I already HAVE a Father...

My daughter tells me that the president passed a law banning flavored cigarettes. [link] The reasoning, apparently, was that the flavored smokes were targeting a young market, and young people shouldn’t smoke. She says all the “scene kids” are bitching about it on myspace.
Let me first assure you that I, myself am a former smoker. Quitting was one of the hardest things I have had to do. I was appalled to learn shortly before the election that Mr. Obama is a smoker. I still voted for him. I don’t believe that his status as a smoker has any bearing on his ability to fulfill the duties of his office, unless of course, he gets emphysema or cancer.
I believe that smoking is a terrible addiction which costs the nation untold billions in healthcare dollars. I believe that people should stop smoking voluntarily or be forced to pay extra penalties in the form of higher cigarette taxes and higher insurance premiums.
Having said that let’s suppose for a minute that the government became less paternalistic. Let’s say they take a look at the way the health care industry is going down the tubes with higher costs and an increasingly elderly population, and they say,” What we need here is a decrease in the population. Let’s repeal all the seat-belt and helmet laws. Let people light up cigarettes anywhere they want. Hell! Lets give away free cigarettes with the purchase of every bottle of Jack Daniels.”
“While we’re at it why don’t we get rid of all those pesky warning labels on hair dryers, telling people not to use them in water.”
You know, that for every one of those warnings there was some poor schmuck who thought it was a good idea, right? Like the warning on the 'Superman' cape that says "Cape does not enable flight." Or the one on the Swedish chainsaw that says "Do not attempt to stop blade with hands."
We have state and federal government legislating what types of fats we can consume. We have people suing fast food chains and cookie companies because they got fat eating their products.
Just what the hell happened to personal accountability? At what point did we lose touch with our responsibility for our own actions?
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Why should we spend so much of our time and resources saving people from themselves?
Why not allow natural selection to thin the herd? Why save the stupid, only to allow them to reproduce and further weaken the gene pool?
There is a good sound reason for natural selection. Nature is ruthless because she has to be. She has limited resources… And so do we.

More later.