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By Lee Duigon
August 2, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

It’s so easy to dump on Michael Bloomberg. But he deserves it.

Bouncing back from the embarrassment he caused himself last week by calling for all the police in America to go on strike until the American people disarm themselves, the mayor of New York City is now trying to ban baby formula. According to The Daily Mail Online, “Mayor Bloomberg has demanded that hospitals stop handing out baby formula to persuade more new mothers to breast feed their babies. The New York City health department will monitor the number of formula bottles being given out and demand a medical reason for each one.”

Only in the mind of Michael Bloomberg do the words “demand” and “persuade” go together.

This oh-so-health-conscious mayor, who proudly marches in the “gay pride” parade every year—can you say “unhealthy lifestyle choices”?—has previously banned smoking, trans-fat, and large sodas, with unsuccessful stabs at salt and caffeine. You can be certain he’ll come up with yet another target—large portions of red meat, maybe. He’s got enough time left on his term to ban a lot of things.

Does this not raise questions, in your mind, about the individual’s relationship to the state?

As Christians we are constantly accused of trying “to impose a theocracy” whenever we suggest any kind of change in public policy, or speak against a change proposed by others. Apparently only foaming-at-the-mouth leftists, feminists, and homosexual activists are allowed any input on such questions.

Meanwhile, the mayor of New York can see no limit whatsoever to his authority. He tells us what we can eat or can’t eat, starting, now, from the moment we are born. It’s hard to imagine any “theocracy” quite as rigorous as that. Maybe the Taliban would like to jump on the ban-the-baby-formula bandwagon: but is it all that hard to imagine Bloomberg in a beard and turban?

It seems the only freedom he would leave us is unfettered fornication. He’s still plenty cool with that. But don’t be fooled. He and his kind let us enjoy this false freedom because it allows them to redefine marriage and the family. They’re big on redefining basic human institutions.

Where is it written that the purpose of a chief executive—Bloomberg is the chief executive of a large city—is to enforce an individual health regime for every citizen?

We all do things that are not in our best health interests. I smoke a pipe or a cigar because I like to. I don’t jog because I don’t like to. I like White Castles for supper now and then. I don’t like goat’s milk and veggie-burgers.

In the Bloomberg universe, I can’t have a nice cigar, but I must send my children to a public school where a “gender coach” comes into the first-grade classroom and teaches the kids, “You can be a boy one day and a girl the next, depending on how you feel.” I can’t have my White Castles, but I must fill my house with those squiggly light bulbs containing toxic mercury vapor. The idea is to wrest all choices out of our hands, empowering the government to make them for us.

Who’s crazier—Bloomberg, or the people who elected him to three terms? Maybe the people of New York like a mayor who makes their choices for him. Then again, maybe the candidates he beat were even worse.

Remember that Time Magazine cover with the woman breast-feeding a four-year-old boy? On Planet Bloomberg, the boy is a 40-year-old man and the mother is the government.

Statism condemns its citizens to perpetual infancy. Remember the Obama Campaign’s video, “The Life of Julia”—the woman who boasts of her dependence on the government for everything she’s ever done in her life? Our leaders wish to turn us into a nation of toddlers.

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Liberty is for adults: a republic of infants will not stand. The most such citizens can do is to rubber-stamp their rulers’ whims and fancies, for fear that otherwise the nipple will be yanked from their mouths.

In truth, there is no compelling medical reason to feed babies on formula instead of breast milk. If the mother is incapable of nursing, find a substitute. What do you think people did before baby formula was invented?

But persuading people to breast-feed, and demanding that they do it, are two different things—a subtle nuance utterly lost on the Bloombergs of this fallen world.