The anti-nanny state rant: leave us be please
November 23, 2009
 By Quentin Wray
Sometimes I think I spend far too much time reading newspapers. It has some advantages. I can sit on my verandah in my pyjamas, having a nice cup of tea, reading the papers and calling it work.
But it has some disadvantages too. After so many years of immersing myself in the vast array of other people's ideas and opinions, I find I have lost the ability to believe anything at all bar a few, to me at least, self-evident truths.
I can no longer treat any ideological position as gospel or bring myself to trust that any lobbyist or politician is telling the truth. It's got to the point where I find earnest people and true believers either scary or hypocritical. Atheists, creationists, environmentalists, climate change denialists, capitalists, communists, conservatives, liberals: it doesn't matter.
The moment anyone takes a firm position on anything they care a lot about and start evangelising, only those ideas and facts that suit their arguments get through. Those that don't are ignored.
Minds get closed to alternative theories and orthodoxies are born which decree any disagreement heresy.
If you don't believe me think back to any of the myriad debates on global warming, affirmative action, Iraq, Julius Malema and evolution in our daily papers.
I won't go into the impact this blanket of disbelief has had on my conversations with friends and family about matters religious, social and economic, save to say that my wife, who is infinitely wiser than I, has taken to banning me from arguing with our guests at dinner parties.
Apparently saying things that even you find indefensible just because you like seeing people get spotty with rage isn't something that nice people do.
Apart from the blight it has placed on my social interactions, one of the by-products of all this exposure to various media is that I have developed a strong distaste for anything that smacks of a nanny state.
The notion that I must be forced to outsource my life choices to bureaucrats, zealots and theologians offends me deeply.
Nannyist tendencies are everywhere, not just in government. Take, for example, reports that Pick n Pay has been put under pressure into not selling toy guns this Christmas. What do the do-gooders think? That little boys who don't get a toy gun won't make one out of a broomstick if they want to play shoot 'em up games?
And what about the notion that fast food joints and alcohol companies should not be allowed to advertise?
Does anybody in their right mind think that the sight of a beer ad on the highway will turn me into a raging drunk where I would have otherwise have gone home and crocheted myself a beanie?
Why should it not be up to me to resist my thirst or my children's pleas for Mickey D's? How else can we teach them the lesson that you can't always get what you want and that sometimes what you want is bad for you?
How can we expect the young to make good life choices if we do not expose them to temptation and show them the consequences and how to resist it?
We should be worrying more about teaching people how to do the right thing and arming them with correct information than about restricting access to potentially harmful ideas.
Toy guns do not turn people into murderers any more than booze ads turn people into alcoholics or fast food billboards make kids fat. The allure of easy options and a lack of self-restraint do this.
And this is something that can't be wished away through tighter legislation.
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