Opus 2026-453: So what if the EU does it?

I was listening to a discussion having to do with nutrition and attitudes and pesticides and food dyes and so on.  One of the points that keeps being brought up in this, and in other venues is looking at the way Europe does it and how superior that is.

First of all, I’m not sure how superior it is because I haven’t done the research or know the data.  I’m not sure that you could believe the research that you see anyway with the state of science today.  Are Americans on the whole living longer than Europeans?  Do we have higher or lower rates of cancer and other diseases that we don’t know the cause of.  Are the significant differences based on double blind testing with only one variable, or are they based on somebody’s opinion.  Do they take into account all the different ethnic groups that are involved in Europe?  Of course we have our own diversity also.

Ultimately, we need to remember that one of the reasons that the United States has been so successful is because we don’t do things the way the Europeans do it.  The Founding Fathers soundly rejected the European governments and their way of running countries.  Up until recently, we have resisted the socialism that Europe has adopted so joyfully.

Also, we need to take into consideration the element of coercion.  In Europe, people have very little freedom.  Try to post a meme in England and see what happens.  Try to run as a conservative in Germany and see what happens.  How do the farmers of the Netherlands feel about their government right now?  Europe is really good on strong-arm tactics and denying people their individual freedoms.

Americans may like the way things are because they like the way things are and they don’t want the government telling them what to do.  Take into consideration recent attempts to have special taxes on drinks that have sugar in them.  We’ve been down these slippery slopes before.  We do not need government control of everything.  If we decide we want to be fat, that’s our privilege.  If they try to force us to eat healthy foods, like they do in Europe, we will find ways to get to the black market to find what we want or we’ll find substitutes.

There may be some reasons why we would want to copy some of the standards of Europe.  There might be even more reasons why we don’t want to copy the standards and methods of Europe.

The last thing we need is more government regulation.

homo unius libri