According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration wants to do for potato chips what the Bush Administration did for the incandescent light bulb:

Packaged food and restaurant meals may face federal limits on sodium, following a report Tuesday from the Institute of Medicine that said high-salt diets are putting Americans at risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

The institute, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences whose findings have significant influence on health policy decisions, said the Food and Drug Administration should set mandatory national standards for sodium content.

…

But changing the formula of well-loved food products is a risk for manufacturers: Consumers could be put-off by a low-salt version that doesn’t taste the same as the original. The White House and the institute are encouraging the industry to cut sodium collectively, so no one maker is at a competitive disadvantage.

It’s good to know, I suppose, that the President has enough time in-between golfing outings, to worry about this sort of thing.  By the way, how’s that whole quitting smoking thing going?

But at another, it’s deeply disturbing, although increasingly typical, that the government feels the need to protect me from myself much of the time.  This isn’t fluoride in the water, or even iodine in the salt, both of which are tasteless ways of improving a product already out there.  I couldn’t add fluoride or iodine myself, even if I wanted to.  This is about making it illegal for me to buy Lay’s potato chips as they are currently made.  Because I can’t be trusted with them.

A friend of mine wanted to claim that it was Lay’s that couldn’t be trusted, but this is nonsense on stilts.  Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a need to go after the whole industry, “so no one maker is at a competitive disadvantage.”  Why would they be at a disadvantage?  They could make – and do make – low-salt snacks.  I suppose there’s a market segment there, and they make some money at it.  But people, given a choice, and they are given a choice, prefer higher-salt snacks.  So they must be protected from themselves.

Now, what’s the harm with wanting people to be healthier?  Nothing, I suppose, except that the history of the Food Pyramid, and now the inverted Food Pyramid, and what tomorrow will probably be the Food Hourglass, show that the government really has only the vaguest idea of what diet makes us healthier as individuals, and probably worse than none at all about what will make us healthier as a whole population, where one man’s salt is another man’s poison.

But look at the difference between the logic here, and the logic that was used to pass “health” “care” , excuse me, “insurance” “reform.”  In that case, we were (not) told, the government would have to make treatment decisions based on things like quality of life-adjusted years left to an individual.  No point in giving that care to someone who wouldn’t suffer as much, and certainly no point in extending one’s suffering, even if the alternative was feeling nothing at all.

In this case, we’re told, quality of life, i.e, the ability to eat tasty food, is at odds with merely living longer.  You’ll learn to enjoy eating food the way you’re told, but even if you don’t, at least you’ll be around to eat more of it.

What do they have in common?  It’s that you need someone – older and wiser – telling you what to do.  You’ll depend on them.

It may be a small thing, less salty potato chips, but it won’t end there.  They’ll be after Coke not merely to offer Diet Coke, which I prefer, but to alter Coke Classic’s formula altogether.  Only they’ll have to get Pepsi to go along so Coke isn’t at a competitive disadvantage.  They’ll start regulating the sugar content in sugary foods.  The fat content in those chips will have to come down, too, since that’s the real villain here.  Battalions of regulators will have to be hired to descend on restaurants to test their menus’ contents.

It’s not that healthier choices will be available where none were before.  It’s that the food that people prefer will simply disappear from shelves, like the corn chips on Super Bowl Sunday, in the picture.

Your life will be marginally poorer, but odds are, you won’t be any healthier for it.

So by now, most of you have seen the new logo for the Missile Defense Agency:

Look familiar?

Which got me thinking.

Department of Energy:

State Department:

Department of Transportation:

According to the Wall Street Journal, President Obama in China argued in favor of Internet freedom, with arguments that should apply to all First Amendment freedoms:

Speaking to a selected group of Chinese students at the beginning of his first visit to China, Mr. Obama said that the free flow of information makes societies stronger and holds political leaders accountable. People in positions of power may bristle at criticism, he said, but open criticism “makes our democracy stronger, and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

Mr. Obama’s words, however, likely reached few Chinese. In contrast to visits by his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Mr. Obama’s talk was not broadcast live on national television.

The Chinese typically respond to criticisms with charges of hypocrisy, and while I’m unsympathetic to them on that account, Americans might do well to pay attention to the charges this time.  Consider that this President has:

• Proposed that the rest of the world adopt pre-emptive “notice and termination” rules for Internet content, and done so in a secret clause in a new international copyright treaty
• Used the bully pulpit to browbeat press critics, including Fox News, Rick Santelli, and others
• Shielded official political advisers from press scrutiny by appointing them as unvetted “czars”
• Proposed that citizens inform the White House of fishy “opinions I don’t want to hear” regarding health care
• Hinted broadly about “hitting back twice as hard” against administration critics
• Repeatedly told those critics to stop talking and that “the time for debate is over” – at the beginning of the legislative process
• Has first supported, now appears to be backing off, a UN resolution pushed by the Islamic Conference banning “blasphemy”
• Has appointed a “Diversity Czar” who openly admires Hugo Chavez’s approach to the media and wants to bring racial politics to the FCC

Administration apologists will argue that such examples only prove the President’s point – that a free press circumscribes presidential power.  But even if that were his point – and I don’t think it was – it’s not as though the President has been supportive of such a press.  Instead, he and his administration see it as an evil that needs to be suffered through and circumscribed, not a positive good.

As usual, universal principles are really about how they affect Obama: they make him hear opinions he doesn’t want to hear.  That, of course, is only part of the value of a free press.  The people have the right to petition the government, which would produce the same effect.  Indeed, the open comment period that most federal bureaucracies have during their rule-making process produces the same effect, but it’s hardly the core of the First Amendment.  Monarchies and autocracies throughout history have had mechanisms for wise rulers to take the temperature of their subjects and their various interest groups when forming policy.

No, freedom of speech is about letting people communicate with each other.  It’s about organizing opposition and support in a pluralistic society, with a separation of powers and a federal system.  It’s a key part of the process of self-government, where citizens debate each other about issues and policies and principles.  And while it’s certainly a part of our elected leaders’ exercise of power, it’s much more often a check and a limitation on that power.

The President of a free people should know better.

UPDATE: Of course, I should have known better than to forget the process by which Congress has passed multi-thousand-page bills this year, in virtual secrecy, without decent public review of their content, and that in direct contravention to promised transparency.  Free and open debate works best when it disseminates actual information, something that the Democratic Congressional leadership has striven mightily to prevent.

I’ve always been a sucker for the Byzantine Empire.  I’ll write a more extensive review of the new book, Lost to the West, soon, but for the moment, I want to focus on one particular emperor, the last of the Macedonian Dynasty, and the last truly great emperor Byzantium produced, Basil II.  Basil took power by overthrowing a regent who wanted the crown for himself, and by putting down rebellion by a couple of successful generals who had similar ideas.  After the second rebellion, Basil met with its leader.  The meeting is recorded by Michael Psellus, in his Chronographia:

After this Basil proceeded to question him, as a man accustomed to command, about his Empire, how it could be preserved free from dissension. Sclerus had an answer to this, although it was not the sort of advice one would expect from a general; in fact, it sounded more like a diabolical plot. ‘Cut down,’ he said, ‘the governors who become overproud. Let no generals on campaign have too many resources. Exhaust them [the aristocracy – ed.] with unjust exactions, to keep them busied with their own affairs. Admit no woman to the imperial councils. Be accessible to no one. Share with few your most intimate plans.’

First, let’s make the obligatory noises about how Obama’s no Byzantine Emperor.  True enough.  Imperial legitimacy came not from the people, but from the blade of a sword.  And women’s relationship to society has – thankfully – changed somewhat since the 10th Century.  But to power politics is power politics, and Sclerus’s advice boils down to this: suppress the institutions that might cause you trouble, and don’t let anyone figure out what you’re up to.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember the posting where I read it, but the author proposed that Obama runs his foreign policy through personal advisers and special envoys – often to the exclusion of the traditional military and foreign policy apparatus – to avoid sharing his overall vision with anyone else.  That this doesn’t require a conspiracy, merely a clever plan by a good politician to avoid opposition to what would be unpopular ideas.

Hey, it’s happened before.