I do not know the fellow who wrote this: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113632/oregon-fluoridation-proof-liberals-are-new-puritans# I think the title is off though as liberals have been uptight all my adult life. After 1972 in every Presidential election except Clinton/Bush I and Clinton/Dole the more uptight guy was the liberal.
But the article hits many, many, many of the JJV views of the world. First, sugar is not going to hurt an active child who eats other things. Second, making the kid think he will die if he eats his apple after dropping it on the ground is not a good life strategy. Third, kids don't need a lot of worries not based on school work. Fourthly, catering to the kids every whim is not good home strategy. Fifth, that worry is as bad as smoking. He touches on but does not go whole hog into my view that health fetishization makes more people miserable than healthy.
Which comes to one of my great bete noires. The most evil state in the nation-Maryland. Maryland, particularly Montgomery County-is the center of every pathology identified by this New Republic writer. They ban, tax and hector you about everything. Your grocery bags, your sugary food, your tarot card readers. God forbid you smoke---outside! In fact, Maryland has for highschoolers forced "volunterism!" The entire panoply of upper middle class obsessions of the early 21st century govern Md. It used to have a few old Democrats like Governor Schaefer who would not be caught dead on a StairMaster or a vegetarian restaurant. But the rise of the D.C. suburbs put paid to all that. Now whatever baneful social program is the flavor of the month from same sex "marriage" to salt bans, to anti-fresh milk jihads shows up there without opposition and in spades.
Even Massachusetts resists some of this nonsense. California itself far gone retains a smidgen of I dont' care hippiedom. But Maryland is the home and redoubt of an odd mixture of Pankhurstims and Billy Sunday. Meddle, meddle, meddle, hectorr, hector, hector.
I don't care what their state song says. Virginia does not call to thee.
4 comments:
Wow, you and the TNR guy have almost cornered the world market in straw.
Bra. Vo.
Except for the federal stock pile the President uses on every issue.
Uptight? Puritans? I will just point out that noted Republican, Virginia Attorney General and candidate for Governor* Ken Cuccinelli has decided to make Virginia famous advertising slogan ironic by asking the Supreme Court to overturn their decision in Lawrence v. Texas and recriminalize oral and anal sex between consenting adults.
Cuccinelli, of course, claims that it is just to use against sexual predators - trust him, he won't use it against consenting adults. But as the court hearing the case Cuccinelli is appealing noted, there is nothing to prevent the state from passing a law criminalizing sexual conduct between a minor and an adult. And of course in 2004 when a bipartisan group of state Senators was trying to make just such a change to the law, Cuccinelli blocked the effort.
The mid-Atlantic region is not a good area for Republicans to try to place the "puritan" label on ... well, pretty much anyone else.
*Cuccinelli is the one that has broken a longstanding bipartisan Virginia tradition of resigning from the position of Attorney General when running for Governor.
Forget it, JCC. It's Wingnut Town.
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