Government Should Protect Health and Welfare of Citizens

To The Editor:
The Aug. 11 Herald offers this quotation from Thomas Jefferson: “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
Here is another quotation from Jefferson, inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.: “…laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered…institutions must.
In other words, Jefferson realized that society and society’s needs will inevitably change over the course of time, that those needs will not remain static for-ever. And he was smart enough to understand that as those needs change, as new challenges arise, it is utter foolishness to think that laws, and the institution of government’s role in addressing those needs and challenges, would — indeed, as some contend, must be restricted to the environment of the 1700s and 1800s.
Were Jefferson alive today, there can be little doubt that he would reject as ridiculous and preposterous the notion that the functions of government in the 21st century must be exactly the same as those of government in the 18th and 19th centuries as though, in both domestic and international affairs, no new issues have arisen; no new challenges have emerged; dangers have evolved; no new wisdom gained; as though absolutely nothing has changed in 220 years.
One such example of a new challenge was cited in a recent Spout Off: the problem of defective baby cribs that have injured and killed babies. A similar challenge or need unforeseen two centuries ago is the danger posed to children by paint formulated with lead, which can damage children’s nervous systems. Or building materials containing asbestos, which can cause lung cancer. Only in the last decade or so have we all been made aware — thanks in part to government action — of the duplicity and dis-honesty — criminality, in fact, of cigarette manufacturers, of their immoral crusade to trap youth into a lifetime of addiction to tobacco.
The philosophy that says that government must sit back and blithely ignore such tragic situations, that it must be powerless to do anything about them, that it is a “nanny” government that acts to address and correct them, is a philosophy that is beyond comprehension. I certainly will not be the one to argue that it is more important not to “waste the labors” of the cigarette manufacturers or of the com-panies that produced the cribs, paints, or building materials, then it is for government to protect the health and welfare of its citizens, indeed to save the lives of those who unknowingly are exposed to the dangers of these products.
JAMES DAVIS
Avalon
(PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The author is absolutely correct. Our Constitution is written with provisions for altering our gov-ernment as necessary.