Yes, this is what is happening. There is the idea that patients must be "protected" against themselves. So we entrust the patient's care to doctors who:

#1 Don't have to live with the situation and may, in many cases, are less informed about it than their patients.

#2 Have interests other than the patent's care.

You see, the patient is not allowed to care for himself. This is "for his own good". Collectively, our society as decided that we are too stupid, untrustworthy, and incompetent to be entrusted with the care of our own bodies.

People relinquish these freedoms because the feel they can then be free of the responsibilities and consequences of making bad choices. Our society is the result, and insurers against malpractice claims are the ones who end up dictating policy because they foot the bill.

In my view of a moral world, people would own the consequences of eating something (whether its flexoril, alcohol, opium or marijuana). There would be nobody to sue, because everyone would recognize that there is nobody else to blame. We would allow people to make decisions that were different than the ones we would make in the same situation, and then we would require that people lived with the results.

The sad truth, articulated brilliantly in Erich Fromm's Escape from Feedom, is that people -- prehaps especially American people, don't want to be free because freedom means living with the results of bad decisions.

The one thing that everyone seems to agree upon, Democrats and Republicans alike, is that the state should be everyone's big parent. All of the major political arguments of today are simply arguing about what kind of parent people want. Nobody seems to question the underlying idea that it is OK to use government to impose one's own point of view on others. Almost everyone completely accepts this. The Left wants to impose one kind of world, while the Right has a different vision. Both believe in the same fundamental idea that is about as un-American and anti-freedom as you can get. From my point of view, they are idealogically identical, differing only in the details.

Well, I've had enough of it. Its gone too far. It's time to start having another political debate: What gives you the right to impose your morality on me?

Don't tread on me!