Opinion

The Rise of Nanny State

Lindsay Perigo

I can't be sure, but it may well have been me who introduced the term "Nanny State" into the New Zealand vernacular, on my Politically Incorrect Show on Radio Pacific. Certainly I used it regularly there, and observed it creep into common usage thereafter, as did the related term, "Helengrad." In any event, the expression is well and truly out there now, and that's as good a thing as its referent is bad. Nanny State is vicious, anti-human … and, as we speak, relentlessly advancing.

Who is she, this hybrid of gargoyle and dominatrix?

She is the strident, scolding, snooping socialist, the control-freak who seeks to regulate every aspect of our existence. She forbids our kids to eat pies and chips at school; she tells us how not to discipline them; she forbids us to read magazines like *Cigar Aficionado*, and closes down cigar bars; she jails us for smoking marijuana; she confiscates our money at every turn and refuses to give any of it back even when she's awash in it; she runs our die-while-you-wait health system and covers up the waiting by destroying the waiting *lists*; she prefers bureaucrats (her soulmates) over practitioners and drowns the productive in paperwork; her child-molesters-of-the-mind run our education system on her behalf and deliberately dumb down our youngsters so they'll vote for her when they come of age; she pays the unproductive with the money of the productive to be reproductive and breed even more voters for her; she forbids us to cut down trees in our own back yards or add decks to our own houses; she snuggles up to Islamofascists (more of her soulmates) and is currently planning on forbidding us to criticise them ("hate speech" laws) … and on and on.

She is, in short, the drooling wannabe totalitarian whose source of orgasm is power-lust, seeking to dictate what we eat, drink, think, say and wear. She is Labour and National, "liberal" and conservative, Helen Clark and Rob Muldoon, communism and fascism, Stalin and Hitler (the vegetarian teetotaller who headed the world's first Green and officially anti-smoking regime) … and she sucks.

Nanny likes to remind us that we're not here to enjoy ourselves. She is the Puritan described by H. L. Mencken, perennially paranoid that somebody, somewhere, somehow might just be managing to have a good time. Sex is a particular bugbear of course, as we see from this June 14 story on CNN re Nanny's Islamofascist incarnation:

*TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.*

*With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world."* *The term, "corrupter of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.*

Alcohol, too. Here we needn't look beyond "the land of the free" to discover a killjoy zeal that would make the Taliban proud:

*CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. - Ryan Kenty, 20, and his brother Brandon, a sophomore in high school, plan to drive their mother to jail Monday morning before heading back to her rented apartment to move the rest of her belongings into storage. Their mom, Elisa Kelly, and her ex-husband, George Robinson, are paying the price for hosting Ryan's 16th birthday party -- more than two years in jail each. Ryan had asked his mother to buy his friends some beer and wine, as long as they all spent the night.*

*In this season of graduation parties, the story of the couple is a cautionary tale for parents if they plan to serve alcohol -- or look the other way. "No one left the party," said Kelly, 42, who collected car keys that night almost five years ago to prevent anyone from leaving. "No one was hurt. No one drove anywhere. I really don't think I deserve to go to jail for this long." … Kelly and Robinson -- the boys' stepfather -- were charged with nine misdemeanor counts each of contributing to the delinquency of a minor resulting from the August 2002 backyard birthday bash. Both were originally sentenced to eight years, but the sentences were reduced to 27 months. The case was appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court and then the U.S. Supreme Court, which recently declined to hear* * it.*

TV3's John Campbell claimed in his studio discussion on Nanny-NZ's new rules about pies and chips in school that "talkbackland" would see the measures as "Nanny State" gone mad. I e-mailed him saying, "I wish!" He responded asking me where I would draw the line—was Nanny not entitled to do * anything*? Was there no line to be drawn *at all*?

I replied:

*Oh, but of course there is. Nanny must protect us from the initiation of force or fraud by others, and use retaliatory force against those who do initiate force, and bring them to justice. Thus—the military, police, law courts, laws against murder, rape, drunk-driving, etc.. All entirely proper. In your socialist utopias, however, Nanny goes way beyond this and HERSELF initiates force, prohibiting all manner of voluntary activities among consenting adults. Hence the term "Nanny," actually —scolding, prescribing and proscribing.*

*She'll be doing even more of that under the guise of mitigating global warming, in obedience to the neo-Marxist (Green) agenda of closing down industrial civilisation (capitalism).*

Nanny's essential sin is to deny beings of choice the right to exercise it. If ever there were a case for going "back to nature" it's going back to * human* nature, whereby governments protect rather than violate our rights. Nanny should be made to back off and butt out. It's time to beat the bitch back -

Lindsay Perigo

ENDS

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