Welcome To “The Nanny State”
Welcome to the Nanny State
By Bill Steigerwald
With his book “Nanny State,†Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi has thrown a conservative-libertarian rope around a disturbing political and cultural trend — the nannification of America by moral busybodies and nitpicking maternalists who use government power to micromanage our personal lives and protect us from ourselves. Whether it’s outlawing trans fats in New York City or tag on school playgrounds, Harsanyi says the “nannyists†among us are not only creating a new culture of dependency on government but also eroding what’s left of our individual freedoms. I talked to the author of “Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning American Into a Nation of Children†by phone from his offices in Denver.
Q: What’s “Nanny State†about?
A: It’s about the difference between coercing someone to do the right thing and convincing them to do the right thing. In the Nanny State, we coerce them — or the government does, at least. All these intrusions — what we eat, what we smoke, what we watch — one by one they don’t seem like they are much. But when you bundle them together, you have a movement, and a movement that undermines our freedoms. That’s what the book’s about.
Q: Do most people know exactly what you are talking about when you mention “the Nanny State”?
A: I think people who pay attention to politics do know what we’re talking about. I’m not sure the everyday Joe does. That’s why I have a very long subtitle — to make it clear that it’s not a book about child care.
Q: Who’s responsible for this Nanny State — liberals, conservatives, Jane Fonda, Jerry Falwell?
A: All of the above. I would say that the left typically believes that government can make us better people and protect us from all the vagaries of life. On the right, at least rhetorically, we hear a lot about individual freedom. But in the past few years, and maybe it’s compassionate conservatism, we see the Republican Party coddling adults as well and buying into the Nanny State. It’s still not as bad as the liberals, but bad enough. But there are many different kinds of people involved in the Nanny State and it’s driven by all kinds of concerns — hyper-risk-aversion and political correctness are also part of it. It’s not like you can pin it down to one or two types of people. It’s a bunch of people.
Q: It’s become federalized — it’s enforced at all levels of government?
A: These ideas usually are hatched in city councils. The nannyistic endeavors of the federal government are not written about much in this book. I concentrate on local stuff. But yes, whenever we have collective health care, for instance, and all of a sudden we are responsible for each other, that just helps grow the Nanny State.
Q: What are some of your favorite examples of “Nanny State”-ism?
A: These are fun, not serious, for the most part: In New York there was a councilwoman who wanted to ban dangerously sized candy. In Chicago — and I believe in all of Illinois — they banned a certain kind of yo-yo because one child almost choked or hung himself, which doesn’t sound too funny; it was funnier when I wrote it, I guess. In Florida there are actually playgrounds that have “No Running†signs. These are things that just make you shake your head. In other places we have people who are advocating for regulations on food portions. So they count out the calories in a restaurant and tell you how much you could eat. And zero-tolerance laws where you can’t have a glass of wine and drive.
Q: Why did you feel you had to write this book?
A: Heh, heh, because they bought it from me — no. Nannyistic laws are coming down every day. I think even liberals sometimes are annoyed by the paternalistic aspects of government on that level. But again, I just don’t think that people viewed it as a movement that was encompassing the whole country. I was surprised there wasn’t a mainstream book about nannyism. I thought I could bring it together and whoever decided to read the book could understand better how dangerous this movement is.
Q: What people or what agencies are the chief practitioners of nannyism?
A: There’s a process to the whole thing. It starts with activist groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving or the Center for Science in the Public Interest and they try to scare the living daylights out of everyone. Sadly, the Centers for Disease Control has also gotten into the act. They released a so-called study that claimed that 400,000 people died from obesity each year. This was quickly debunked. But the original story had run in every newspaper in the country – “Fat is killing us.†But the corrected number hardly ran anywhere and certainly didn’t have the prominence the other stories did. It sort of softens up the American public. You know, like these bogus secondhand-smoke studies that essentially tell you that you can have worse things happen to you from secondhand smoke than actually smoking for 20 years. These things soften up the American people for the city councilman to come in and ban smoking in your home, which they’ve just done in Belmont, California.
Q: Do you take issue with things like motorcycle helmet laws and seatbelt laws, which are sort of the beginnings of the Nanny State?
A: Yes, I do. I realize the motivation behind seatbelt and helmet laws. It was the first major initiative that told people you are too stupid to take care of yourself and even if you are hurting no one else, we’ve decided you must wear seatbelts and must wear helmets.
Tucker Carlson says in the back of the book that once you can force someone to put a seatbelt on, you can force them to do anything. I go into this at length in the book. I’m not against someone wearing a seat belt, because obviously it’s for self-preservation. I don’t put a seat belt on my kids or myself because I care about some $50 fine. I do it because I care about myself. And clearly, I think that most Americans do, and the ones who don’t, don’t care about the law anyway. That’s why I think seatbelt laws are irrelevant.
Q: Is this whole petty Nanny State thing a European thing, a socialist thing?
A: It’s a sort of socialism, a sort of collective looking out for each other. It sounds nice, like socialism does on occasion. But I think what we forget sometimes is that a little thing can lead to a big thing. Here in Colorado and elsewhere they wanted to pass “driving while distracted†laws – if you are playing with your radio, they can pull you over. Doesn’t that mean that a cop can pull you over for basically anything whenever they felt like it? They could racially profile if they felt like it. They could do anything they want. That’s what people forget: they are petty laws but in the long run they could become a very big deal.
Let me go back to the socialism thing. I tried to stay away from that, only in the sense that I didn’t want the book to become something partisan. But clearly, clearly, this is a European model we’re headed for — and that’s a socialist model.
Q: We’re probably the smartest, safest, richest, most self-reliant, most anti-authoritarian society in history. Yet here we are micromanaging our lives more and more. What’s going on here?
A: I don’t know, because when you listen to the news you wouldn’t even know that we are living longer than ever before. Or that we’re healthier than ever before; our kids are healthier than ever before; we have more choices than ever before. What this is about is that there are people out there who don’t believe in free will. They are anti-capitalistic, so I guess they’re socialists.
They think that McDonald’s can convince you to come in there and be fat and eat junk. I think that most Americans still believe in free will and the freedom to make the wrong choice. Without that freedom, the rest doesn’t really mean that much. However petty it is to create a “health zone†in South Los Angeles, I think that’s an assault on freedom. It’s hard for me to believe Americans let it happen, but it’s happening everywhere..
Q: It’s innocent, I guess, on the local level as long as you can move to another town. But at some point….
A: Where do you move now? It’s happening everywhere. Colorado Springs is a conservative place, maybe one of the most conservative places in the country. They have schools that just banned tag, because some kid would have to be “it.†That’s a whole different area. We get the kids started early: this is politically correct not to have someone be “it†or someone chasing someone else.
People keep giving me the example about the frog in a pot and you just keep incrementally putting up the heat and then it’s boiling and frog doesn’t even know it. I think we’re almost there. But I don’t see any stop to it, because it’s hard for a politician to get up and defend tobacco, or strippers, or drinking and all those things, even though the underlying argument obviously is freedom of choice and individual choice. But what we’re doing is creating a nation of dependents. Not just as far as welfare programs go, but as far as people believing that government should always protect them, from Katrina all the way down to a kid playing tag. And it’s dangerous.
Q: Albert J. Nock once wrote that individuals lose the ability to “do the right thing†and develop good moral character if the government outlaws everything.
A: Even in religion, as far as I know, and I’m a lapsed Jew, God gives you the choice. He gives you free will to make the right choice. Without that choice, making the right choice means nothing. I’d always think back when I was writing this book, “What would Thomas Jefferson think about this? What would he think about banning happy hours at pubs? Or telling an Irish immigrant who owns a little pub somewhere that he can’t smoke a cigarette in there — on his own property?†I think it’s an assault on the American idea. I know that sounds dramatic, because it’s such small inconveniences, but that’s what they are.
And then you have to deal with the argument about externalities – “Well, if you smoke, I have to pay for your health care in the end.†Clearly, that’s a slippery slope, because then you can tell me to exercise every day. That never ends. But the more we socialize on a federal level, and clearly that’s coming with health care, then we’re all going to be collectively looking out for each other. That never ends. It’s never-ending right now, and it’s accelerating. Soon we’ll be at the Nanny State. It’s Orwellian. I know people throw around Orwell’s name a lot, but if you read “1984†the protagonist is trying to sneak a cigarette – because small things lead to big things. I think that’s the lesson there, and that’s the lesson I hope this book will convey to people.
Q: It’s hard to believe that this Nanny State mentality is going to go away or lose its steam. Were you discouraged by what you found?
A: Sure, yeah. I’m pessimistic about the future. My parents defected from Hungary in 1969 to get away from this sort of thing — the whole socialization we’re going through. For my kids to have to be heading into it is a depressing thought. And that’s where we’re headed on every level. I blame Republicans the most for not standing up for individual freedom — even rhetorically, as Reagan did.
Bush’s compassionate conservatism was just another nannyistic idea, in my opinion, and there’s no one left to stop it that I can see.
At some point there is always push-back, but I don’t know where that will be. I could have written another book on nannyistic laws since I wrote this one, because that’s how fast it’s coming. We have guys like (New York Mayor) Michael Bloomberg — who’s somewhat popular in this country — whose only ideological stand is nannyism. He doesn’t really stand for anything else — except protecting people from themselves. So, yeah, pessimistic. Big-time.
Bill Steigerwald is a columnist at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. His column is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons. ©Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, All Rights Reserved.
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35 Responses to “Welcome To “The Nanny State””
I find reading this review to be a lot like when I read something by a feminist who goes on and on about the mythical patriarchy. Beyond the fantasy through which one lumps everything government does as nannyism or everything about gender roles as patriarchy, I know there is something important to discuss. It is important to discuss where the healthiest boundary is between freedom and personal foolishness and why it’s foolish to say any individual has to find that boundary for himself or herself, that the government shouldn’t help people in that at all. Yet as soon as one starts talking about a mythical nanny state, one has left the real world for some fantasy where everything is black and white. It is human nature to think of the world as a cartoon rather than as it really is, but it is a distortion that is best overcome. The term “nanny state” doesn’t help me get to the reality of the issue. It just tells me the prejudice of the speaker, much like “patriarchy”.
I wish there were a nation where government took care of the people as a good nanny or a good father would, with some perfect balance of freedom and rules for its citizens. I’d like to see what that looks like. Instead the reality of bureaucracies is that they are not just driven by knowledge and a desire to help people, yet that’s not an argument for ignorance and apathy. Freedom is real. Rules are real. We need both. Exactly how much of each we need is debatable, but “nanny state” doesn’t help that debate any more than it does to say conservatives are smart, while liberals are stupid.
There should be a rule against embracing such cognitive distortions. Otherwise we have to wait until people give up listening to prejudice on their own. That could be a very long time. I know why I wouldn’t want government imposing such a rule on everyone, but you know there are other possibilities apart from government deciding everything and individuals each reinventing the wheel.
Libertarians are despicable, soulless people with no moral compass. They behave like rebelious adolescents. I would take religious conservatives over them anytime. At least they have convictions and concern themselves with issues of greater import than monetary values.
[...] 6th, 2007 by Michael van der Galiën Further confirmation that America will not be ruled by tyrants. Instead, American will – more than happily – freely [...]
Q: Who’s responsible for this Nanny State — liberals, conservatives, Jane Fonda, Jerry Falwell?
A: All of the above.
Take it to the bank. And start actually paying attention to and getting involved in local politics.
AMEN to DavidD-
The most natural state of man, as of all nature, is to contain conflicting traits, values, morals, goals, and so on down the line. The yin and the yang.
LIving consists of making choices between and among conflicting concepts.
Public debates are dominated by a false either/or paradigm and jingoism.. I’ve been raging for years about how corrosive is the ‘message by slogan’ form of advocacy. It strangles thoughtful consideration at birth.
The latest answer to every controversy is ‘states rights’. That posits the answer before the question is fully understood. It cuts off the necessary step of considering the practical ways a ‘states rights’ solution would work out on the ground in a particular case. Can the state and the federal government co-operate instead of compete in a particular case? At least the question should be asked!
For example, I was startled to hear about the trans-fat ban in NY. At first glance, it did feel like the government was trying to police our dinner plates.
I soon realized, however, that this was a far more complex issue than the headlines indicate.
Aside from teens, those most likely to eat at fast food joints are those with strict budget and/or time limitations.
They don’t have the ‘liberty’ of choosing between healthy and unhealthy food; their choices are made by thei wallets and the number of limits in their lunch hours.
What may look like restricions on personal liberties to those who enjoy plenty of them may look like liberation from exploitation to those whose liberties are few.
At the very least, let’s talk about these issues more fully and thoughtfully. Let’s stop pretenting that the answers are ckear-cut and easy.
Agree with Doma and David- this is not a black/white issue, but one of balance between individual freedoms and protection of society at large.
Laws against drunk driving protect everyone- not just the drunk driver. And motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets end up in the emergency rooms with serious head injuries, while the taxpayer often picks up the tab for extensive treatment.
As we’ve recently discovered ideologically-based solutions often don’t work in the real world- even if they look good on paper.
The are other ways to get people to wear helmets and wear seatbelts besides writing traffic tickets. Give emergency rooms the ability to refuse aid to motorcycle riders to do not wear their helmets or driver who were not wearing their seatbelts.
I guess drug use is one of the worse examples of the nanny state. Look at the left wants to medicalize drug use. Let people have all the fun they want and when they destroy or disrupt their lives, let the government step in to pick up the pieces.
The nanny state can best be described as an enabler. People make poorly thought out decision and the government is suppose to step in and clean up the mess.
I guess as long as people believe that the government is suppose to “take care of its citizens” the government will keep growing at a much faster rate than inflation and eventually consume the entire economy.
I guess what also makes the nanny state so onerous is how the rich are able to escape for the nanny parts but the middle class feels the full negative impact.
Hospitals and medical personnel are not geared up to turn away critically injured patients, they are there to save lives- and I don’t think that’s a very humane solution, SD. What about the 16 year old kid who just goes for a joy ride? I certainly think a majority of American parents would rather their kids get a ticket than turned away at the ER. And I don’t know of any rational person who would think that allowing drunk drivers to stay on the road is a good idea.
BTW, since you are buying into this, isn’t the effort to put God back into our schools and our government, plus ban abortion , gay marriage and drugs all part and parcel of the Nanny State from the opposite side of the political spectrum? The religious right thinks the role of government is legislating morality.
The religious right thinks the role of government is legislating morality.
Funny, so does much of the left. Just from different angles.
And motorcyclists who don’t wear helmets end up in the emergency rooms with serious head injuries, while the taxpayer often picks up the tab for extensive treatment.
And the more the state horns in on paying for things that people should pay for themselves, the more power you hand the state to tell you what to do in your private life under that theory. With the state having to pay for so much of health care, under that theory they can justify regulating every portion of our lives.
Should we ban unprotected sex because people who get AIDS impact the public purse? If you think that’s a stretch, go back and look at the trans-fat bans and the rationales for them.
tully,
You forgot that the nanny state never cross the line in the homosexual behavior because homosexuals are rich, urban, overwhelmingly white and educated. Since the vote overwhemingly Democratic, the nanny state is designed to lessen the impact of their behaviors without ever interfering with them.
A goodl example of the nanny state is that it is much harder for people who have cancers that do not respond to standard therapies to get on protocol for experimental drugs. The liberal nanny state is almost to the point of outlawing medical reserach in the U.S. for cancer therapy.
On the other hand, the government has basically thrown out the rule book when it comes to AIDS research. All of the rules that apply to new chemotherapy agents to not apply to new AIDS drugs. In addition, homosexual activist activity encourage non-protocol use of experimental AIDS drugs while the same people keep insisting on additional rules for experimental cancer drugs.
Tully- You wouldn’t try to ban behaviors that are unenforceable, like forcing people to use condoms. There’s a reasonable balance between personal freedoms and protection of society as a whole. The arguments come in deciding where the line should be drawn— unless you’re an anarchist, you believe in some government regulation of private behavior when it crosses that line.
The right concentrates on legislating morality from a religious standpoint, the left from a social justice standpoint.
I’m going to ignore SD’s comments- because he doesn’t even try to use facts–just what he believes to be true. In point of fact, gays don’t always vote as a bloc for Democrats, and most Democrats actually believe they should have the same rights that straight people have. For me, its a point of principle- a civil rights issue.
This is a good example of why discussions seldom evolve beyond people with different views simply stating their different opinions and then retreating to their respective corners.
The minute a new topic is raised, a nifty label gets slapped on it that oversimplifies the topic beyond recognition. This shorthand shortcutting stifles real analysis at birth.
‘Legislating morality’ (like ‘nanny state”) reduces what all is involved to the level of a nursery rhyme.
The following statement, for example, is true:-
“…the more the state horns in on paying for things that people should pay for themselves, the more power you hand the state to tell you what to do ..”
-but it speaks to only one part of what is true.
The rest of the picture consists of what happens when the state doesn’t horn in.
Not horning in doesn’t make the people who can’t/won’t pay for themselves disappear. They, and the costs they incur, remain right here and they impact on us individually and as a society. Everyone else absorbs the costs they incur, and everyone else miises out on what they could, but don;t contribute.
The only way to avoid that is to opt for genocide or
simply watching as they rot, and no civilized society could survive those options.
I think, then, we should throw out the nifty tags and talk about pragmatic ways to improve the basic poblem. Ignoring it, as I said, won’t make it disappear. Some legislation is aimed at shifting people from the cost incurring to the contributing sector of society. That’s what a lot of this is about; It’s not about legislating morality at all.
The concern for personal liberties is legitimate.
Again, let’s not stoop to sweeping generalizationts without looking at what is really involved. in a particular case. What liberties, for example, are sacrificed by banning trans fats? Those with freedom of funds can always find a cook to serve up all the trans fats they want.
At the same time, those with limited choces in where and what they eat gain, because they are no longer locked into a trans-fat world. The rest of us gain, because we can hope for less diabetes and other health problem costs to impact on all of our pocket books.
It’s always a trade-off. It’s always complicated. It’s usually a hard decision to make.
But it’s never solved by a simplistic and formulaic label like ‘legislating morality’.
[...] Here’s an interview about Nanny State with Bill Steigerwald at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. My answers are somewhat fuzzy in this one, though I think I touch on all the points that need touching on. Q: Who’s responsible for this Nanny State — liberals, conservatives, Jane Fonda, Jerry Falwell? A: All of the above. I would say that the left typically believes that government can make us better people and protect us from all the vagaries of life. On the right, at least rhetorically, we hear a lot about individual freedom. But in the past few years, and maybe it’s compassionate conservatism, we see the Republican Party coddling adults as well and buying into the Nanny State. It’s still not as bad as the liberals, but bad enough. But there are many different kinds of people involved in the Nanny State and it’s driven by all kinds of concerns — hyper-risk-aversion and political correctness are also part of it. It’s not like you can pin it down to one or two types of people. It’s a bunch of people. [...]
Note that he does not decry the theocratic state tendencies of the right, only when they apparently buy into his definition of the “Nanny State”. Given the tendencies of many young men who ride motorcycles to be the ones who have no health insurance any argument against the idea that society overall pays a price for their lack of judgment in not wearing a helmet is as lacking as their judgment.
doma has a good point about transfats as well. It’s not as though they have some inherent advantage compared to the alternatives. I haven’t noticed a decline in taste or quality in the places I eat that have quit using them (Not due to any local law, either.).
You wouldn’t try to ban behaviors that are unenforceable, like forcing people to use condoms.
That explains the lack of laws against marijuana use, and the legality of polygamy and polyandry and gay marriage and such. Oh, wait….
My example was hyperbole, of course, an absurdity of extension, but it’s a very logical extension of the rationale that society’s monetary “rights” outweigh the rights of the individual. If that’s the touchstone standard, then there are NO limits on the “right” of the government to regulate behavior. None. The flip side of that is the total loss of individual rights, and the road to “Everything not forbidden is mandatory, and everything not mandatory is forbidden.”
I’ll skip the left/right bit. You already know my opinion on simplistic facile categorization. I just don’t see a lot of difference between one set of nannies trying to save us all from ourselves, and the other set of nannies trying to save us all from ourselves. They may have different rationalizations for doing so, but the effect is the same–an empowerment of more governmental intrusion into private affairs, the erosion of individual liberty.
[...] (more…) [...]
Tully said:
“My example was hyperbole, of course, an absurdity of extension, but it’s a very logical extension of the rationale that society’s monetary “rights†outweigh the rights of the individual.”
I don’t think that an absurdity of extension can, at the same time, be a logical (in the sense of denoting ‘rational’) exentsion. It can, I will grant, be an absurd exageration to serve as a warning against extremes. That’s a different concept, however, and I am bending over backwars to read the rest of the comment in that light. It did continue in the same absurdly exagerated vein, in spite of protestations to the contrary.
The best way to avoid extremes is to pay attention to particulars.
If drug laws need reform, let’s talk about reforming drug laws without sweeping other, unrelated, laws into the same basket.
If individual liberties are threatened, let’s talk about which liberties those are instead of claiming that all liberties are threatened.
If leaving an issue up to the states is the proposed solution, let’s look at how that would would work out in the particular instance instead of claiming that leaving everything for states to determine is the only way to preserve federalism.
BTW, I can’t resust the following to counter ominous warnings about slippery slopes:
Driving at 5 mph one morning does not mean that you will inevitably be led to drive 150 mph every day for the rest of your life.
Trent Lott was quite eloquent in a speech on a related subject. He spoke about the need to get out in the world to become familiar with the variety among people and their ideas. It’s good medicine to prevent extremes in thought as well as in action.
Tully is right, IMO- the difference between left and right on these issues is strictly a matter of selection of which ‘morals’ to enforce. You can always make the case that infringement of freedoms is correct in a given situation based on the notion that the actions affect society and not just the individual. Each of us is more likely to see the logic in those arguments in direct proportion to how much we personally object to the actions; if you’re concerned about the debasement of traditional values, you make the arguments about behaviors related to sexuality, alcohol and drugs; if you’re concerned about physical health issues you make the arguments about trans fats, smoking, and seat belts. Both involve the same concepts; the ‘righties’ who argue about the first set of issues argue that there’s a cost to society when we lose our ‘family values’ orientation, and the ‘lefties’ who argue about the second set point out direct costs like healthcare. There’s also some crossover: people who are more left leaning might agree with the moral ‘nannyism’ when it comes to protecting kids from child pornography, and people who are more right leaning might be sympathetic to some of the legislation on diet or smoking, or acceptant of seat belt laws. It’s not always a right-left issue, but we all ought to be more careful before we sign our rights away, and make sure we know what the fine print says- because Tully’s right, once you erode the basic principle, you may have just taken the brakes off of the government. Best to make sure you still have an emergency brake in case you start rolling down that slope.
‘Tully is right, IMO- the difference between left and right on these issues is strictly a matter of selection of which ‘morals’ to enforce”
The argument is wrong from the gitgo if it insists on interpreting everything in terms of morals. Mrore often, proposals are attempts to solve a problem in the most pragmetic way possible.
The argument is also wrong to ring alarm bells about signing rights away in ominous tones without specifying exactly what rights are in danger in a particular case.
Certainly we should be careful.
We should also be careful of being so careful that we become unable to move while a speeding train is barreling down on us.
Making these kind of sweeping political generalizations creates a smokescreen preventing the realistic evaluation of any and all propositions
If we’re not careful, it can become just another political ploy.
What sweeping political generalizations?
I think the fundies are part of the package as well-who are they to determine my immortal soul’s status through political gerrymandering and parochial thinking. I have to laugh everytime someone says “Conservative Christian values” the two don’t add up nor are they mutually exclusive. It would make more sense to say Conservative AND Christian values. People seem to forget that John, Paul,Peter, Andrew and the rest were all rebels hiding in caves following a man who was speaking out against the Republic of Rome. A man who spoke of love, not war.
Bans on smoking in public places are not about forcing smokers to do something for their own good, they’re about not letting smokers force others to inhale their smoke.
And I have to laugh every time I hear a liberal who thinks that conservatives shouldn’t claim Jesus as one of their own, and then goes on to show why they think he was really a liberal.
The reason you can argue it either way is that the values Christ proclaimed are compatible with many of the goals of the liberal agenda (social justice) but he didn’t promote the use of government to meet those goals. In fact, He was pretty emphatic in that His kingdom was of the next world, not this one, and He avoided the trap that was laid for him in the question of taxation. When he said to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, I don’t hear Him saying that we should expect Caesar to feed the lambs with the coins we render unto Him- that charge was asked of us as individuals, to take care of our brethren.
CS-
What sweeping statements?
Debasement of individual values
Erosion of personal liberty
Jesus didn’t promote the use of government to meet sodial justice goals (did he warn against government intrusion?)
My point: keep generalized assertions about motives out of it. Talk about a specific issue in specific terms.
PS
Health issues are primarily a matter of national concern in terms of how to keep to country going economically and practically. The moral aspect may be a selling point for some, but it would not fly on its own, unless if it wasn’t driven by economic soncerns.
Making health equivaent to concerns about pronogrhphy, is, well, pronographic.
Doma,
I’m sorry but I’m not following you at all. Feel free to clarify, or not, as you wish.
If it’s wrong to make a sweeping generalization about the absolute necessity of starting from a position of upholding personal liberty, and maintaining checks on the govt’s authority to limit it, then I stand guilty of that charge. My position is that this should always be the starting point, and if we make exceptions to grant authority to the govt over our personal liberties, we ought to be very aware that we’re doing so and we ought to have broad support for the idea that it’s a necessity to do so.
And when you argue that health concerns are a matter of economic concern (presumably arguing that moral values are not- correct me if I’m misinterpreting that), I’d disagree (with the latter part that I’m inferring- again, feel free to correct if that’s not what you were saying). Moral values can be every bit as economically relevant in terms of family structure being conducive to better economic conditions, for example.
That’s got to be one of the most thoughtless posts I’ve come across at TMV in a long while (or at least since LL’s previous comment). What if we all did what you did, LL, and label all liberals as “despicable, soulless people with no moral compass” or all conservatives as “despicable, soulless people with no moral compass”? Is that any way to conduct an intelligent debate?
Your post is factually inaccurate. Libertarians are not necessarily libertines. Libertarianism is a philosophy about what one believes the government should be empowered to do–not how one should live one’s life.
There are a number of libertarians who abstain from drinking, smoking, drugs, and other illicit activities but don’t think the government should impose laws that others should be forced to do the same.
Also, the idea that libertarians have no convictions is laughable. If anything, it’s the perception that libertarians adhere too strongly to their principles (pursuing a purist ideology) that turns people off of libertarianism.
Those of you defending the Nanny State (or reacting defensively to assertion that we have a Nanny State) seem to be missing the point Harsanyi is trying to make.
This isn’t an argument that the ends Nanny Stater are trying to achieve are wrong. It’s the means they employ that is wrong.
Few people would deny that we’d be better off if we didn’t smoke cigarettes, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, eat excessive amounts of fatty foods, or refuse to wear seat belts when driving. No one is disagreeing with the idea that convincing others to live healthier lives is a noble thing to do.
But when you pass laws against such things, you are resorting to the use of force rather than the power of persuasion. That is what government is…force. The government doesn’t make suggestions about how you should live your lives. It passes laws that are backed up by the implicit use of force.
When you pass a law saying that people can’t smoke in restaraunts, you’re basically arguing that if anyone smokes in a restaraunt, you’re willing to have the state fine or imprison these people for not living their lives the way you insist they do.
Nanny state laws are laws that make criminals out of people who commit victimless acts. Such laws infringe on our civil liberties and are fraught with unintended consequences because they are prosecuted by a bunch of government bureacrats–many of whom have far less common sense that you or I.
Perhaps the worst example of the Nanny State gone wrong is our government’s War on Drugs.
When a government is so bent on reducing drug use that it is willing to send SWAT teams into people’s houses to prevent them from using drugs in the privacy of their own homes (and occasionally bursting into the homes of innocent people), you know that government is out of control.
Nick,
I think your points are valid but I’d say that this is one of those cases where you open yourself up to the charge that “libertarians adhere too strongly to their principles”. The adherence to principle, in this case, is the assertion that these are all victimless crimes, when in almost all cases you can argue that the behaviors do affect all of society. There are all kinds of costs to society from poor health choices, drug use, etc (and on smoking, I have to agree with Jim S-yes, unbelievable as that may be, that smoking laws are based on second hand smoke, not the effects on the smoker him/herself.)
I’m with you in principle, as to the starting point of personal liberty to make even bad choices. But then the arguments begin, and each should be weighed on it’s own merits and the ‘societal interest’ in prohibiting or regulating a behavior should be weighed against the interest of individuals in limiting the government’s authority. In most cases, I’d come down closer to the liberty side, but I think libertarians tend to be too pure on that in insisting that poor behavioral choices are purely victimless crimes.
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He addresses the ends, or end, as well — that the concept of government is beyond a true government and has become a service agency is not enough — what is sought is government as a surrogate parent, as if it really were a nanny:
* * *
Me, too. It’s the basic libertarian character of this country and of Americans, an English heritage. The burden of proof normally is and must be on government and proponents to justify what is proposed that government do. That is a sound general principle, not a “sweeping assertion” [sic].
That’s one area where I side with authority (or compulsion) over liberty, too; these behaviors frequently are not victimless.
A number of victimless crimes that people claim are not victimless, truly are victimless.
Second-hand smoke is a perfect example. People are always arguing that banning smoking in restaurants is justified on the basis that second-hand smoke harms people.
Second-hand smoke certainly does harm people. But no one forced the “victim” to enter the restaurant in which smoking was allowed.
Someone who inhales second-hand smoke in a restaurant that permits smoking is no more a victim than a than a person who gets tackled in a football game in which tackling is permitted.
In other words, one cannot be a victim if they are knowingly subjecting themselves to an activity that it permitted in a particular environment.
On another point, a real “crime” is one in which the perpertrator and the victim are two different people. The idea that drug users are committing a crime because they are inflicting harm upon themselves is ridiculous. That would be like arguing that eating fast food on a daily basis is a crime on the basis that they are inflicting harm upon themselves.
In a free society, people must take responsibility for their own actions–whether they are choosing to engage in an unhealthy activity or whether they are willingly entiring environments where unhealthy activities are permitted. It is not the government’s job to decide that people are endangering their own health and then punishing them as criminals.
Actually, drug users typically harm others as well as themselves, beginning with abuse or neglect of their family members and others in their lives.
DLS,
Wouldn’t it make more sense to criminalize abuse or neglect rather than drug use itself?
People who drink alcohol are responsible for thousands of drunk driving deaths each year. However, we don’t criminalize alcohol use just because a minority of alcohol users drink and drive and cause automobile accidents that claim lives.
If you truly hate the Nanny State, DLS, then you ought to be against the War on Drugs, which is basically the Nanny State on steroids.
Just wait until SWAT teams break into people’s homes to arrest anyone smoking a cigarette. Using the perverse “it’s for your own good and for the good of society” logic of the War on Drugs, it’s only a matter of time until cigarette smokers are targetted.
Then again, Congress receives quite a bit of money from the tobacco lobby. You’d better believe that if there had been a marijuana lobby back in the 1930′s, marijuana would be legal today.
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