THE DARK SIDE: ‘We’ already know the solution to obesity

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Wisconsin is going to receive $27.5 million from the federal government to hector the citizenry into losing weight.

Unfortunately, it is a lot easier to burn $27.5 million dollars than it is to burn 27.5 million calories. So, the money will be wasted. In fact, it would probably be better to burn the money than spend it.

At least burning it wouldn’t give the people who administer this boondoggle the false notion that they are actually contributing to society.

But if the government really wants people to lose weight, there is a simple way to go about it.

It needs to start with what are called “First Principles.”

The First Principle when it comes to losing weight is that the only reason people lose weight is to have better sex with higher quality partners. Some folks might say they do it for “better health,” but we are all intelligent adults here. We all know that “better health” is just a euphemism for “better sex with higher quality partners.”

Please don’t go all egalitarian on me now. Just because all men and women are created equal, it is not true that all men and women are of equal quality when it comes to having sex.

Now that our First Principle has been established, all we need to do is use that principle to actually get people to lose weight.

I suggest we adopt a variant on the dystopian state described by Yevgeny Zamyatin in his 1924 novel, “We.”

One of the laws in the state is the Lex Sexualis, which provides, “Every number has a right to any other number, as a sexual commodity.” “Number” is the state’s word for “person.”

The state decides how many times per year you need to have sex, and it is your fundamental right to have sex with whichever “number” you want on your allotted occasions.

We could adopt a law like that here in Wisconsin, with the following caveat: you can’t have any sex if you are obese.

Please don’t go all constitutional on me now. I realize nothing in the Constitution says that the government has the authority to compel the use of people as commodities.

But nothing in the Constitution says that the government has the power to burn $27.5 million on hectoring people to lose weight either. And nothing in the Constitution says the government can force you to buy health insurance, but numerous federal courts have held that constitutional.

Furthermore, being born should be deemed implicit consent to the law, just like driving a car constitutes implicit consent to a blood alcohol test.

So, the constitutional argument is a nonstarter.

Besides, we would pretty much have to overrule every U.S. Supreme Court opinion since 1937 if we wanted to have a government that is actually limited in its powers in some meaningful way. After all, nothing in the Constitution says the government has the authority to limit the production of wheat, and yet that was held constitutional in Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

Such a law would not only be constitutional, it would be great public policy. We’d all have lots of sex and nobody would be obese. And it would save a fortune on preventable health problems.

What could possibly go wrong?