Couple points on this. And no, I'm not picking on you Elinda. This is just an easy quote of an idea that lots of people have expressed.
Elinda wrote:
Brownduck claims that it's setting precedent for the government to be able to limit personal choice.
I countered that this isn't setting a precedent because the government has limited choice previously (the precedent has already been set).
It's not so much that it's setting a precedent as extending one. My issue with this is that when conservatives warn about how doing X will lead to Y (set, or extend a precedent), we're often shouted down by liberals insisting that it wont happen, or there's no connection, or that said future thing will be decided on its own merits. Yet, when we're faced with Y happening, it seems like those same liberals forget what they said earlier and insist that it doesn't matter because we already did X.
It's just jarring to me that this seems to happen so frequently. How can someone argue that doing X doesn't set a precedent for Y, when they're constantly arguing exactly the opposite when Y is being considered? It should not be acceptable to do Y because we did X, doubly so when X was justified in the first place because of an assumption that it wouldn't lead to Y. I just don't see how people can do this and not be aware that they're doing it.
Smasharoo wrote:
Overreaching implies that government should be able to pass no laws with the intent of improving public health.
Huh? No. There's a massive excluded middle there. The word "overreach" implies that there some degree of reach that the government can have, and some degree that is more than it should (hence, the "over" part of the word). You seem to be arguing that since we allow government to regulate *anything* related to public health, that there should be no restrictions at all on what it can regulate. Is that actually what you're saying?
So why not make red meat illegal? Hell. Why not just create a government agency that creates a diet plan for every citizen and forces them to eat it. Let's make all recreational activities which might result in harm illegal as well. Hell. Let's make it illegal to leave your government provided health cocoon. We'll just plug you all into a virtual reality system instead. Much safer, right?
Clearly we can and should place limits on government regulations. So your argument is completely incorrect.
Quote:
If this law overreach then laws against selling cigarettes to minors overreach. Seat belt laws overreach. Limiting Sudafed sales overreaches. You get the idea, all the way down the slippery slope to "Why do you want to give heroin to infants?" You can't buy 2500mg Ibuprofen in single pills over the counter, either. Why is there a maximum OTC dosage? Because people will invariably take more if each dose is larger. The same applies here. Is that bad law? Should I be able to buy any dosage of any OTC medication I want? I mean I can just take 10, right?
Ok. So tell me what you think would be a government overreach with regard to public health regulations? Doesn't your argument basically say that government has infinite power to regulate in this area? I suspect that most people will disagree with you.
Edited, Sep 14th 2012 5:28pm by gbaji