Opinion: The Government's Just Not That Into You

(April 2) -- Unconditional love is a lot harder than it looks. Brothers and sisters can be morons, parents can be buffoons, spouses can be louses and kids can be brats. But we try, every day, to love people just as they are.

Patriotism is a form of unconditional love, too. I may get really ticked off at the state of our nation, but my love for America is unwavering. I think most of us are like this, so I'm generally loath to question another person's patriotism -- just because you don't believe what I do doesn't mean you love this country any less.

But recently, I've felt that my unconditional love of country isn't being reciprocated.

Maybe America's just not that into me.

How else can you explain the near-constant nanny-state efforts by government to push, prod and clean up my act?

Every day, he tells me to drink less, drive a greener car, stop wearing fur, start eating organic and quit doing a host of other awesome-but-terrible-for-me things because I'm just not good enough the way I am. Nor am I smart enough to realize that he knows what's best for me.

Health care reform is just one example -- President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress are going to force me to buy health insurance. They say it's because they love me and want me to be healthy. But the way I see it, they're actually kind of ashamed of me and my fungal toe nail, missing teeth and mysterious back rash. Indeed, they really think I ought to get that looked at.

Obama's health care bill will also levy a 10 percent excise tax on tanning beds, because my skin doesn't actually belong to me, it belongs to the president. (Don't even think about getting a tattoo, young lady.)

State governments don't seem to like me much, either.

Case in point? New York Gov. David Paterson wants to tax sugary sodas, I guess because he thinks I would feel and look better if I drank more Evian.

Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Felix Ortiz is trying to ban salt from New York City restaurants, because ingesting a metric ton of sodium with my sea bass would most definitely kill me -- and I can't be trusted to use any less than a metric ton.

In Santa Clara, Calif., Democratic Supervisor Ken Yeager wants the toys banned from McDonald's Happy Meals, because we're all terrible parents who can't say "no" to our kids.

Cigarettes in New York City now cost something like $74 a pack, because only rich people with monocles and top hats should be able to indulge in something that's totally legal.

Sure, my government couches it all in the language of love -- I'll feel better and it will save me money -- but in the end, what he's really saying is, "I love you, you're perfect, now change."

But in the America that I know and unconditionally love, I should be allowed to be as moronic, stupid and unhealthy as I want, as long as the only idiot I'm hurting is myself. But that worldview is probably yet another thing my government doesn't like about me.

So I'm evaluating my options. Do I leave him? Do I change? Do I compromise by drinking one bottle of wine a night instead of three? Or do I mess with his head by becoming everything he wants me to be, and then dumping him -- publicly, on Facebook?

Maybe we just need some relationship counseling to make him realize that I'm an adult and can make my own decisions, and he should love me just as I am.

Either way, this unconditional love business is a lot harder than it looks.

S.E. Cupp is a conservative columnist and author of the book "Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity," due out April 27.


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