A university in Pennsylvania has decided that students with a BMI of 30 or more must take physical education classes or they will not be allowed to graduate.  The motivation, of course, is to make sure that students are being the best selves they can be:

“We, as educators, must tell students when we believe, in our heart of hearts, when certain factors, certain behaviors, attitudes, whatever, are going to hinder that student from achieving and maximizing their life goals,” [James DeBoy, chairman of the school’s Department of Health and Physical Education] said.

Further, the university wants to make sure that obesity doesn’t destroy us all:

“Obesity is going to rob you of your quality and quantity of life,” DeBoy said. “We believe that this is unconscionable.”

The problem, though, is that “obesity” robs you of nothing.  It’s the choices that you make that determine the size of your waist.  Choosing to eat too much of the wrong types of foods, and choosing not to exercise, lead to obesity.  It’s not something that just happens (and, I know, I’m excluding those who have medical conditions that cause obesity; most obese people, such as myself, are that way because of decisions they’ve made).  As long as people have choice, they will choose “incorrectly” in some aspect of their life.

And the use of the word “unconscionable” is an interesting choice.  The definition implies moral agency.  An unconscionable act isn’t a tragedy or an unfortunate event; it’s an act born of immoral intent.  Thus, saving me from my enjoyment of Haagen-Dazs isn’t merely an attempt to educate me about limiting my fat consumption, it’s a moral crusade.  One imagines Carrie Nation-style zealots taking axes to Baskin Robbins stores.

What gets me about all this is that it’s those on the left side of the aisle that promote this sort of food-moralism.  Proposals for fat taxes and soda taxes seem to originate from the left.  Some have even promoted out-and-out mockery of the obese as means to induce them to be thin.  I suppose it must be ideological leftovers from the Progressive Era, when social hygiene was all the rage, and people would engage in Fitter Family Contests.

My issue with the left’s support of this sort of nannyism is that liberals are supposed to be about liberty, about constraining state action and advancing civil rights (as a libertarian, I’m the fascist, for some reason).  But it’s exactly the sort of creeping, petty tyranny that fat taxes and anti-obesity crusades represent that should scare us the most.  Some of the most disgusting government actions (e.g, Buck v. Bell) were perpetrated because someone somewhere decided they knew better than others about how to properly order their lives.

I don’t want my life “ordered.”  And I am suspicious of government encroachment.  A government that puts sin taxes on fatty foods may well decide that fat people just don’t deserve medical treatment.

C.S. Lewis was right, and I’d rather my betters just left me the hell alone.

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