are either “obese” & “overweight” to justify their programs. Seems a bit rigged to me.
For instance, lately you read everywhere that “1 in 3 children is overweight or obese”, which has been used to justify Michelle Obama’s healthy eating act (whatever it’s called). Maybe I’m blind, but I’m just not seeing 33% of the kids at my son’s school, or out around town, as fat. Are they hiding somewhere?
And then on the opposite end, I’ve also seen the “1 in 5 children goes hungry”quoted a lot. For this one I believe it’s tied to that “food insecurity” metric where if a child goes hungry once in a one year period they count as part of that 1 in 5.
So which is it – are our children overwhelmingly plump or starving? I’m guessing that poor children who are a bit chubby because they eat a lot of cheap fast food are being counted as both fat and food insecure. So really, our bureaucratic betters are just bend the statistics to whatever health control program they want, which is why government involvement in our eating & weight control is ridiculous.
You can always depend on conservatives to turn a conversation about public policy into a conversation about their money.
A more modest proposal incorporating a modern masterpiece:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan's_Run_(film)
At age 35, carousel, and the ones that float away get to live; the fat ones that don’t . . . food!
Hey, wait a second. Do the North Koreans have this problem?
Frum is right!
Worship the Leader and lose the pounds. No need to pay for expensive wraps and Pilates. No need for expensive individual thought and expression or achievement. Dirt to eat is free.
Please, can’t we all just worship the Leader?
America the fat
Crap
Wait
The answer
Not in denial
but
in
your anal
Poop a little
more
and
problem solved.
They lost me at the jump from “you must change your whole life” to “…we will have to alter the way society is organized.”
It’s never, ever enough to encourage individual responsibility. Oh no. “WE” mus take charge and decide what and how needs to be changed in order to create the utopian society that somehow keeps eluding us. *imagine dripping sarcasm*
“”You can always depend on conservatives to turn a conversation about public policy into a conversation about their money.””
Altemeyer
And you can count on a liberal democrat supporter to be somewhere in that public policy wagon instead of pulling it.
Actually, “food insecurity” is, iirc, a parent worrying about food once a month.
Said it before: My father was the fastest end in whatever league UConn is in at 6’1″ and 185. He’d be overweight with today’s rigged tables. I was 6’2″, 205 when I got out of Infantry OCS. Underfed, overworked, stressed out. Could whip a tiger, if the tiger, upon seeing my gaze, didn’t slink away. With today’s rigged tables, I’d be overweight.
Call BS. As the military says, this is preparing the battlespace for yet another government intrusion.
Altemeyer
As to talking about money, sport, that’s the point. They’re going to be telling us that our excess avoirdupois costs society money as has been the point with motorcycle helmets and smoking. And it’s our duty to the state to….in this case, lose weight. I suspect government employees will be exempt, and being overweight will be a sign of high social status and connectedness. My point is, if you’re going to start with numbers, be prepared to have somebody else know more than you do. Guaranteed it will happen. And you won’t like it.
In today’s generation of Dirty Dancing, at the table when Johnny says, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner,” it’s because nobody can put Baby in the corner.
New Chinese delicacy and the real reason they’re stealing our technology: chow yung fat
Academics think nothing of totalitarianism. MOST all of them come up with problems that then reuire the effort of stalin to implement, and the idea that people be left alone to their problems and their own responsibility is null. its a very poor way to look at people. the sad truth is that if they didnt play with people years ago, to destroy the family, and redesign our lives, we wouldnt be that fat as there would be fathers in families teaching self control, rather than no father, a mother at work, and a babysitter who dont care, attachment problems in kids where you shove food in their mouths to shut them up, and a licencious society where self control is abhored, and responsibility is someone elses problem, not yours.
the idea you can keep tweaking to fix the problems that tweaking caused and end up in a good place is null. especially when there are thousands and thousands of such academics all clamoring to be marx and have their hubris turned into the new idea of the future.
meanwhile, when they finally get what they want, now that this thinking is so normalized they dont get its unconstitutional, and goes against all ideas of freedom… they will complain that there is too much state…
but as long as they are in da house, and ther est of us are in the fields, the house slaves think its fine…
Doom,
Most wives are no longer actually mothers, other than in giving birth, sometimes. Until she returns don’t expect change.
seems to me that the cancer called feminism has worked to destroy the society it was designed to destroy… as i have endlessly pointed out.
when we stop loving our cancer, we will stop being so sick… but as long as wearing your undewear outside the body, pole dancing for 8 year olds, std vaccinations rather than abstinance, killing the unplaned growth, and asymetric laws, and other constitutional violations for the purpose of irrisponsibility as liberation… well, we are going to fail…
and guess what? the other sides know this, and so know that we no longer can fight. only 25% are fit enough to sign up… while back in the 60s that number was nearer 75% and in wwii, was near 90%…
it tracks perfectly the elites use of women via lysastrada and social engineering buying them off to hurt their own families and think they were victim valueless… has resulted on the need for totalitarianism to make it all right, from affirmative action, to taking the children away as parents, i mean parent, no longer can raise them.
what a great thing given that most women want marraiges, want a family, want all the stuff they themselves are destroying, and that the leaders they follow are open and quite clear on the goals…
“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” – Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10
“No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” — Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, “Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma,” Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18
seems they are getting their way, and that the eugenics is working… its destroying the smart and self controlled (through redistribution of their advantage to less controlled), and destroying the family, and all that…
which is clear by the leaders is the goal
and that the end result is the totalitarianism we are discusssing here.
i am glad i wont be alive to see it
as such a state would not tolerate my existence…
or do you think when they ration food for our own good they will take into account that a fixed ration would give advantage to midgets and dwarves, and slowly starve large people like me?
but it would homogenize the herd of new slaves over time…
just look how its women working, the mancession… and how that means that women will finance the new society as they take more and more taxes from them to do so!!!!!!! with most layoffs being men, it means that the tax base to pay for all this stuff is now on the shoulders of the women.
you go girls…
marx said you had to move into industry so your labor could be taxed and redirected away from the power of the family to make healthy people… and thats what you got..
“What is the present family based on? On capitalism, the acquisition of private property… The bourgeois sees in his wife nothing but production.” — Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
no… it is most revealing as to how he saw this and how he thought their work shouold be taxed by moving them into industry.
when she worked for her own, the kids were healthy, the husbands were able to provide, and the kids were taught and had lineage.
but her labor was not taxable.
now that she works its taxable twice, for her own work, and for the work of the woman she hires to do the job of being with her kids.. if she has any, or the time to do so.
[edited for length by n-n]
Now that parents are gone, and self control is gone, the behaviors of the polity justify tyranny…
which was the whole (stated) point of feminism… duh
The left is always making a problem and acting like it’s everyone el let else’s to solve. Due to most women working children now are trapped in the house playing video games. Why? Because parents are afraid to let them outside to play. Why? Child molesters, due to leniency in punishing child molesters. Result: children don’t get exercise plus are inside where they can snack. Of course they’re gaining weight.
When I was young, no kids were fat, and we ate pie and white bread and potato salad and fried chicken and many fattening foods. But we walked 1/2 mile to and from school each day. We had an hour for lunch, most of the time spent in strenuous exercise like softball or climbing, running etc.
My own children had video games and TV in their rooms, but they much preferred being outdoors after school because I was home to keep an eye on them. However, thanks to teacher’s unions screwing up education and the demand for more “homework” to make up for lousy teaching, they often were stuck inside.
As a child I never had homework. In high school I completed homework in study hall, no longer available in most high schools.
Still from the one room school house I attended, my uncles earned Ph.d’s, one inventing the hybrid corn grown in most cornfields today. From our small high school (I don’t remember a single fat person) one student was admitted to West Point, another to Air Force Academy.
If we could return to low crime, someone at home for kids, plus traditional school schedules, the obesity problem would go out the window.
JJ…”Pilots earn their money basically sitting in a chair”
You could have sued Boeing, or whoever the aircraft manufacturer was, for including hydraulically-boosted controls so that you didn’t get enough exercise with the yoke and the rudder pedals.
Wouldn’t have been much sillier than some of that lawsuits that *have* been filed….
You can always depend on conservatives to turn a conversation about public policy into a conversation about their money.
Just as you can always count on leftists to turn the conversation into how people ought to be coerced to do what the leftist thinks they should do. For their own good, of course. Poor dears don’t know what’s best for them, and we must do preventive maintenance on the factors of production.
Bottom line: All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
In early 2012, wristwatch-like devices called Polar active monitors will be used by older students in PE classes at all 18 Parkway elementary schools. District officials say the devices should help improve the students’ fitness and academic achievement.
Later this school year, the district plans to collect data about activity levels and even sleep patterns for a week at a time. It will have the students wear the devices round the clock. …
The monitors measure activity by tracking every movement of the person wearing them. They display steps taken, calories spent and time spent at various levels of activity. An animated figure on the monitor indicates the activity level. A bar shows the target time for doing moderate to vigorous activity and the amount of time achieved at that level.
Surprise! Men and women really ARE different: Sexes share just 10 per cent of their personality traits
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082398/Surprise-Men-women-really-ARE-different-Sexes-share-just-10-cent-personality-traits.html
think that removing the idea of emotional stability, and rule conciousness, and responsibility from family may have deliterious effects on children? of course… which is why no communist state has any real feminism, and only the free states they established it in have it.
duh.
Co-author Dr Paul Irwing, of Manchester University’s Psychometrics at Work Research Group, said: ‘It was a really surprising finding. ‘The conventional view, and my own view, was that there would have been much greater overlap, but actually there is an extremely large difference.
why is it surprising? because he was raised and taught that there was no such difference and so he assumed his work would confirm his lifes programming and ideological indoctrination.
kind of like the leftists always surprised the economy is tanking after they ‘fix’ it…
how to save this ideological revelation and restablish the feminist facts derived from 1850 prior to any such medical knowlege?
there now… doesn’t that FEEL better?
Mitch Pearlstein, who worked in the Department of Education under Reagan and Bush I, and then founded the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis, also sees this as a growing problem. His new book, From Family Fragmentation to America’s Decline, laments this inability of many to climb their way up from the bottom rungs of society. But rather than fixating on the one percent, he focuses on the 33 percent. This is the percent of children living with one parent rather than two. These children, victims of what many call “family fragmentation,” start out with tremendous social and educational deficits that are hard to narrow, nevermind close. These are most often the children for whom upward mobility has stalled. Their economic well-being has led to decline in American competitiveness and also the deeper cleavages of inequality that have been so widely noted.
This territory is not new. In his first chapter, “From Moynihan to ‘My Goodness,” Pearlstein traces the findings of social scientists on the effects of divorce, single-parenthood, and particularly the absence of fathers from the period of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous (or infamous, from contemporary leftist viewpoints) 1965 report on the status of black families. While Moynihan was careful to ascribe the then-current break down of the black family to factors like slavery, racism, and other economic factors, he was nonetheless demonized for racism in raising the topic. While other social scientists working from the 1960s to the 1980s vindicated everything Moynihan had said, it was not politically correct to say any of it, considering the opposition from multiculturalists and, of course, feminists themselves who seemed to believe not only that women, but also children, needed men like fish needed bicycles. Charles Murray’s 1984 Losing Ground had the temerity to suggest that much of the welfare state apparatus assembled since the 1960s had not only not helped family life, but incentivized divorce and single parenthood, creating the same problems among whites that Moynihan had identified among blacks. The ice was finally broken when established liberal figures like Bill Moyers and then William Galston began to publicize the realities of family breakdown.
http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2012/01/04/one-percent-or-33-americas-real-inequality-problem
I’ve been waiting for years for a chance to use this slogan – “My body, my choice!”. I will, however, resist the temptation to say “Keep David Frum out of my colon”.
Geoffrey Britain — January 4th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the public interests …”
= = = = =
Well what about those of us who “fear and distrust the people” (and are horrified by the vast number of self-serving dimwits among the voting populace), but who at the same time “fear and distrust” those “higher classes” and the self-anointed intelligentsia much, MUCH, more?
“You can always depend on conservatives to turn a conversation of public policy into a conversation about their money.”
Damn right Altemeyer, when so much of your public policy depends on taking away the resources I’ve spent my working life acquiring so you can give them to those parasites who wouldn’t know a job from a matinee I’m going to talk about it. If that hurts your feelings maybe you need to go back to the hive where everyone is the same, all the colors are shades of grey and everything tastes like vanilla. I’m not an ant and I resent my government trying to make me act like one and support the “greater good” whatever some half wit bureaucrat decides that is this week.
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david foster@11:42am
Thanks for the idea, David. I may be able to recoup some of my lost pension. :>)
Actually, I forgot about hauling our bags from one gate to another. At O’Hare it was often a mile walk if your connecting gate was at the far end of concourse B and you came in on the far end of concourse C. 40-50 pounds of luggage, carried for a mile – a bit of a workout, especially if you’re running late. I retired before “wheeled bags” came into wide use. So, in a way, the airlines did have a fitness routine built into our job. That would probably be their defense.
We are now spending ever more hours under artificial light.
This gradual progression has hidden the body’s link to natural sunlight: it drives our hormones.
CFLs and LEDs repress melatonin and other hormones that, in turn, regulate appetite.
THAT’S why American women are getting fattest fastest.
They spend more time indoors than the guys — just amplifying the effect.
We went through this before with Pellagra: medical science circa 1930 was absolutely convinced that there was absolutely no correlation between sunlight, Vitamin D and the malady.
Then Wonder Bread came out with enriched wheat and slices!
Within one year pellagra vanished from the US.
We can’t long survive high efficiency illumination — because of our biology. It treats such rays as a repetition of the last ice age: and hence fat storage goes into overdrive — especially for possible/prospective mothers.
That something this obvious is not taken seriously tells us the IQs have taken a terrible plunge.
I’m a little late, but I’ll add this for the archives: Once upon a time, most stores, gov’t buildings, etc., had a few steps in front of them. Now, with the ADA, that’s mostly illegal. Once upon a time, drafting tables were set at standing height and draftsmen alternated between standing and sitting on a high stool. No more. Even before computers came along, the ADA made it impossible to set up a standing office. Now, at my credit union, the counters are set at wheelchair height, which means that I can’t use them without ruining my back (which suffers from sitting too much) and I have to find an unoccupied part of the tellers’ counter to do the paperwork.
The ADA might as well have been designed to PUT us all in wheelchairs.