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We're spending a lot of time these days talking about the proper size of government, an eternal debate in American politics. You've probably gotten frustrated recently when you see Tea Partiers talking about how they feel terribly oppressed by the tyranny of things like the stimulus bill. "What the hell are they talking about?" you ask yourself. The idea that the federal government funding things like highway projects is pretty much the same thing as the Stasi bugging your house and carting your uncle off to jail for making a joke about a local apparatchik seems like something no sane person could believe. So where do they get these ideas?Well, one place they get them is from our nation's lawmakers. Think Progress gives us this rather amazing video, featuring Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia:
BROUN: I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!Wow - that's pretty scary. Is the government really going to "force you to eat more fruits and vegetables"? Is the CDC really "gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day"? That would indeed be pretty totalitarian. But of course, they're doing nothing of the sort. What they're actually doing is encouraging people to eat healthy, with websites like this one. You can argue that this isn't something the government should bother with. You can argue that it's doomed to failure, and that Americans are going to continue to gorge on stuff like this, no matter how much they hear about the benefits of a healthy diet. And you might be right. But if you tell people that when the government encourages you to do something, it's actually forcing you to do something, you're just lying.No one has ever accused Rep. Broun of being the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knows that the government isn't going to "force" anyone to eat anything. He knows that the CDC isn't actually going to be calling every American home every day. He's lying, and he knows it. So the next time you hear ordinary citizens yelling about the "tyranny" they're suffering under, and you wonder, "Where do they get these ideas?", now you know. -- Paul Waldman
