Right Move, Wrong Perspective
May 11, 2011

Writes Kristen at Food Renegade:

Sedgwick, Maine has done what no other town in the United States has done. The town unanimously passed an ordinance giving its citizens the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” This includes raw milk, locally slaughtered meats, and just about anything else you can imagine. It’s also a decided bucking of state and federal laws.

The horror! Someone call the FDA! Get out your posterboard and sharpies, we need to rally! Chant with me now: SHUT DOWN SEDGWICK! SHUT DOWN SEDGWICK! What is the government waiting for? I demand they protect me from the guerilla foodists in this tiny coastal town who dare to consume local foods of their choosing. Cultists! Anarchists! Terrorists! Save us! Please, government, reign in these nutritional evildoers and see to it that they never again attempt to secede from this One Nation Under Monsanto!

I love the fact that people in Sedgwick, Maine have declared that - as rational, responsible, self-determining, individual human beings - they’ll raise, grow, and eat whatever they choose, regardless of the wishes and/or commands of those in state and federal government that would be so all-encompassingly cuntish as to attempt to govern the digestive tracts of others. Each and every such governmental hemorrhoid in the anal canal of free society should be rounded up, sent to feedlots, force-fed refuse, and left to meet the same fate as the other diseased cows.

I hate the fact, though, that most people read the above passage and felt absolutely no instinctual rage at the notion that the town “gave its citizens the right” to produce and eat food. The town GAVE THEIR CITIZENS THIS RIGHT? Fuck right the fuck off, would you? This is how for granted we take our status as unconditional slaves to government. A right, under the assumption that such a thing exists, cannot be given or taken. It simply is. A right is inherent in life, in humanity. Exercising any particular right could have unpleasant consequences, ranging from a guy at the bar punching you in the face for saying something stupid, to the government caging or slaughtering you for any attempt at personal sovereignty. Still, the fact that the government will murder you doesn’t make them the gatekeeper of rights anymore than it does the CPA/serial killer next door who’ll do the same. If the CPA knocked on your door and told you that you’re no longer allowed to consume raw milk, per his edict, or else he’ll put you in a cage in his basement and kill you if you resist, you’d get your gun and tell him to go fist himself. But when the government tells you the exact same thing, you comply - proud, “law-abiding” citizen that you are. And when they haul off your neighbor for daring to take one last raw swig, you shrug, and think to yourself, “Well, he did break the law. He gets what he deserves. No one has a right to break the law.”

And that’s when you officially become a slave. And an asshole. Because everyone has a right to break the law. Everyone has a right to do whatever the earthly fuck they wish to do so long as they don't trespass on others. Individuals are the exclusive keepers of rights. Governments, no matter what ridiculous laws they pass, cannot take rights. They cannot store them in basements or file cabinets and promise that, some sunny day, they might just give them back. All they can do is levy a threat, aka a “law” or “statute”, to execute violence against you for exercising whatever right they don’t like (which is all of them). Then, we the people, being the wretched cowards we are, tuck our dicks - and our rights - back between our legs and long for the day when “government” gives them back. Should one or two ballsy individuals work up the testicular fortitude to go ahead and untuck from the government-sanctioned mangina, they’ll quickly be snuffed out. But if, by some miracle, the whole populace suddenly thinks, “Wait, these are my genitals. Why do I allow some other entity to tell me that they have to be all stuffed up in my grundle while my asshole sweats in the summer heat? Fuck this noise, it’s time to air out deez nuts!”, it would suddenly showcase the impotence of government in the face of widespread self-ownership - the prerequisite right for freedom.

So “hurrah” to any individuals in Sedgwick, Maine, or elsewhere, that exercise the right to ingest things of their choosing. And “fuck you” not only to any cunt that would burn a single corn-fueled, Monsanto-sponsored calorie to stop them, but also to any poltroon (great word, been waiting for an excuse to use it) who a) considers freedom in food choice anything other than incredibly unremarkable and b) would look to politicians for permission to swallow.