Wow. We’re fighting about diet soda.

Anymore these days, it’s like we’ve entered the Bermuda Triangle of politics. Our moral or intellectual compasses are either stuck or spinning around like fan blades.

Last week, conservative and progressive partisans decided to have a big dust-up over whether Colorado school districts should have the right to allow sales of diet soda in high schools: a proxy battle over personal freedom and government regulation, if you will.

There were protesters. There were calamitous predictions.

There was testimony that high schoolers wouldn’t be able to control themselves with all that diet soda everywhere. (Students, by the way, who will soon be old enough to drive, vote and fight for our country.)

There was testimony that students’ “academic health” would be damaged because diet soda could give them cavities.

And there was the too-predictable desire on the part of conservatives to prove a point where sitting pat likely was the smarter move.

What a waste of time and human potential. What a sad example for the next generation.

I can’t see how either side fared well to the average middle-of-the-road Coloradan, but in a presidential election year gone off the rails it appears you do whatever you can to score points and bolster the true believers.

So: Diet soda. Not full-calorie soda, but diet soda, which I can’t imagine ever wanting to drink in the first place (as an old ad went, I want all the sugar and twice the caffeine!). For a time there, you would have thought students were going to get free cigarettes, matches and pints of bourbon.

Let’s look at the quick facts on the ground. Recently the Obama administration lightened its Smart Snacks in School beverage rules for high school students. It did so to recognize “the students’ increased independence, relative to younger students, and the wide range of beverages available to high school students in the broader marketplace.”

The change allows the older students to drink lower-calorie beverages with up to 60 calories per 12 ounces.

Staff members at Colorado’s board of education looked into the rule change and reasonably suggested that state regulations be brought in line with the new federal rules. Rules, by the way, that must be OK with Michelle Obama.

Why not let community school boards make the choice?

The answer, of course, is that in 2008 Colorado passed much stricter rules than the current federal guidelines, and advocates for keeping sugary drinks out of schools understandably want to maintain that victory.

After all, childhood obesity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells us, has more than doubled with young kids and quadrupled in adolescents in the last generation.

Childhood obesity leads to diabetes and other problems that are horrible for the sufferers and expensive for the public.

Given that history, why not keep any soda out of the classroom? Let families choose on their own how they want to handle the stuff at home. The new federal guidelines allow states to employ stricter guidelines, like Colorado’s, so why not leave well enough alone?

But conservative members of the board — also understandably — value personal freedom and responsibility and voted to reduce conflicting regulations.

“There is no better regulator than a parent,” said the board’s chairman, Steve Durham.

Who knows? Learning self-control in the presence of a diet soda machine may be good education for young people dealing with much greater temptations.

Durham’s view makes complete sense — until you consider political reality. The conservative board members knew they would face this fight. Yet they walked right into it.

Now the left has TV footage of conservative board members telling security to remove Latino protesters who are correctly noting the outsized problem of childhood obesity in minority communities.

You wonder what the kids make of it all.

Let’s hope they see through the hyperbole and consider the takeaway: As a rule of thumb, moderation goes a long, long way.

E-mail editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett at cplunkett@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @chuckplunkett

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