It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong (20 page)

And the invasion of your natural right to privacy does not end there. Now, because of the individual mandate, on an ongoing basis you will be required to provide personal medical details to an insurance company. What information is more personal than your health? The ACLU describes medical information as “arguably the most personal and private source of data about us”; yet, the ACLU refuses to challenge Obamacare because of its support for the welfare state.

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The philosopher Ayn Rand argued that when government destroys your privacy, it destroys your dignity and your uniqueness. And then, by regulating your privacy, it controls you.

Thus, it is up to you to elect officials willing to repeal Obamacare, the Patriot Act, the spy cameras, and numerous other pieces of legislation stripping you of your natural right to privacy. The government bureaucrats will fiercely fight back by claiming they are maintaining national security, providing medical care to impoverished children, and the Constitution grants them the authority to do so. But do not wane in your efforts to fight this political rhetoric, for we never want to fulfill Benjamin Franklin's prediction of losing our essential liberties for temporary safety.

103

Chapter 7
Hands Off:
You Own Your Body

As we have seen, your body is yours and yours alone. If you do not have control over your own body, what then
do
you control as an individual? Think about it. If you were financially broke with absolutely no real property or possessions to your name, the only thing over which you have full and complete autonomy is your own body. You have the power to direct what goes into it—what you eat, what you drink, whether you exercise, and whether you take vitamins or drugs. You also own whatever your body produces—the fruits of your labor, the sweat of your brow, the manner of your expression.

Reason and human nature dictate that the legs, arms, muscles, fingers, toes, torso, eyeballs, brain, and feet with which you enter and exit the world belong to you as the sovereign individual, including every action or word that comes from your body. Your body can move, build, work, talk, think, and express. As a result, having control and autonomy over your body is the most fundamental and natural right that you have as a human being. Right?

Not exactly. Contemporary government in the United States has another model in mind. The government believes that
it
has the right to interfere with your free choices and to monitor what you eat, what you drink, who you sleep with, whether you can donate an organ, and whether you can take that experimental drug from Canada. It believes that it knows your body better than you do, and that it can take better care of your body than you can.

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The World's Oldest Profession

Imagine you are at a formal restaurant with your husband, wife, or significant other. You look around at all the classy, well-dressed clientele enjoying their dinners in the dining room. To the left of your table is a younger couple. Wearing a slinky “first-date” dress, the woman must be twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Her date, in his early thirties, is eyeing his beautiful dinner companion. To your right is an older couple. The man is distinguished looking with a full head of hair while the woman is conservatively dressed in a black dress.

To the outside observer, there are no substantial differences between these couples. All parties are enjoying a delicious dinner with pleasant company. All parties are consensually sitting at the restaurant with an individual of their choosing. All parties will pay their bills upon completion of dinner and head on their merry way. Except . . . there is one difference. The young man is paying for dinner in hopes of sexual activity, while the older man is paying for dinner
and
sexual activity. Prior to dinner, money exchanged hands from the distinguished gentleman to his conservatively dressed date.

Now, I know some of you may consider these claims extreme, but look at these men objectively. Is there really any distinction between the men's
motives
that is the legitimate concern of the government? There are none whatsoever. Each man has the intention to sleep with the woman at his table. The young man is posturing as a refined suitor when, in fact, he has an ulterior motive; he paid for dinner with the anticipation of getting something in return. The older man, on the other hand, was transparent about his intentions from the very beginning by paying for the services rendered directly by his dinner companion. Why is one man's behavior considered benign while the other's is the object of government wrath and potential criminal prosecution? Their behavior is nearly identical, so which man's intentions are more harmful?

The discreet and subtle nature of the young man's desire for sex is potentially more harmful than the older gentleman's transparent exchange of money for sex. Tom Knighton, a libertarian commentator, furthers this argument and posits that all men pay for sex in some way or another: “It may be three fancy dinners and a bouquet of flowers. It may be a trip to Hawaii. It may be a wedding ring. No matter the costs, these guys argue, men pay for it [sex] with something. There is probably some truth to that. And yet, this kind of practice is also perfectly legal.”
¹
Talk about inconsistency.

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The Moral Case for Prostitution

Prohibitions on how we use our bodies violate our most basic rights as human beings. The government is not even giving you the option to participate in the restricted practice. In truly free societies, any type of prohibition must be void because it violates the fundamental liberties of all individuals who wish (or do not wish) to take part in that specific activity.

In the case of prostitution, as long as the transaction is voluntary, there is no justification for governmental intervention. While the government does have an interest in protecting the individual property rights of a person (the prostitute) from violence, rape, and other harms, the government does not have the right to prohibit prostitution outright. The theory is, “prostitution is the
voluntary
sale (or rental) of a labor service. Individuals own their own bodies and their own labor services and have the absolute right to decide how those labor services should be used.”
²
We have the personal liberty and freedom to do with our bodies what we please—both as producer and as consumer of the product. I can rent my body to the owner of a coal mine for thirty years, who will use my work to strip the earth of natural resources, but a woman cannot rent her body to the same coal mine owner for a few hours of private time? Why? Because the government says so, that's why.

Like it or not, prostitution is a victimless crime. Both parties are agreeing to a financial transaction where money is offered in exchange for a service. Both parties are receiving something they want. There is no “evil” inherent in this barter. A “vice,” perhaps, may be involved, but vices are not harms
to another
. Vices are harms
to you
, and you have the right to make poor decisions, and the government has no authority to stop you from making these poor decisions because your body is
your
body.

While we will never accurately know how many men and women make a living by full-time or part-time prostitution, the consensus is the numbers are substantial. And despite the government's prohibition of prostitution in the United States, research suggests that its “prohibition” is not working . . . at all. Gee, I wonder why? Moral prohibitions throughout history have never succeeded. Look at alcohol prohibition from 1920 to 1933, for example. See how far that form of prohibition got the government. Albert Einstein once stated, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Clearly, we have an insane government because it thinks prohibiting prostitution will actually accomplish something of substance. Think again, government.

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The Nanny State Strikes Again: Bigger Government Does Not Equal Smaller Waistlines

New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is a health fanatic, so much so that he maintains a monthly weight-loss competition with one of his buddies in order to stay slim.
³
He has taken this obsession so far that, with his urging, the New York City Board of Health voted to ban trans fats at restaurants in December 2006. In other words, the government has already decided what you can and cannot eat for dinner at Applebee's tonight. Violating Natural Law, freedom of choice, and the very nature of the Constitution, the government has usurped control over your body yet again. Shortly after New York City passed its ban, the entire State of California followed suit in January 2008 by prohibiting restaurants and bakeries from using cooking oils that contain trans fats. Violators can be fined up to one thousand dollars. And that's just trans fats.

So you want to cool off with a Gatorade, Coke, Sprite, or flavored water on public property in San Francisco? That's too bad; San Francisco's mayor at the time, Gavin Newsom, skipped the whole darn legislative process in
his
personal quest to control your diet and instituted an executive order prohibiting vending machines from carrying artificially sweetened drinks on city property.
⁴
But don't worry; diet sodas will be allowed in
some
locations in the City by the Bay. Apparently, Mayor Newsom believes it is his duty to force-feed his constituents and San Francisco's visitors water, soy milk, rice milk, or other similar dairy or non-dairy milk in lieu of what they really want to drink on a hot July day.

And from sugar to salt. In March 2010, New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of salt in making foods at restaurants.
⁵
Seriously? You mean salt—the substance that preserves food, regulates body functions including blood pressure and fluid volume, carries nutrients into cells, and regulates muscle contractions? Ortiz's bill states, “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers.”
⁶
Salt in any form is evil and needs to be regulated by the government? I think not!

While trans fats, sugar, and salt—like all things in our diet—should be consumed in moderation, it is not the job or interest of the government to determine what should or should not be consumed by a free individual. These dietary choices are highly personal as they deal with the sustenance of our own bodies—what we eat, what we drink, and how much we eat and drink. It is our natural right as freethinking human beings to make these healthy or unhealthy decisions and live with the consequences. In implementing restrictive food and drink policies, the government is merely treating us like children, deeming us incapable of determining the course of our own health and fitness. This government-knows-best attitude is highly invasive, offensive, and demeaning and will result in more harm than benefit.

When the government makes health decisions on our behalf, we are deprived of the opportunity to learn what is or is not healthy for our own bodies. We thereby become complacent and dependent on the government's (many times incorrect) policies. The government bases its policies only on medical advice it wants to hear and which is often arbitrary, changing from year to year. For example, in the 1980s, the food industry was told to replace saturated fats like coconut oil and butter with oil containing trans fat. Now, science has obviously changed its mind. For this reason, we cannot depend on the government to make these kinds of decisions for us. These decisions are ours, and ours alone.

And one last story of Nanny State absurdity. In April 2010, Santa Clara County, California, passed an ordinance banning restaurants from giving out toys with meals of more than 485 calories! The law bans any “toy, game, trading card, admission ticket or other consumer product, whether physical or digital.”
⁷
A critic of the legislation, Eric Felten, doubted its efficacy, commenting in the
Wall Street Journal
,

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If cheapo trinkets are so seductive, why don't some enterprising health advocates launch a restaurant chain devoted to cauliflower and Brussels sprouts and then package the stuff with fabulous toys? And don't forget the cartoon characters, which surely have the mesmeric power to overcome even the most vegephobic. After all, what kid wouldn't kill for some Sponge Bob-brand seaweed salad?
⁸

The government has taken its nannying too far. We are all grown up. Except in the government's eyes.

Kidney Shortage Is the Fault of Our Self-appointed Protectors

The most reliable and natural way for an individual to acquire something he or she desires is through a system of trade. For example, A has the freedom to trade with B so long as B wishes to trade with A. This voluntary exchange is a natural right and ensures that both parties walk away with something each party wants. This uncomplicated concept goes back to the beginning of time. A man could trade animal skins for meat, gold for tools, or corn for wheat (or today, money for toothpaste). The theory really is as simple as a fifth grader trading her peanut butter sandwich for her friend's two chocolate chip cookies. The desires of both parties are fulfilled, and no rights are violated because the exchange was completely voluntary.

Unfortunately, the federal government thinks it knows what is best for you, your body, and your exchanges. Say you are cutting a piece of plywood at your home. At the sight of a mouse at your feet, you jump, lose control of the circular saw, and consequently cut off a piece of your finger. Ironically enough, the government says you can buy poison to kill that rodent (exchanging money for the toxic substance), but the government says you cannot buy a finger to replace the one lost at the mercy of the saw. The state claims it has outlawed the sale of organs and body parts for your well-being and safety. Unfortunately for your well-being, even if it is available, you cannot acquire that lost finger because the state says so.