The Nanny State

[marmar]

by Robert Koehler at HuffPost:
The Nanny State
Posted August 23, 2007 | 11:08 AM (EST)




The "ahhh" of familiar pleasure I felt as I accelerated cut off abruptly as I watched the gas-mileage readout on my sister's new Camry plummet.

How dare the requirements of fuel-efficient driving presume to contradict the habits -- and unacknowledged godlike joys -- of a lifetime of gasoline consumption? I looked at my sister, a "hypermiling" neo-enthusiast, who seemed to be wagging her finger at me (she wasn't, but I'm sure the impulse was there), and said, "Nanny state."

At least I uttered it as a joke -- that grating, illuminating expression of adolescent politics and individual triumphalism. Libertarians. You gotta love 'em. They survey the human landscape and wince at . . . a government that cares too much, in a bumbling, overreaching way, of course, and tries to protect us not merely from thieves and terrorists and snake oil salesmen but from ourselves. They hate seatbelt laws and anti-smoking laws and picture government not as a shifting coalition of organized, often malign interests, but as a self-righteous scold.

As I felt my inner libertarian rage at the dashboard of my sister's hybrid auto, I was reminded of a story I'd recently read in the Chicago Tribune about the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone -- sometimes known as "Red Ken" -- who has taken aim at the street-clogging, gas-slurping, CO2-belching American SUVs the city's upper crust have embraced as status symbols.

Livingstone, who calls these monsters Chelsea tractors (after the well-heeled London 'hood where they abound), wants to introduce a $50-a-day "green tax" on SUV owners as the cost of driving in the central city. These folks are unhappy. The essence of their complaint about the tax, as reported by the Tribune, was summed up by the owner of a Range Rover who said, "We've become a nanny state. With Mr. Livingstone, we are constantly being told what we can do and cannot do."

Wow, that sounds rough. Reading these words, I realized that democratic societies have many ways to trivialize debate and defend and maintain states of privilege and denial, and these days "nanny state" is one of the most effective. For know-nothing noise production, it's right up there with "family values" and "flip-flop." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-koehler/the-nanny-state_b_61557.html