Do you remember playing “war games” as a kid? Not the ones that involved connecting yourself to your TV, but the ones where you grabbed your coolest toy gun (or even an appropriately shaped stick) and headed outside with your friends to run around screaming “Pow! Pow!”. “Pow” would be followed inevitably with “I have a force field”. Of course that would be followed with “I have force field penetrating bullets”.

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do.”

It would carry on like this until someone got the bright idea to play kickball or dodgeball, or until everyone went home to tell their parents how stupid the other kids were.

There’s a similar thing going on in legislation, I think.

You may have heard of some communities wanting to ban the sale of toys with kids’ meals in restaurants in an effort to curb the obesity epidemic. This is, of course, a noble cause. It’s not the best way to go about doing it, however. Some things shouldn’t be legislated, and while I agree that the obesity problem needs to be addressed, I disagree that placing restrictions on how restaurants are allowed to market their food is the way to do it.

Here in Arizona, we’re so intent on not having any silly communist legislation telling us what we can and can’t do, that there is legislation in the works to ban legislation that would ban having kids’ meals sold with toys. If that twists your head in knots, I’m right with you. It’s like we’re kids again. Here’s a link to an article that goes into (slightly) more detail than I.

“I’m banning something I don’t like.”

“Oh yeah, well I’m gonna ban your ban, ‘cuz banning is stupid.”

It’s positively ridiculous.

I have an idea. Let’s spend time educating people, and empowering them, so they can make healthy choices for themselves. Let’s teach kids to WANT healthy food, toy or not. With the time, effort, and money spent on legislation and enforcement, couldn’t we do better by our kids? Couldn’t we give them healthier school lunches instead of lunches that are on par with a toy-enhanced fast food fat fest? Couldn’t we invest in community gardens? There are so many better ways for the government to invest it’s resources for real change.

Or, we can let the legislators sit around trying to protect us from ourselves, or to protect us from those who would protect us from ourselves… If only I had a force field to keep all of that silliness at bay…