The American Spectator

BUT THE REAL BOTTOM LINE with “Click It or Ticket” is the precedent it (and programs like it) sets for government meddling in areas where the individual was (formerly, anyhow) sovereign. If the government can make us buckle up for safety, why not issue tickets to sedentary people for failing to maintain an ideal body-mass index? How about mandatory jumping jacks each morning — monitored by cameras in our homes, with tickets issued to “cardiac fitness scofflaws”? After all, being overweight and sedentary have clear-cut health and well-being consequences every bit as severe (indeed, more so) than failing to wear one’s seat belt. The former, for example, is a real and definite risk — the latter, at best a theoretical one. A person could go his whole life without buckling up and suffer no adverse consequences and impose no costs on “society.” But eat a pound of bacon every day, smoke two packs and put on 50 pounds of excess blubber — and you will absolutely suffer health ill-effects. And “society” will get the tab.

Perhaps a ticket-writing campaign (and many federal dollars) is in order. All those blubber-powers need to be protected against the consequences of their risky and dangerous behavior. Don’t you agree? If it’s good for the (seat belt) goose, it’s good for the big-boy gander, eh?

Or would that be too philosophically consistent?