TheAgitator.com
Morning Links
Friday, July 8th, 2011- Michelle Bachman signs pledge to ban all forms of pornography, bashing homosexuality, vowing to “reject sharia law”.
- Interesting discussion of the environmental effects of an overboard shipping container.
- This girl is good.
- Woman arrested on theory that her cat may have died from secondhand heroin smoke. I guess we do know that smoking pot is dangerous for your dog.
- Jeffrey Tambor says the Arrested Development movie is happening.
- More evidence that calorie counts don’t work.
- Roundup of Nancy Grace-inspired Twitter reactions to the Casey Anthony verdict.
- The Nanny State gets literal: warning labels for sippy cups.
I like the reasoning that allows one to “reject of all other anti-woman/anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control” while abiding by everything else on that list that includes anti-woman/anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
Uh oh, if calorie counts don’t work then it’s time for the nannies to up the ante. Maybe mandatory limits on the amount of fat and calories a restaurant can sell in a dish?
Curious what conclusion you draw from the fact that calorie counts don’t work. Granting that they don’t, I’ve actually been surprised how much I’ve missed having them since I moved away from NY. I guess what I’m asking is, what’s the downside to this policy whether it works or not?
Please don’t draw attention to the fact that calorie counts don’t work.
Like Z said, it’ll just make them double-down in the “war” against obesity. We’ll see legislation pushing a maximum number of calories they can provide you. If the waiter sees you eating off of someone’s plate, they’ll be required by law to come over and cut you off. When you pay for your meal, your credit card will be confiscated until you put in 30 minutes on the treadmill.
But no pledge to stop the gorwth of the national debt, balance the budget, or protect privacy. Some GOPers never change.
I love the Bachman bullet, particularly when combined with yesterday’s Clemons/Politicians lying bullet. That’s some hall-of-fame quality hypocrisy and lack of self-awareness right there. And some blog-of-the-week worthy snark from our host. Well played!
#3 – Patrick
The downside is the compliance costs for the businesses. Sure McDonalds wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to lab test all of their food for caloric counts, but that could be crippling to a smaller business.
“Like Z said, it’ll just make them double-down in the “war” against obesity.”
Speaking of double down… http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/
The thing that bothers me most about the Bachman story is that people like her and the VanderPlaats guy are identified as “leaders” of the Tea Party movement. The media regularly equates Tea Party people with libertarians. Now, suddenly, libertarians are anti-gay and anti-muslim.
All because some stupid clowns are trying to appeal to their social-conservative base.
@Ben, but isn’t the upside more freedom for the customers to choose? More information in the hands of the consumer should be a good thing? To me this is akin to providing a prospectus to a potential investor. Would your comments be the same if this was about investors not reading the available information before plunking down their cash?
Also, if you are running a chain so large that your food is so unique that you have to have it lab tested (unless the law specifically requires this) the money you speak of is not much, and has probably already been spent when developing the food.
BTW, I own a restaurant (not a chain … yet). It would not be a big deal, or a major inconvenience to make this information available.
#8 – The thing that annoyed me so much about the hysteria over the Double Down, is that it has less calories and fat than the Whopper, and about the same as the Big Mac.
A hot chick telling me I can’t have pron in private is worse than a prom rejection. Unless she replaces it w/ a network of venues for live shows. Maybe that’s the kind of job creation she’s driving at though.
Bachman and Palin are like black holes, any intelligence being devoured in the void of their massive stupidity.
#10 – Of course there’s an upside to consumers. I never said there wasn’t. Patrick asked what the downside was.
And I don’t know about how your chefs work at your restaurant, but in every kitchen I’ve ever been in, portions and ingredient amounts are NOT exact, chefs improvise a lot, and use rough round amounts like a handful of this, a rounded scoop of that, and any sort of calorie count for a menu item would be a vague guess at BEST. The NYC law wants the calorie count to be rounded to the nearest 10 calories. Could you make every menu item come in within 10 calories of your published value?
Marcus-
The argument in response to that would be that companies should have the option of providing that information. If it is seen as a competitive advantage, as it would garner more business from folks looking to make more informed decisions, companies will opt to do it of their own accord. Requiring companies to do it is an issue. However, in response to the comment about the economy of scale, I believe that the NY law only applies to larger chains (5+ outlets, I believe). So a small operation isn’t subject to it.
Personally, I appreciate having the information available, assuming it is reasonably accurate. Many studies have pointed out that the information provided is horribly inaccurate, making its presentation more problematic than helpful. I’ve always argued that companies should have the freedom to provide nutritional information or not BUT, should they choose to provide it, it must be as accurate as possible (allowing for the natural variance you are going to find with mass produced food). A company should be free to say, “Sorry, we’re not going to give you that info,” in which case a customer can say, “Well, sorry, I’m not going to shop here.” But if a company does opt to provide the information, it should be accurate. My hunch is that existing truth in advertising laws should suffice to enforce this, eliminating the need for even more restrictions.
I clicked the link that went to your SWAT cops shoot dogs story, which I got no problem with, but I must say that I get a visceral feeling of hostility whenever I read mentions of Norm Stamper, even if he is now advocating good drug law reform (which I think I read elsewhere).
This feeling comes from Stamper’s tenure as Seattle Chief of Police and the way he justified the very brutal (and obviously planned at policy level) response to the civil disobedience tactics of the anti-WTO protests in November 1999.
Whatever you feel about the politics of the protest yourselves (I myself was involved in them, so my feelings can be easily discerned), I think that most Balko readers should or would be appalled by the way the police erupted in unprovoked violence against passive-resistance protesters.
Anyway, as a result of that experience, Stamper has lost all my respect, no matter what he does, until he apologizes for that sorry performance or, better yet, is held to account.
Stamper is not the only official to blame of course, the mayor at the time played a pretty pernicious role, as did apparently Bill Clinton, who was coming to the WTO meeting and did not want to be embarrassed by protesters and therefore put pressure on the city to crack down on them, leading to me vomiting my guts out on city pavements in clouds of tear gas.
So, from this WTO protest participant, a hearty FU! to Stamper, Mayor Schell, and Clinton (among others).
P.S. That girl singing “When I’m Gone” really does have a sweet voice. It’s a cover, but I like it better.
One of the points of the “vow” that Bachman signed…
“SEX IS BETTER AFTER MARRIAGE: Vow 5 requires the candidate to support the notion that “married people enjoy better health, better sex.” ”
I’m getting married this August and, for once, I’m actually excited about it! Thanks, Michelle!
To believe calorie counts work requires 3 leaps of faith, none of which are supported by evidence.
First, you must believe that significant numbers of fat people will actually read them (as the article noted, many or most who read calorie counts are already slim).
2nd, you must believe that as a result of #1, significant numbers of fat people will actually eat fewer calories.
3rd, you must believe that eating fewer calories actually results in significant and sustained weight loss. In spite of the “calories in/calories out” mantra, empirical evidence for this is amazingly meager. Pretty much every low-calorie diet study I’m aware of has reported minimal weight loss (like 5-10 lbs on average) and even then subjects gained that back within 6-12 months.
Speaking of porn and Casey Anthony….anyone else
foresee a 10 million dollar deal for her via Hefner or some vid company when she gets out next week?
Rags, and handcuffs, to riches.
Killer or not, she’s got some bodacious tatas.
For someone who “rejects sharia law”, Bachmann seems to spend an awful lot of time advocating it.
BSK, I’d even say that a 5-store city chain is still not a ‘big company’, and they certainly wouldn’t have the resources to spend on getting the independent testing done, and it gets worse the larger menu they’d have. So you’d have situations where a restaurant has n-1 locations, and is unable to expand because of a law like that, or you’d have a restaurant chain with 7 local outlets, and they have to kill 3 of them. And I think another problem with some of these bills is that they tend to count the overall size. So a growing multi-state chain that’s trying to expand, and might have 20 restaurants in 5 states would face a hardship trying to open a restaurant in a location with a law like that. The local franchisee would probably be on the hook for the testing, unless the chain offers to cover that cost, but they’re likely not going to have the resources. So they’ll just go somewhere else.
Marcus, as others have said, it’s fine to appreciate the information, and make use of it, and like to see it. It’s the line that’s crossed when you say “I think this information might be helpful, so you *must* give it to me, whether I patronize your establishment or not.” And then add in the evidence that it doesn’t carry a significant overall health benefit to the people it’s supposedly trying to help, and it really becomes another anti-competitive racket by the established players.
Plus, it’s not like people who care about the nutritional value of their food don’t realize the relative values of what they eat. Maybe there are some variations, but for the most part, if you look into it at all, you know the approximate calorie count for just about any food, regardless of preparation. Sure, some things might surprise you at a particular place, but overall it shouldn’t.
Wow people actually starting to push back against Nancy Grace. Wasn’t there a time where Ms. Grace’s conduct would have been illegal?
@Ben & @BSK
For the record, I do not have a dog in this fight, I do not care about this law one way or the other, but when discussing freedoms of corporations and individuals, I am most likely going to side with individuals over the legal construct.
I seriously do not understand the argument here. Do you think we should get rid of all compulsory product labeling? Should we have never had them, or have we changed to the point they are no longer needed?
@Ben
The restaurants that you are talking about are probably exempted from these types of laws. If your chefs are estimating, guessing, using rounded amounts, food quality and food cost is going to be out of control, and you are going to have difficult time growing into multiple locations. Portion control is extremely important in the restaurant world.
The main problem with online porn is that it’s everywhere. It’s more of a technical problem than a legal one. The solution is a combination of a .XXX domain for full time porn sites and a metadata schema that lets browsers identify content. The federal government could easily get most sites, even many foreign sites, to comply with this by immunizing sites that voluntarily enact the technical changes.
That shipping container article was quite interesting. However, I found it annoying that the scientist was straining to suggest that shipping containers on the bottom of the ocean are a serious environmental problem, when in fact he admitted that we know almost nothing about them. By all means, study them. But don’t try to make it into Bhopal before you even know anything.
Define “work”. Contrary to what’s been posted here, calorie deficit == weight loss. It’s basic physics and there is no way around that. If people choose not to use that information to make wise choices, well anything that isn’t used won’t work. Lawnmowers, toothbrushes, hammers, etc. unless you use them they won’t do what they were intended to do.
Additionally, there are other uses for that information than just weight loss. Diabetics and hypoglycemics find the information very helpful.
Finally, it’s only for chains with 20 locations or more, not for Mr. Nguyen’s taco cart. Even if it was for everyone, the cost of someone sitting down with their recipes, looking up the nutritional information and then adding it up according to the preparation involved is minimal. An entire menu could be done in a couple of hours.
But, it doesn’t matter whether they work or not. It’s not a bad idea because they don’t work. It’s a bad idea even if they do work.
This is one mistake I think libertarians make repeatedly. They are sucked into the argument that, because a law improves some people’s lives at little or no expense, it is justified. If that’s the case, then there is no limit to what government can justify.
Two links to HuffPo. Are they paying you for clicks, Radley? Regardless, I want to see an Arrested Development movie!
Highway-
I wasn’t necessarily agreeing with it; only stating what I believe the law to be and how it attempts to account for that.
Marcus-
Is product labeling even mandatory? I’m pretty sure they are only required to include ingredients, as many products I buy don’t include nutritional information. Again, I would say allow companies to choose what they include on their labels but require that what they do include be accurate (given a certain margin for error). If you don’t want to tell me what are in your Twinkies, so be it; I won’t buy them. But you can’t tell me they are sugar free and contain 40 Gs of fiber if they don’t. I know some would argue that even truth-in-advertising laws are unnecessary, since third parties could verify what is printed, but this is simply an impractical solution. I don’t think jail time should be metered out in an instance of false labeling, but consumers should have every opportunity to sue.
@Highway
I have to take issue with the stance that this would be a huge financial burden on a chain. Nutrition information is widely available for free. Everything I buy except for whole foods comes labeled due to already existing law, and whole food information can be found online.
Putting the information together is simple math.
I’ve heard that calorie counts are bad for people who are working on recovery from anorexia. I don’t know of any research, but it sounds reasonable.
RE: Bachman
For what it’s worth, it might make sense to read the pledge versus the reporting of the pledge. Here it is.
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM187_marriage.html
They apparently are not warm to the idea of gay marriage. Who knew?
@Leonard re:#25
Wow, that’s totally not what I read at all. I read him saying that it impacted the environment, certainly; that how one viewed the known impact is in part governed by how one thinks about certain specific species, because some species are harmed while others benefit; that it deserves further study, because this is an extremely limited study focused only on one container; and that because it was such a limited study, it remained possible that there’s a serious environmental problem.
I think suggesting that, because some relatively recent and widespread phenomena has not been studied sufficiently, the question of its impact on the environment remains unsettled, seems rather reasonable to me.
Re the Bachman pledge: I have no love for Michelle Bachman, but I recommend reading the actual pledge (available as a pdf, but you had to follow three or four links to see it), rather than the summary by folks who started out opposed to Bachman.
The document as I read it seemed to me to be much, much less radical than the summary claimed. The thinkprogress summary (as you’d expect given the sides everyone’s on) seemed to me to massively overstate things. For example, stating in a pledge that homosexuality and promiscuity and pornography are all bad things that are damaging to the family, and pledging to protect families from them, isn’t at all the same as promising to pass laws against any or all of them.
In case it matters, I’m pretty opposed to many of the positions of this pledge–I think legal recognition of gay marriage is a good thing, that fearmongering about Sharia law is silly, and that the overwhelming majority of the genuine and destructive decline in the stability of families and the sanctity of marriage is simply outside the power of the government to fix. But I’m even more opposed to spin and BS.
Sorry, I should have made this easier: link to the pledge from ThinkProgress.
Dave K –
I don’t think it’s about “if it works, it’s okay”. But since we don’t yet live in libertopia, we’re not going to get rid of bad laws like this by saying they’re anti-freedom. We will get rid of laws like this by saying they don’t work. And hopefully, as more and more and more expensive government programs are shown to not work, maybe, just maybe, we can make some people “see the light”
Concerning Michelle Bachman and all the other people worried about Sharia law coming to the United States, I wonder how much of Sharia law we could trick them into agreeing with if they didn’t know the source of the various statutes they were considering. It would be a fun little experiment. My guess is that if you simply took out any reference to Allah, and maybe women wearing veils, it wouldn’t look too different from the holier-than-thou laws they would have the rest of us living under.
Calorie counts work. The point of a calorie count is providing the buyer with information about a product. What’s wrong with letting me know what’s in my food? The law doesn’t appear to apply to small businesses, which makes sense (a chef Murphy exception).
Get off your high horses and comment on that guy who went to jail over a legitimate check at Chase Bank — now, that’s scandalous.
Strictly, no.
But since the only way that politicians know “to protect families” is to pass a law, it is a fairly safe assumption that is what is intended.
Personally, I am hoping that a high school porn video of Bachman, three other women, a middle-eastern guy with a whip, a camel and two dogs surfaces about four days before the Iowa caucuses.
As a brown feller that is difficult to ethnically peg, I volunteer to play the Middle Eastern guy with the whip!
#10, why don’t you provide calorie counts? If it’s not a big deal and it’s such a good deal for customers that you would advocate forcing other restaurants to do it at gunpoint, why do you not already do it yourself? Seems like it would be a competitive advantage for you if your competition doesn’t do it, based on your comment.
I guess bible thumping social cons forgot that porn is protected by the 1st amendment. Sometimes you got to wonder who is stupider, the theocons or the class warfare left?
Also…sippy cups? Really?
#36, have you ever considered how government has managed to become so large and intrusive? It’s because at every stage of incremental growth, someone has said “well they already ______, so this doesn’t seem like a big deal,” and someone else has said “How dare you waste time talking about _____ when there are ______er _____s in the world?!” That is why libertarians tend to oppose things like this on principle, because it’s a much smaller jump from “you must provide calorie counts” to “You cannot serve food with more than ____ calories” than it is from “We will occasionally inspect to make sure your kitchen is clean and your meat isn’t soylent green,” and once people are used to the “calorie counts or else,” then it will be someone like you chiming in with “well why are they allowed to serve ____ anyway, no one actually NEEDS that many calories!”
There is nothing wrong with letting you know what’s in your food; and in fact, most fast food chains already have that information readily available to you if you care to ask. If you believe in it so strongly, don’t patronize places that don’t provide the information, and let them know that you won’t until they do. Of course it’s easier to just force something at gunpoint than it is to convince people to do it rationally, but that doesn’t make it morally acceptable.
Marcus, you might think it’s not a significant burden, but most restaurants are barely breaking even anyway. Most restaurants (about 60%) close within 3 years of opening. It’s definitely another cost, and it’s also an avenue of liability. Menus can’t change without extra work to find out the number for the new items. It requires continual maintenance to make sure that the ingredients don’t change. Once that number is on the menu, then it can be argued and cited and sued over. Maybe the complainant doesn’t win, but it’s still legal fees to defend.
And recipes definitely change. Chefs taste things, add more salt, add less salt. Maybe they’re trying to stretch some sauce so there’s less on each plate, maybe they’ve got a lot to use up, so they put on more. Maybe today’s chicken breasts were on sale, and all of them are .7 pounds, rather than .5 pounds. Maybe the batch of meatballs made 38 meatballs rather than 40 or 42.
But ultimately, again, why is this a burden that restaurants should be *forced* to assume? If they want to, because it’s a good story, it’s good marketing, they think it’s good practice, it’s competitive, then that’s fine. But when it’s a requirement, then it turns from “I’m promoting my things” to “I’m trying to punish those other guys.” Every time. And why should the government be used to punish your competition? To Karl, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with providing the information. What’s wrong is forcing someone to do something.
I read that Family Leader pledge, and the part that really made my head explode was the footnote stating that the Supreme Court ruling anti-sodomy laws unconstitutional was part of a plot to violently persecute homosexuals.
Also, noting that you’re a restaurant owner: Is there much time you’re sitting around doing nothing? I doubt it. So what would you take the time away from that you’re currently doing to comply with putting calories on the menu? What current expense can you forgo to reprint the menus, or pay someone to add up the nutritional information. What if someone complains? Do you really need another thing that the inspector is looking at?
Albatross @#32 beat me to it. I too am no Bachmann fan but the article Radley links to grossly mischaracterizes the pledge. In fact, the linked article links to ANOTHER article in which Bachmann explicitly refuses to go along with the organization’s comparison of homosexuality to second-hand smoking. Also, the pledge does not advocate banning pornography; it advocates protecting CHILDREN from all forms of pornography (a pretty significant difference). There are plenty of legitimate bases for ripping on Michele Bachmann; it’s disappointing (though not remotely surprising) that ThinkProgress would feel the need to make shit up to disparage her.
Personally, I care less about calorie counts and more about what is actually in my food. Knowing that a Big Mac and a turkey sandwich have the same number of calories is only so useful; knowing that my Big Mac is full of sawdust and rat meat and my turkey sandwich has actual turkey in it is much more helpful. Of course, the government regulations don’t require the information I’m actually looking for. Most eateries I visit provide it upon request and/or can generally be trusted to have what they say they have in their foods. And when I order Chinese take-out, I know I’m playing Russian roulette with my health/stomach/toilet. And I’m okay with that. From time to time. (I say this as I currently hold my stomach and groan over last night’s Kung Pao Chicken)
#27: “This is one mistake I think libertarians make repeatedly. They are sucked into the argument that, because a law improves some people’s lives at little or no expense, it is justified. If that’s the case, then there is no limit to what government can justify.”
Sex work activists have to deal with this one all the time nowadays. As soon as one criticizes outlandish figures a la Ashton, the wailing starts: “ONE is too many!!!!!” and “If it helps ONE CHILD…” Of course, as I pointed out to one of these lunatics the other day, I’m sure that the Drug War has helped at least one child at some point in the past 40 years, but does that honestly justify its mind-boggling expense and catastrophic social consequences in the mind of anyone who isn’t completely insane?
Yet every effort by Congress to “protect children from pornography” has been overturned. Why? Because laws to “protect the children” usually do that by restricting it to adults.
One girl, one cup: good find, thanks.
#9 Seems to me the religious right took over the tea party from the libertarians pretty early on.
#35 Bachmann is a dominionist. So of course she would like nothing better than to force everyone to live by her nutty ideas.
#47 It does not justify the drug war in the slightest.
An offer from Vivid was already made and withdrawn due to customer outrage.
I’m also a bit uncomfortable watching the apparent building up of Michelle Bachman as the new bogeyman to replace Sarah Palin. In both cases, the goal seems to be to have someone to scare recalcitrant liberals/progressives with, as an alternative to having a candidate who has actually stuck with his campaign promises or implemented liberal/progressive ideas w.r.t. civil liberties, war powers, or financial regulation while in office.
OT: Cops arrest man in Arkansas for calling them Nazis (for fondling up a woman stopped in front of his house). Apparently that is obstruction and a “hate crime”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOYDjGgGtBM
Highway:
“… there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with providing the information. What’s wrong is forcing someone to do something.”
I’ll admit that in life’s grand pageant calorie menus aren’t a big deal, but is forcing someone under penalty of law to provide safe products something you would object to? Or, like congressional Republicans, do you want to leave that to the invisible hand?
#15: “I believe that the NY law only applies to larger chains (5+ outlets, I believe). So a small operation isn’t subject to it.”
#36: “The law doesn’t appear to apply to small businesses, which makes sense”
Yes, it makes perfect sense — Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tests and new signs for all my stores, I just won’t expand my business beyond 4 outlets. PROBLEM SOLVED! (And people really wonder why there are no jobs.)
karl, (#54)
I have a much higher degree of trust in an organization that will vanish from market forces if it kills me than a government agency that will just get more funding if IT kills me. (“We didn’t have enough money to watch all these business.. we need more!”)
Use some common sense.
Of course Calorie counts work. They work for me. Having said that, I dont think the government should force private business to post them. I’m happy to spend my dollars where they do. You have to be pretty out of touch to not know most fast food is loaded with calories and salt though.
Who wastes Heroin smoke? Jk.
In today’s news, Michelle Bachman took her dog, who she named Cat, to the pound. When asked why she no longer wanted Cat, Bachman replied: “She barks”.
Nancy Grace…what a piece of work unleashed upon us. Hollywood and Dr. Frankenstein (or is that Fronkensteen?) are bereft of the singular or collective brilliance to create this hell in high heels. Part of me is kinda glad Casey beat the rap as the first thought that crossed my mind was Nancy Grace going into major meltdown. It was worth the watch. There’s not enough Prozac in this world to cure Nancy Grace of whatever ails her or is this her normal mode. Someone please do tell.
Currently on Drudge…
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/jul/07/knox-deputies-raid-bexhill-subdivision-poker-game/?partner=popular
From knoxnews.com, Knox Deputies Raid Bexhill Subdivision Poker Game.
The report states that only $1000.00 was confiscated by police (SWAT Team?). No arrests were made. This raid is in conjunction to seven other “operations” within the past five weeks targeting underground poker games…
Times must be tough, pimps are riding bicycles and I guess the cops were running a deficit in the coffee/donut fund. Well…at least no one was shot.
I think Radley is going to have some fun with this one.
Andrew S. @#50:
Yet every effort by Congress to “protect children from pornography” has been overturned. Why? Because laws to “protect the children” usually do that by restricting it to adults.
Totally valid point and I didn’t mean to imply that I agree with the pledge Bachmann signed. I certainly would not vote for anybody who signed that pledge. I merely meant to point out that there is a significant factual difference between a candidate who vows to protect children from pornography and a candidate who vows to ban all pornography.
#5, the pledge does include downsizing government and debt.
Woman uses biological weapon to assault sheriff’s deputies.
karl, that’s an entirely different argument. And the fact that you’re conflating them shows that you’re either purposely trying to obfuscate the discussion, or you don’t understand that there’s a difference between food that is ‘safe’ – in that it’s non-toxic – and products that are sold.
You’re doing that classic bait and switch argument (I can’t remember who talked about this, but it’s been quoted before): Libertarians say ‘we shouldn’t have a law about forcing restaurants to label foods’, and the response is “So *all* food safety laws should be gotten rid of?????”
@ClubMedSux,
The pledge doesn’t say children, it says *women* and children, which suggests they have restrictions/bans in mind. The full text can be found here:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/The-Family-Leader-Presidential-Pledge.pdf
Andrew S. “I don’t think it’s about “if it works, it’s okay”. But since we don’t yet live in libertopia, we’re not going to get rid of bad laws like this by saying they’re anti-freedom.”
It’s not that we don’t live in “libertopia” yet, its that we don’t live in America the way it used to be anymore. Not that it ever was perfect or anything but it was actually a hell of a lot more free than it is now. It seems like we lose more and more freedom with every passing year. At this point most Americans don’t even know what the word means.