I agree with Pete that Sarah Palin is dead wrong on this one. Encouraging parents to monitor their children’s weight and to give them a healthy diet is one thing, mandating it is quite another.

That’s the difference between Michelle Obama and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which would like nothing better than to require that parents provide a prescribed diet, devoid of anything that tastes good. This group, which could with more accuracy be called the Center for the Suppression of All Pleasure in Life, is currently suing McDonald’s in California over the toys it puts in children’s “happy meals.” As detailed by my friend Walter Olson, their argument is that the toys make the meals too appealing to kids, who then bully their parents into buying the fattening meals, the parents giving in rather than face life with pouting children. They are seeking class-action status so that other parents, helpless before their children’s demands, can join in. San Francisco and Marin County (across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco) have already outlawed happy meals. They certainly have a low opinion of their citizens’ parenting skills. (Personally, I can remember all too well how my mother could bring my brother and me to heel with a single glance.)

The Center for Science in the Public Interest and such organizations, it seems to me, are staffed and supported by the philosophical descendants of New England Puritans. They wanted to build a shining city on a hill and, to do so, were only too happy to run everyone’s life for them.