Momma Michelle Knows Best

Jennifer Ruben, writing in Commentary:

I don’t much care if the president smokes or pigs out on fast food. In fact, I think it’s a poor idea to take away emotionally comforting habits from the man with his finger on the button. I don’t care, because these are personal choices, and he is an adult, a well-educated one with superb medical advice. What does grate on the nerves is the incessant nagging — don’t eat those fries, inflate your tires – that suggests that Americans are too dim to figure these things out for themselves. Moreover, it assumes it is the government’s job to screech at us.

And yes, it is a matter of perspective. Laura Bush was concerned with the women of Burma who are raped and murdered by a fascistic state. Michelle is growing — actually having the hired help grow — an organic garden. It’s the sort of thing that bored housewives from the Upper West Side or Beverly Hills would obsess about. It lack gravitas and perspective. But then that’s pretty much what the Obamas are all about.

Is there anything that symbolizes more clearly how inane our government has become than Michelle Antoinette telling us what we are and are not allowed to eat? The government argues that when the government foots the bill that it gets to call the shots but government doesn't really foot the bill for anything. It is the taxpayers who shell out the bucks and it is government who sits on the dole.

I was raised in the "my house, my rules" era. It worked out pretty good though I sometimes resented that my dependency limited my ability to make choices. As an adult I have no desire to be dependent on the government and I certainly don't need a daddy (other than the one I have). Yet Washington elites are determined to pull a "my house, my rules" on the entire country. Friends, we don't have that type of relationship. They work for us and when last I checked, the employee does not dictate to the employer.

We did not reach this point overnight and we will not undo the damage done by government encroachment any time soon. We can start by re-igniting the "can do" attitude that served us so well for decades and by remembering that government is not our daddy, our nanny or our charity provider. For my part, I promise not to tell Michelle Antoinette what she can plant in her garden if she will promise to return the favor.