I've had conversations with right wing nuts who are upset about peanuts banned on flights. It's simply that their personal right to do whatever they think they want overrides the fact that recycled air with nut scent into it can cause someone to go into seizure. I personally am a peanuts freak, can easily eat a half a jar at a time. But somehow I can't even imagine myself grousing about this obvious public safety move, while others will find it a horrid expression of the daily attack on the nostalgic Christian Paradise we used to have once upon a time.

You can add in seat belts, dumping oil down the sewers, strip mining, asbestos, thalidomide, alcohol laws and whatever. Somehow, the conservative mantra goes, we used to face all these dangers, tamping our own gunpowder while drinking whiskey up on top of the cab at 140mph without a seatbelt and we still survived. Except of course quite a number of people didn't survive. Women died of backroom abortions (of course that happened across state lines and more likely to minorities due to cheaper clinics). People near toxic dumps developed tumors the size of grapefruit. But those figures and images don't appear in our collective nostalgia, due to faulty selective memories and the way we used to shuffle away invalids and paraplegics and braindead accident survivors. De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
Or better, de mortuis nil loquatur.

Yes, our conservative memory of our inherited past has been cleansed by eugenics. So nicely that they want to cleanse the future too. Leave it to Beaver.

Great post and hits me personally Billy, as my 21-month old daughter was just diagnosed with a peanut allergy. It's serious business. We now have to have one of those emergency "pens", and more importantly, thank heavens for govenrmental labelling requirements because we read them now as never before.

Great point: there is no need to run away from government. A winning Democrat needs to remind us all how government is a necessary, not sufficient, but necessary component of our society.

I do not have anything original to add here, but I agree with everyone else that this is a good point well made. I tip my hat to you, Mr Glad.

Soybean butter is often an excellent and safe alternative. It is now avaialble in most supermarkets, but they sometimes put it into the "fancy" food isle, you know, where the arugula is and where people with many houses shop.

There was a funny political cartoon years ago (farside?), that showed a whole bunch of angy white wing nuts, shaking their fists and otherwise expressing their displeasure with "The Government". The captions read such things as "Goddamn government beaurocrats made sure my medicine was safe" and "Those good for nothing government freeloaders inspected the meat that my children eat", etc.

"We're all in this together" versus "Every man for himself"? Or maybe it's "Us versus them" that's got them all caught up.

It's interesting that the right will spare no oxygen on extolling the virtues of democracy, even such that it need be spread far and wide (at gunpoint if necessary), only to turn around and bloviate that government, fundamentally, doesn't work. Last I checked, democracy was the practice of self-governance.

PS - What's with the articles?

Billy: I'm sorry but all of sudden you started sounding like those elitist liberals that don't know what they are talking about.

"So I have to wonder what people like McCain and Palin think the world would be like without government, or with a government that just limits itself to unleashing what McCain calls "the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself?"

This is one of the funnier ways of misunderstanding the concept of limited government I have come across and it's nothing to do with reality. If you don't want to get your hands dirty to learn about it from the republicans, read up on libertarians . I learned it from libertarians and it makes a lot of sense.

Government does work sometimes.

As long as it's not run by Republicans.

McCain and Palin undoubtedly think they'd be just fine without government, just like Cheney could claim with a straight face that "the government had nothing to do" with the wealth he accumulated from Halliburton.

Reminds me of all of the dot.com millionaires saying government should just get out of their way. Never mind that government was responsible for the creation of the internet in the first place, and that it's government oversight of securities markets that enabled them to do IPOs and get rich in the first place.

I love hearing about how all of those red self-sufficient pioneer Alaskans have been drinking the federal milkshake from that long straw down into the lower 48.

When I run into these conversations I like to remind folks about the FAA, interstate trucking regulations, USDA food inspections, federal safety standards for cribs, etc.

Actually I just wanted to write...

"Synchronize your spoons!"

As for seeing worse things, apparently I gave you the wrong impression about my "career," and corrected it in a comment on your excellent blog, where every TPMCafe denizen should take a stroll through the archives. I linked to "Citizen Journalism," which is only one of many essays there that "moves the story."

One more thing, Billy. I agree with you about McCain. Didn't want to ignore the real message of your post. It's a good, simple way to express the issue. Thanks.

Billy,

I am happy to see you taking the peanut allergies so seriously. I am sure it is probably teaching your daughter a lot about having respect and care for her fellow students.

I work in EMS and had a call a couple years back for a peanut allergy. 17 year old male. His father had a few drinks at a business gathering, and took a handful of nuts at a bar. 12 hours later, the peanut oil from his hand, caused his son to have a severe allergic reaction.

We did everything we could and then some, because I really couldn't stand the idea of telling this father that he had accidently killed his son. We just couldn't save him. I will never forget the look on Dad's face.

That is why peanut allergies are different from other allergies. Because they are common, and because people can and do die, without ever having seen or eaten a peanut or peanut product. Most don't die, but I have seen hundreds of really close calls. Thanks for your diligence, and for your post.