Will the nanny state kill democracy?
Democracy is built on the idea that the people are intelligent enough to make their own decision about who they want to represent them.
The nanny state is based on the idea that people are too stupid to work out how to live and must be told via laws, regulations, guides, and propaganda what to do and how to do it and where to do it.
The term nanny state was first used in the 1960’s in the Spectator but it hardly existed before that time. The little that did exist was part of the temperance societies who wanted to tell people how to live. The state bit started off small with the welfare state, but after 1997 when Labour came into power it gathered momentum. This is because one of socialism’s tenets is being a big brother to the workers and who looks after them from cradle to grave.
As more and more organisations realised that they could ride on the coat tails of the government and promote their particular single issue the nanny state started to grow. And like a child it developed very quickly and before you knew it, it was a very demanding teenager. With so many single issue campaigns all wanting to control the population to follow their particular ideology there was a lot of nannying going on.
An example of such nannying is in the health sector. Proponents of the health nanny believe that it is an ethical and moral stance to take to look after people who can’t care for themselves. As an idea in itself it sounds like a good thing, but there are a lot of unintended consequences and once you start it’s very easy to widen the scope of your care.
The scope has now widened to the level where fatty foods, smoking, alcohol, salt, sugar, are now seen as evil. It has been so heavily promoted that one extra grain of salt or sugar will cause you to have health problems. It’s been going for so long that people are getting so ingrained to be told what to eat and how to live by the health nazis that it’s now seen as normal.
People are getting accustomed to not thinking for themselves and waiting to be told what to do by the experts.
It happens in all walks of life. It even happens in the workplace where you have employees who are told not to think for themselves but to follow procedures set down by the expert, usually a consultant paid extortionate amounts for a few pages of nonsense.
One of the few areas were people aren’t told what to do is in voting. However not everyone thinks for themselves. A lot of tribal voting still occurs where parent and grandparent voted for a party and so the children and grandchildren will do so to carry on the tradition.
Now many will think that democracy will never be controlled by a nazi, but if the experts don’t think people can think for themselves about their own health it won’t be long before the experts will make decisions on behalf of the electorate.
It won’t start with a big bang. It’ll start with small things, then nudging, then bullying. But it’s not outside the realms of possibilities for those in charge to decide that the population is not voting the way they it should be for the benefit of the country.
Am I being defeatist or alarmist? Or are the men in white coats at the door.
SBML
-
May 16, 2011 at 23:47 -
No, you’re not being defeatist, alarmist, or mad.
I actually think it’s happening already. We are seeing significant moves to take power away from parliament (elected) and give it to the courts (not elected). The reason normally given why that is a “good thing” is that the courts are “independent” and not “populist” or “demagogic”. In other words, it is being done precisely because the courts are not subject to “capricious” democratic control.
-
May 17, 2011 at 00:13 -
It has happened twice already here in Ireland. Twice we rejected the EU and each time we were told not to be naughty and to go back and vote properly, on the clear understanding that they would keep asking until we gave the correct answer.
-
May 17, 2011 at 00:14 -
It already did…
-
May 17, 2011 at 01:29 -
What democracy?
-
May 17, 2011 at 01:53 -
well you lot voted blair in and this is what you wanted.
As well there must be something wrong with current white heterosexual males or else why so many laws and rules against them?
Cant they speak up are are they that bad.-
May 17, 2011 at 14:17 -
Good point about ‘white heterosexual males ‘
All we have to do is write to our MP or local councillor or whoever & they’ll take onboard our point(s) immediately.
What a dreadful cheapshot.
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 04:39 -
Well I was one of those evil consultants. In my experience the problem is with totally idiotic and dumbass managers who are clueless about how to run their team that they need to hire a consultant in the first place. And unfortunately a dumbass manager cant even tell the difference between a consultant selling snake-oil or the genuine article. Much like politicians today. The amazing thing is consultants, quangos, special interest groups, lobbyist get cast as the wrong doers, but the real fault is with the stupid managers/politicians that hired/listened to them in the first place.
Re the nanny issue. I place a large part of blame on the media, the self appointed voice of public opinion. They run scare story, after scare story, demanding that something must be done. Enter the clueless politician who then does what “public opinion”, or rather the media, demand.
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:10 -
Alan – I blame no-win-no-fee lawyers actually. I’m an elf ‘n’ safety rep and much of our work is taken up trying to counter getting sued. It’s not us that have gone mad though I admit that we’re going that way.
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:33 -
I don’t usually stand up for lawyers, but it’s insurance companies driving the Safety Elf. Of course, the lawyers are doing very nicely out of this nonsense too.
-
May 17, 2011 at 14:00
-
-
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:06 -
*buzz-buzz-buzz * Please use the handrail and be careful on the stairs *buzz-buzz-buzz* Please use the handrail and be careful on the stairs*buzz-buzz-buzz* Please use the handrail and be careful on the …
On goes the rolling announcement broadcast throughout Plymouth railway station all day long.
Yes. Definitely time for the men in white coats.
When will the madness end ???
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:06 -
Same on the Tube (Holborn at least): “Please stand on the left and walk on the right, taking care to hold on to the handrail at all times.”
And, if it’s raining: “Please take extra care. The escalators and floors can become slippery when they are wet.”
I look around, expecting to be surrounded by primary school children. But no, everyone *appears* to be an adult, despite TFL’s infuriatingly condescending opinion of our mental age.
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:15 -
“*buzz-buzz-buzz * Please use the handrail and be careful on the stairs ”
We have a similar directive broadcast at the escalators in Northampton bus station.
And watch the gormless drones approach a pedestrian crossing, not a vehicle in sight, press the button and wait for their ‘green man’ instruction. They are happy to have devolved their judgement from a brain with the potential to outperform a super-computer to a system with less processing power than their mobile phone.
-
May 17, 2011 at 14:30 -
“And watch the gormless drones approach a pedestrian crossing, not a vehicle in sight, press the button and wait for their ‘green man’ instruction.”
Not so in the “lower end” of Sheffield city centre. The council had to install an automated “annoucer” at a particular pelican controlled junction telling people only to cross when the ‘green man’ was lit.
Yes, some ‘adults’ are that stupid that they can’t discern that stepping onto a very busy road might make them eligible for a Darwin Award.
-
May 17, 2011 at 21:27 -
for “annoucer” read “announcer”, sigh
-
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:27 -
Didn’t Plato say 2500 years ago that all democracies inevitably end in tyranny? We certainly appear to be on that course.
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:42 -
Democracy? Sadbutmadlad really. You have a majority voting Tyranny, not a ‘Democracy’.
In fact, with the EU you now have a self perpetuating, unaccountable Tyranny. The Lisbon treaty signed, sealed and delivered that unpleasant reality.
-
May 17, 2011 at 07:46 -
Although theoretically an attractive system, perhaps the problem is inherent in practical democracy? The “Arab Spring” uprisings are assumed (& promoted) by western media to be about their desire for democracy. They want freedom, but not necessarily democracy, & “certainly not our distorted version of it.
It’s our own corrupt, self-serving, political elite, supported by a tame media, who thrive on “democracy”. -
May 17, 2011 at 08:05 -
The nanny state is designed to prevent us wicked people using our own judgement and taking reponsibility for ourselves.
I think “scripts” are nearly as harmful as they not only prevent people using their judgement, they also prevent any social interaction between the poor guy working for a company and their customer. Maybe just a personal bugbear but when a shop assistant who has already served me 50+ times is afraid to deviate from the almighty script and NOT ask me if I want a bag even though they know full well I don’t it cannot be a good sign.
Democracy itself would be nice, that would require more than one party, however.
-
May 17, 2011 at 08:43 -
SBML – Perhaps a suitable corollary to your statement – that the nanny state assumes that people are too stupid to make their own reasoned and reasonable choices – is that the elite are too unimaginative, afraid and stupid to leave the public to make their own decisions about what they eat, drink and smoke – and where they go. Unfortunately for us, Labour had a control-freak mentality – which is a certain sign that they were afraid of being unable to keep the masses reined in. That legacy hasn’t died with this pseudo-Conservative and faux-Liberal coalition.
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:33 -
Actually they’re cleverer than you may have noticed.
We still vote, but it makes no difference: you can vote for anyone you want, but the next morning when you wake up, you find there is still a bunch of Europhile statist thieves in charge, lining their own pockets while emptying yours for the benefit of their pals in the banking and global warming industries.
It’s too late to change anything by voting.
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:41
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:41 -
Not defeatist.
Just look at how the “experts” view the so called “population time bomb”.
The experts would have our breeding controlled. First the number of children….how long then until they seek to control the sex, ability, apearance too? How long before they select superior genes – what to do with the rest I wonder?
Sounds quite Nazi to me.
Eugenics was a popular and acceptable opinion in liberal circles before the last World War.
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:49 -
Eugenics was a popular and acceptable opinion in liberal circles before the last World War. by the Fabian society. And where did many of the Fabian society eventually move to? The Labour party.
An interesting point about the population time bomb. It’s not breeding that is causing the time bomb, it’s us old folk. We are living longer and and healthier and not dying off and therefore clogging up the system. Unintendend consequences of the health nazis.
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:51 -
-
May 17, 2011 at 11:01 -
Have the EU instigated a culling policy yet or do they use the Swiss clinic???
-
-
-
-
May 17, 2011 at 10:52 -
Nice article Anna and have linked to part of your penultimarte paragraph in a post on what may be considered a related matter of our democracy.
-
May 17, 2011 at 17:27 -
Under Darwinian evolutionary theory, kids will soon be born without any ‘Common Sense’.
{ 30 comments… read them below or add one }