HEALTHY FOOD SHOULD BE FREE
After being on the Joe Rogan show a couple of weeks ago, I received numerous comments and this is one: The U.S. government should 100 percent pay for every American's healthy food. Healthy food should be free in the U.S.
By extension, of course, this means that every farmer becomes a U.S. Government employee. That in turn means the U.S. government sets the price the farmer gets paid. It means that acquiring food would be like going to the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
This is simply one example recently of righteous-sounding goals created out of frustration. When people are emotionally frustrated about things, we tend to overcorrect. The pendulum of thought and policy rarely hangs in the middle; it swings wildly from side to side.
I'm sure the goal of free healthy food is shared by many; this person voiced a sentiment read, heard, and nurtured from talking heads somewhere. I'm exercising tremendous explanative restraint in responding to this the opposite way my baser instincts would want to respond, but I'll try to keep from flipping off.
When people ask me how to change the food system, the thought of complete government takeover and confiscation of the production, pricing, and purchasing of the nation's food never enters my mind. I tend to think more in terms of reducing government involvement, since that is what got us where we are. At least it aids and abets where we are.
The notion that the government is benign and righteous while everything else is evil and greedy is a fundamentally terrifying notion. And yet that seems to be the trajectory of the culture, which means we're headed into an abyss.
If you've read Rod Druher's The Benedict Option, you know where I'm heading in this analysis. His first blockbuster was Crunchy Cons (shorthand for environmentalist conservatives). In that book he explained the tension between those of us who are socially conservative but take seriously creation care.
In the more recent book, he explains the origins of St. Benedict, who as a young Italian born into affluence and political connection saw his future shattered when the Huns destroyed Rome. After visiting Rome and seeing the pillaging and collapse of his culture, he returned to his village and established an agrarian community dedicated to literature and culture. He realized the culture was lost and the answer would be to re-launch enclaves of civilization and food security from the bottom up. He argues that the U.S. is in that situation now.
The paradigm divide between me and a person who thinks the culture would be better served if we all ate from the food equivalent of the DMV looms wider than conversation can bridge. For a communicator and wordsmith like me, that's incredibly depressing. Where do you start unraveling all the assumptions and life beliefs between someone who believes in individual responsibility, market competition and diversity, and personal initiative versus someone who thinks the DMV should dispense our food?
That gap is so wide it's like we're on a different planet and speak a different language. We need a translator. I will continue to speak my message into the universe, will continue to be encouraging and try to offer solutions that have practical function, but I confess to fighting dismay and hopelessness when someone suggests that the answer to food foibles is a complete federal government takeover of farms, farmers, and food systems. I find such a notion terrifying.
How about you?
**Thank you to our friend Michaelann Brescia Photography for this beautiful photo**