Thursday, May 06, 2004

Fat Children: Sad but not Our Business

Some excerpts from Sean Gabb:

I was on the radio last Sunday evening, and again this morning, and again this afternoon - and may be on the television later this week - to discuss the supposed problem of fat children. Apparently, 15 per cent of children are "obese", and the Government is proposing to start urging children to take more exercise. I was brought on to oppose the notion of government interference in matters of lifestyle. The objections are easily stated:

Even if the alleged facts are true, it is not the business of the government to do anything about them. It is not the business of the government to tell us how to live, or to tell parents how their children should live. If there must be a government, its duties ought to be confined to protecting the lives and properties of individuals and defending the country against foreign aggressions. How much we eat, and what this may do to us, and what we might do in response, are no more matters for government concern than is the matter of what place of worship we attend and how often we go there.

Even granting a right of interference, there is no reason to suppose that the government can effectively interfere. Human constitutions are so different that being fat is best seen as an individual problem with individual solutions. There is no one prescription the politicians can make and apply to the whole country. Some people get fat on almost nothing. Others can eat as they will without gaining a pound. Some people do well from heavy exercise. Others are harmed by light exercise. Indeed, though weighing 30 stones or whatever must be harmful, we do not really know what harm comes from being just fat or even very fat. The experts pretend here to knowledge they do not have. Doubtless, any advice they give will be good for some people. It cannot, I repeat, be good for everyone.

Even if this were not so, it is unlikely that the government can stop children from getting fat. The proposal is that they should be required to learn about diet and exercise while at school. Bearing in mind how bad a job the schools do at teaching their inmates to read and write and count, I cannot see what good will come of this. Governments are generally better at claiming abilities than at showing them. Indeed, apart perhaps from collecting taxes and fighting wars, I cannot think of anything done by a government that could not be done better by voluntary effort - assuming, that is, it should be done at all.

It is not advisable for the government to interfere, and would not be if interference were likely to do any good. Perhaps, in certain areas, the government is better able to choose for us than we are ourselves. But unless its effects are likely to be catastrophic, the public good is better served by leaving us alone. Whenever the government does something for us, it takes away from our own ability to do that for ourselves. This diminishes us as human beings. Better, I suggest, a people who often eat and drink too much, and who on average die a few years before they might, than a people deprived of autonomy and shepherded into a few extra years of intellectual and moral passivity.

Where the protection of children is concerned, we have what the lefty sociologists call a discourse. This is a set of false assumptions about the world so pervasive and so connected to each other, that those under its influence are unable to conceive the validity of any alternative to it. The idea that the raising of children is a matter wholly for parents - and that interference is only justified to stop or punish violence or gross deception - is not so much rejected by most people in this country as never considered.

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