Ed Asner, where are you?

It used to be the American way you can read and say what you want, and you don't have to read or say what you don't want. You can eat what you want, and you don't have to eat what you don't want.

On a strictly technical level, the facts are simple: food spoilage is caused by bacteria and other microorganisms, which can be killed by radiation (without, of course, making the food radio-active). Foods can thus be preserved without questionable chemical additives, and to some degree even without refrigera-tion. Cosmetic and surgical materials can be safely and more effectively sterilized.

All of which is merely the technical preface. For the real point is much more terrifying. Food irradiation is not nuclear power, where the majority, however misinformed, overrules the minority. Irradiated foods are clearly marked with a special sign; you can buy them if you want to, and you don't have to if you don't. You are responsible for your own actions and decisions; your eating habits do not threaten anybody else.

At least, that used to be the American way. What threatens us now, is not radioactivity, but coercion by the Green Church, bent on preempting your decisions in the manner of Stalin and Ceausescu, and the other Big Brothers who knew what is good for you. What threatens is singularly brutal suppression of the freedom of choice, right now by Der Staat of Florida.

So where are you, Ed Asner and co-masqueraders of "People for the American Way?" Where are you, freedom-of-choicers, civil-rights advocates and highfalutin warriors of the ACLU?

Rhetorical questions, of course; for I know well enough where you champions of liberty are: purging campus libraries, censor-ing the media, and overruling the ballot box by noisy street demonstrations.

But let me end on a happier note. This August 1, it will be 700 years since democracy was founded: not by Greek slave owners, nor by feudal barons extracting Magna Carta, but by Swiss com-moners who in 1291 swore to rid their country of Hapsburg rule. Like America, Switzerland has never had an aristocracy. Its decentralized form of government has enabled four populations divided by language to live in peace for centuries. After serving in the army, Swiss soldiers are sent home with their rifles and am-munition ready for defense of their country: there are 1,000,000 rifles in Switzerland's attics ("assault weapons," the gun control brainwashers call them), and never has one been fired in anger.

Switzerland is the world's only country virtually safe from totalitarian aggression by nuclear or other means, for its popula-tion is willing and able to de&nd itself. The country has a for-midable civil defense (America has none). Every new Swiss home has a fall-out shelter. Its armed forces are part of no pact;

Switzerland relies only on itself. Hitler's overwhelming might could perhaps have conquered it; but not at a price even he was willing to pay.

And the Swiss have recently rejected a socialist-sponsored initiative to shut down the five nuclear plants supplying 42.6% of its electricity.

May they prosper another 700 years.