WEIGHING THE `BURDENS' OF LIBERTY

Expressing outrage at the idea of asking permission of government to disable air bags in our vehicles, J.L. Hermann asked in a Nov. 26 Viewpoints letter, "What happened to our individual freedoms? Are we no longer allowed to make any decisions for ourselves?"

Fortunately, we no longer need hazard a guess in response. David Kessler, recently retired director of the Food and Drug Administration, has supplied the answer. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, he wrote: "If members of our society were empowered to make their own decisions ... then the whole rationale of the (FDA) would cease to exist. To argue that people ought to be able to choose their own risks, that government should not intervene ... is to impose an unrealistic burden on people."

Deciding questions for ourselves, even lifeanddeath questions, is considered by the government to be an "unrealistic burden" on its people. How convenient that an increasingly centralized and tyrannical authority remains ever ready to remove the few "burdens" of liberty which still stand.

To answer Hermann's first question: They have been stolen while we slept. As to the second question: apparently not.

Wayne D. Holt,
Houston