WAR ON DRUGS, WAR ON TERROR; WHAT'S NEXT, WAR ON FAT?

When politicians outlaw lard, as they surely soon will, organized criminals
will eagerly step into the breach and peddle onion rings on the black market.

Turf wars will erupt over prime deep-fry corners.

The price of potato chips will skyrocket, as will profits from smuggling
pork rinds.

Hundreds of thousands of peaceful, oil-sodden french-fry lovers, who once
clogged just their arteries, will clog prisons, too.

It's the age-old story of what happens when bureaucrats try to save us from
ourselves.

Cops will spend less time chasing murderers and more time sniffing out
illegal doughnut labs.

Other officers will be taken off the streets and put inside schools to
promote Bad Oil Resistance Education.

Children robotically will recite, "Chickpeas are my anti-fat'' before
sneaking behind the school for a shot of Wesson.

The courts will approve no-knock refrigerator searches and covert oven
monitoring.

The politicians behind the Health and Happiness for All (Prohibited Fats
and Oils) Act of 2012 will claim they are protecting the public.

"There is no such thing as a victimless meal,'' Sen. Buncombe will
pronounce very loudly at a news conference.

"A fatty-food junkie may eat in the privacy of his own home, but when that
same junkie steals money for a Pringles fix; when he glamorizes his
depraved, greasy lifestyle among our youth; when he overtaxes our
health-care system with his liposuction, his bypass surgery, his Richard
Simmons tapes, then society pays. You pay. And yes, my friends, my fellow
Americans, your children pay.''

Soon the Bill of Rights -- the batter-thin crust separating us from tyranny
- -- will be tattered and torn. Fat barons will control several Third World
countries. Nacho-terrorists will perform foul deeds in the service of their
oily masters.

Finally, the Office of the National Fat Control Policy will run ads during
the Super Bowl and in newspapers blaming the chip eaters, doughnut dunkers
and deep-fry nibblers for the evils spawned by criminalizing grease:

"Lard money helps support terror. Buy fat and you could be supporting it,
too.''

Such is the logic of politicians, who care more about power than truth.

The same scenario played out during Prohibition.

Beer drinkers and martini lovers were blamed for the rise of organized
crime. Every bottle of bathtub gin was alleged to encourage Al Capone.
Perhaps it did.

But the real culprit, as Americans finally realized, was Prohibition itself
- -- and the politicians, vote-grubbers, moralists, scolds, gin- runners and
crime bosses who benefited because a product demanded by millions was illegal.

Five years after alcohol was outlawed, H.L. Mencken, that tireless
journalist and truth-teller, noted that "None of the great boons and
usufructs that were to follow the passage of (Prohibition) has come to
pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not
less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of
government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not
increased, but diminished.''

Prohibition was finally repealed, but little, apparently, was learned from
the disaster.

Perhaps Americans will learn something from analogous disasters, up to and
including the War on Fat.

But I doubt it.