by Klaus Rohrich
July 8, 2004
Not a day goes by that the news media doesn’t issue some kind of warning about something that will hurt or kill us. On the nicest, sunniest spring days, the radio, television and print media warn of the UV index and urges people to stay indoors and/or wear lots of sunscreen. On hot summer days, the media urges people to avoid movement lest they be stricken with heat stroke. In the winter, it’s wind chill factors or impending storms. In spring and autumn, it’s thundershowers and high winds.
Nearly every newspaper in North america has a daily story that talks about an SUV accident. It’s strange that in these stories the driver of the vehicle is never mentioned, just the SUV. It’s as if the SUV had a contrary mind of its own and like untrained horses has a tendency to wildly run amok, destroying persons and property.
Recently I heard a radio report about a number of all-terrain vehicle (aTV) accidents that resulted in fatalities. The way the story was read made it seem like the aTVs just decided to run off the road, run into a ditch and throw the driver headlong into a tree.
Last December, as a result of a weather forecast, our local school board closed all schools just in case it snowed.
It seems to me that each and every day some new peril is added to the existing, rapidly growing list of things that might do us harm. Of course, in all cases the answer seems to be more government regulations. are SUVs using too much gas? Impose a gas-guzzler tax. Do they tend to tip if driven erratically? Start a movement to ban them and tie the movement to some moral or ethical tenet such as saving the children or the planet.
We’ve just witnessed the brilliant maneuvering that government and slick lawyers have devised to separate cigarette manufacturers from more of their money, without losing any of the revenue generated from taxes by the sale of cigarettes.
Today I heard a commercial on the radio that claimed cigarette manufacturers were targeting black people more than whites in their advertising. The commercial stated that african american magazines had 42 percent more cigarette ads than magazines aimed at whites. It went on to say that smokers among black people are 50 percent higher than among whites. It then urged all black people to participate in the "Smoke Freedom Project" with a chance to win $5,000.
The key ingredient that seems to missing from all this impending gloom and doom is human choice. It isn’t like we didn’t know that cigarettes were harmful, given that the U.S. Surgeon General issued a stern warning as far back as 1964. So for 40 years (2 generations) it’s been common knowledge that cigarettes were not good for you. Yet there are still people attempting to sue cigarette manufacturers for their poor health.
Fast food manufacturers are next. There have already been several legal cases where individuals attempted to blame their heart condition on Macdonald’s or Burger King. To date they have been unsuccessful, but as the media continues to collude with those who would rather not take responsibility for their own lives and with revenue hungry governments, the chances of a big fat (pun intended) cash settlement increase logarithmically. There will come a day when the processed food industry will hit the skids in the same way that Big Tobacco did.
The end result of the fast food wars will be similar to those of the cigarette wars. People will continue to eat the junk foods that they are "addicted" to and the fines and settlements these corporations pay will ultimately be paid by their customers. So in effect, it becomes yet another tax.
Makers of guns have also been targeted in an effort to blame them for the large number of gun crimes. again, the first test cases have been dismissed in favour of the gun manufacturers, but as the media continues to hack away at the evils of guns, public sentiment will slowly change to the point where it will be difficult to find a jury that can maintain a semblance of impartiality. at that point, the gun manufacturers, like the tobacco manufacturers, will seek a settlement with the government in return for protection from class-action lawsuits, rather than risk public jury trials.
Big media has become a shill for big government. In their ever-present hunger for news, they will publicize anything, no matter how bogus. In the process we forget all about personal responsibility, we forget all about self-reliance or choice and we forget the fact that really, we are agreeing to let the government protect us from ourselves. My question is: Who will protect us from big government?