Ninny State

"Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector. Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always 'against,' never 'for' anything."—Ronald Reagan

I haven’t read David Harsanyi’s book Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children, but I hope to. Anita Allen’s review in the Washington Post both intrigued and infuriated me. She writes:

David Harsanyi begins his book, "Nanny State," with a libertarian fairy tale that goes like this: Once upon a time, Americans were free. We were allowed to abuse ourselves, take unreasonable risks and offend people. We enjoyed a glorious right "to be unhealthy, unsafe, immoral, and politically incorrect." But along came meddlesome politicians, bureaucrats and activists who put an end to all that. Self-righteous "wardens of well-being" mistook free adults for helpless children. Beginning more than 20 years ago with mandatory-seat-belt laws designed "to save citizens from their own self-destructive stupidity," the "nannies" next went after our booze and cigarettes. Lately, they have attempted to put the nation on a low-sugar, no-trans-fat, small-portion diet (Harsanyi’s words are bold and in quotes).

What she seems to intend to be disparaging, i.e. “libertarian fairy tale,” sounds about right to me. Apart from the rationale that follows, it is not the government’s job to take care of citizens. PERIOD!!! Free people look after themselves with recourse to criminal (law enforcement) and tort law (lawsuits) when others misuse their freedom to harm others.

Allen’s argument is that Americans have always used government for “improving character or public health and safety.” Her evidence?

Overreaching rules of other sorts reigned supreme. Under "blue laws," most retail stores and virtually all liquor stores were closed on Sundays, presumably so everyone could stay sober and go to church. More profoundly, in 1960 married couples could not legally obtain birth control in Connecticut, mixed-race couples could not marry in Virginia, black kids in Georgia attended under-funded segregated public schools and homosexual sex was against the law.

She seems to overlook the difference between laws designed to restrict immoral behavior, which they always do, and laws and regulations designed to manage every aspect of our personal lives. She doesn’t see the difference between laws that come from an earlier era where most people saw the world differently and that have slowly been superseded and laws that represent the opinion of a vocal minority. Even more basic, she doesn’t notice the difference between laws that prohibit a few things from laws that try to manage everything.

I don’t know if Harsanyi mentions this, but the sheer volume of laws and regulations and the segment of the economy now under the government’s control tells the story—federal tax code at 700 forms and 17,000 pages, federal criminal code of 1,400 pages, the federal registry of the government’s regulations that takes 75,000 pages! (That was over three years ago!)

Someone, probably my parents, taught me that “Ignorance is no excuse.” It is a principle that dates back to the Roman Empire, at least, and says that people cannot excuse themselves for breaking laws by saying they didn’t know about them. Of course, as things now stand, who could possibly know all the laws and regulations, which have become so numerous, complicated, and invasive?

Here’s another gem from Allen review: “Corporate America's advertising had our parents fooled into thinking that tobacco smoke was refreshing and carbonated soda was good for digestion.” Is Allen anti-business, do you suppose? When I went to school, they still taught “caveat emptor” or “Let the buyer beware,” but that was before the days of government-managed consumer protection. Caveat emptor is still the better attitude, not only regarding advertising or telemarketing, but also with respect to the long arm of the government itself.

Dare we entrust ourselves to the politicians and candidates to care for us? Let the buyer beware. Is it safe to put our heath and well-being into the hands of bureaucrats running a universal health care system? Let the buyer beware. Do you assume that the schools are properly teaching and caring for your children? Let the buyer beware. Are the roads safer today because of the growing number of taxes, fees, and fines the government collects from drivers, good and bad? Let the buyer beware. Is the government assuring our safety by keeping bad people out and allowing only prospect Americans in? Let the buyer beware.

The most frightening and distressing line in Allen’s review is this one: “Harsanyi seems to favor treating citizens like conscientious adults, even if they do not, in fact, have the information and education needed for responsible choices.” Pardon me for asking, incidentally, how American citizens came to lack “the information and education for responsible choices?” Let me think, could it have anything to do with the government-run public education system? That certainly gives me confidence that I want the same government looking after all my other needs.

This reminds me of the equally distressing discovery in a student’s ESL exercise on government, that I wrote about recently:

I was shocked to discover several misleading definitions. The worst was “right,” which was defined as “a power given by law or tradition.” This is NOT the definition of rights used by our forefathers.Every immigrant, refugee, and illegal alien enrolled in an American public school should learn American history and government. They should study the Declaration of Independence by actually reading and studying it. No one should ever teach them ideas that differ from “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Who in HELL (and I’m being literal, for this thinking comes straight from the pit!) is stupid enough to give a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians, who generally think first of themselves and their own futures, the responsibility to care for each of us 300 plus million individuals? Who in HELL dares to transfer the power from “we the people” to the government, in the first place?

Allen’s review ends with a discussion of how to determine the balance between what people need, for their own good, and limiting their freedom. I come down solidly on the libertarian side of that question. Freedom is not a government dispensed commodity; it is the inherent right of people who permit a government to carry out its strictly limited duties. We have allowed our American republic of self-governing citizens to become a self-empowering behemoth over which we may no longer have any real control, short of another revolution. Sadly, people like Allen, who dominate media, education, the Democratic and much of the Republican parties, and too much of the government either don’t know or don’t care about the very essence of our American heritage.

A family may choose to hire a nanny to assist the parents in caring for their children (although I personally think that parents should never trust delegate their responsibility to another, short of a catastrophic situation), but at some point, children become adults who no longer need a nanny. I find the very idea that government would come along and impose “nanny care,” on its entire population of adult citizens, offensive and contrary to commonsense. I also find it strangely ironic that, as the anti-establishment generation moves toward retirement, it now has become party to creating a “super-establishment” far more parental and intrusive than anything they rejected and protested back in the hippie era.

I for one do not need or want a bureaucratic "nanny" looking after me. I actually know my own needs better than some distant official, who couldn't possibly know or care about one of the 300 million people out here. Anyone who thinks that is the way to get quality care of any kind is a "ninny" to think so. If the American people allow this to play out, then we won't have a "nanny state;" we will be a "ninny state!"