Food Fight

Lew Rockwell has a good article at his sight on food in USA.  I was speaking with a colleague from way back when last week, lamenting the paucity of young people starting businesses.  She said, "they are... it is all related to food."  I had to stop and reflect... of my 3 kids, each is somehow anchored in food.. one a cook, another writing, a third is into the science.  I am not objecting, in fact, I sit down to some very fine meals when we get together.


Before I return to food, I do think my colleague is right, but in our day, the movement was not limited to one aspect... fashion, architecture, entertainment and indeed food were all apart of the changes.  Bur maybe the emphasis is more focussed in complement to the viciousness of government intervention in the food supply. As long ago freedom from war and to pursue happiness stimulated the economy, perhaps now freedom from frankenfoods and freedom to eat healthy will spread into other fields.  In any event, good food seems to be where the ramparts are, where the trade leads are.


A gaffe is defined as when a government official speaks the truth.  Earl Butz was Nixon's ag sec and in 1972 he made famous the line "get big or get out," and pushed fencerow to fencerow planting.  Of course govt policy has ruined small farmers, and fencerow to fencerow planting destroys the habitat of the myriad bees and moths that pollinate crops.  With monoculture bees, we have a crisis in the one pollination bee left we see disease destroying their numbers, threatening our food supply.  He also exemplified the raw Darwinian racism of those given to government office. Nice work, Earl.


Not that Earl was an aberration.  He only spoke put of school.  The entire system hates freedon, as this Obama administration lawsuit pleading states, in part:

a.  There is No Absolute Right to Consume or Feed Children Any Particular Food. 

Although “[t]wo of the earliest right to privacy cases,” Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), and Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925), “established the existence of a fundamental right to make child rearing decisions free from unwarranted governmental intrusion,” these cases do not “establish an absolute parental right to make decisions relating to children free from government regulation.” 

b.  There is No Generalized Right to Bodily and Physical Health. 

Plaintiffs’ assertion of a “fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families” is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.

  c.  There is No Fundamental Right to Freedom of Contract.

Understand that A, B and C above is not the law, it is just what the Obama administration is arguing how the law should be understood.  If you read the Transformation of American Law by Morton Horvitz, you'll anticipate that the courts will eventually agree.


The movement is gathering the left against big business and the right against big government, and showing the two are actually one.  This is an important advance.

Thomas Jefferson had views on this topic:

“If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.” ~Thomas Jefferson

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