The nanny state

Just about everyone these days understand what is meant by a nanny state, especially in conservative bastions like Nebraska, Arkansas and Texas. It's a term of British origin that conveys a view that a government or its polices are overprotective or interfering unduly with personal choice. It comes from a couple hiring a nanny to watch everything a child does to make sure they don't put themselves in any danger.

Most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, don't want the state running almost every aspect of our lives for us. I remember the protests that were literally heard from coast to coast when mandatory seat belt lives were passed. Even though the government produced reliable statistics that proved that wearing a seat belt could save your life, the protesters argued that unless the government could provide data that it would save your life EVERY time, it was an imposition on personal freedom. Using that logic as my own, it took me quite some time before I started wearing a seat belt. Now it's become such a habit that I buckle up without even thinking about it and sometimes without even remembering.

And there have been other protests to other laws that have been passed. The smoking bans now cover almost every private and public place and include many of the places where we actually live, like my apartment complex. Does smoking cause lung cancer? Yes it does. Does it cause lung cancer in everybody that smokes? No it doesn't. Can people get lung cancer without ever having smoked? Yes they can and yes they do. So it causes lung cancer in some people and doesn't in others. Is that sufficient reason for a ban that includes everybody?

You can make this argument for so many laws that restrict so many freedoms and many people do. But there's a caveat to this and it's an important one. Are some people self-destructive and will they do anything they're allowed to do which in a non-nanny state world would be EVERYTHING?

I watch more television in the summer than I do during the school year because I have a lot more free time. I hardly ever watch anything live, except for sporting events, because I don't like to sit through commercials so I record almost everything on my DVR. But sometimes when I don't have anything recorded that I'm in the mood to watch, I channel surf and one of the channels I came across the other day was called TRU-TV. They show a lot of people in America doing a lot of stupid things; many of them dangerous and injurious. Most of them are done by dumb, red-neck guys, usually but not always young, in an attempt to prove their manhood, sometimes to other guys but preferably to girls. And they will do practically anything to do this. Some may call it being tough, many others call it just being stupid. The question is do these activities need to be prevented by law and would injuries and deaths decrease if they were?

I suppose a case could be made to support laws that would legally prevent these behaviors but I'm not sure what the point would be. I figured out a long time ago that you can't fix stupid and, consequently, people are going to BE stupid and ACT stupid whether you want them to or not.

On a food show the other day that featured the country's best hamburgers, the last place they went was to the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas, Nevada. Their biggest hamburger, four patties weighing a half-pound each along with mustard, mayo, lettuce, pickles, and onions and held together by a skewer stick clocked in at just under10,000 calories and they sell them every day. They even have a public scale that rewards anyone weighing over 350 pounds to a FREE heart attack burger and they had people proudly stepping on the scale to display their weight.

My thinking has certainly evolved on this over many years and I've finally come to the conclusion that people should be able to do anything they want to do as long as it doesn't harm anybody else and there should be no legal prohibitions against it. Some of those things will result in emotional, psychological and/or physical injury to the person and some of those things will result in death but people participating in them are usually aware of the risks beforehand. If there's anything the government SHOULD do, it is to perhaps show us through literature how dangerous what we're about to do is, but leave the DECISION about whether to do it or not to the individual.

That would sure take care of a lot of the bad genes in this country that continue to reproduce!