First, governments produce no product (or service) for their pay. All their income is taken forcibly from those who have earned it in the form of various taxes. Therefore, the government cannot give money to anyone without first taking it from someone else. So to suggest new subsidies only results in higher taxation of others.

Second, I don’t know about in Australia, but here in America, the primary reason the people are overweight is because all the food has been switched to high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. The body cannot properly metabolize HFCS so it just gets stored as fat – even if you exercise. Its really wicked stuff, and its very cheap and tastes great so there’s a lot of incentive for all food manufacturers to put it in their products. It also provides a use for all that corn we make here. In classic “love of money” fashion, the nation has effectively created a health epidemic that also has the wonderful benefit of giving doctors and drug manufacturers an endless supply of unhealthy people to treat. Believe me, the government doesn’t *want* us to be healthy and fit.

Anyways, I know that has little to do with your article but I thought I should mention it.

For a great article on HFCS, check this out:
www.sprol.com/2005/10/high-fructose-corn-syrup

Nathan Schellinger, USA

So by all means bring on the sporting club subsidies. But governments must also seek to remind us of the overwhelming importance of individual virtue, morality and conscience. Without all this, no amount of carrot and stick regulation will even come close to dealing with our many pressing national problems.

I suggest that Scripture does NOT give governments the authority to subsidise anything but only to “commend what is good and punish what is bad” (to approximate the words of Romans 13:3-5 and 1 Peter 2:14).

So I recommend that we work for governments to operate as insurance companies do – apply assured penalties to bad behaviour (NB: not bad thinking) and let the absence of penalty be the reward for taking personal responsibility.

As an aside, the Victorian government enquiry into removal of Equal Opporetunity Act exemptions for churches and private schools, and the move to arm the Equal Opportunity Commission with inquisitorial powers to investigate possible discrimination of its own volition, is a two-pronged attempt to “make people do good” which is
a) contrary to its Biblical mandate
and
b) futile

I encourage every reader here to ask Family Voice for a briefing paper on the issue.

John Angelico

Naturally I got asked how I did it, to which I replied that I could write the world’s shortest book on the subject which would really just amount to a brief treatise on discipline and common sense with food and exercise. It is easy to make excuses for yourself, but ultimately you have to decide what you want your life to be. It’s not the philosophy that is hard (or complicated for that matter), it’s the courage to keep going when it seems unrewarding and you are ‘not in the mood’. That’s when it matters the most. How you apply that is something that is likely to be different for everybody, but ultimately there is just no substitute for pain and sweat.

I remember thinking that the 24kg (my original goal, but I pushed a bit longer at the end) was an impossible idea at the beginning, but I got a nice surprise. But if the motivation doesn’t come from within (and that’s the funny intangible where God does a major work), it’s doubtful that a person will change as much, and – most importantly – make that change into something permanent. You can lead a horse to water…

Maybe unhealthy food should/could just be more expensive!

Mark Rabich

John Adams the second president of America said in an address to the Military, 11 October 1798:
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”

David Skinner, UK

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch