David Harsanyi

This book is for anyone who was an adult before the mid-80s to early '90s when nannyism really sank their mommy claws in. It's for people who thought that being an adult was about making decisions, being in control of your life and accepting the consequences of those decisions.

This book, clearly written in the early aughts, is little more than nostalgia now. In some ways we have more freedom because society has accepted more individuality. Unfortunately, society has found new scapegoats to replace the old ones.

The circle of life...… (altro)

A decent dive into the idea that (a) democracy is bad and (b) more people voting isn't necessarily a good thing. Wait, what? Democracy is bad? Yes, Virginia, it is. There is a reason the Founders chose a republic for the USA, not a democracy. A democracy means everyone votes on every issue. A republic is the people select their betters to represent them. Democracy can veer into a tyranny of the majority. (If the democratic majority votes for slavery, shouldn't you do it? Majority rules, right?) Hopefully, in a republic, your better representatives will use their better brains to prevent tyranny, etc. Harsanyi points out that most voters are wildly ill-informed. Who wants more dolts voting? The problem with the book is that it is anchored in the late Obama era politics and policies, it was written in 2014. It won't be a classic because it doesn't seem to stand the test of time. And what would he have written about Trump, Clinton, and the Trump era? Pretty good, but not essential, get it cheaply.… (altro)

Subtitled "How food fascists, teetotaling do-gooders, priggish moralists, and other boneheaded bureaucrats are turning America into a nation of children". Regardless of your political leanings, it is an interesting look at the increasingly invasive laws that are being passed every year at all levels of government - for our own benefit. Published in 2007, the current administration escapes attention, but the author has plenty to say about both Bill Clinton and George W Bush and their Big Governments.

"The more government feels comfortable subverting our right to live as we wish - while not hurting others - simply to create a more agreeable society, the state will feel increasingly comfortable sabotaging our rights on all fronts." (pg 11)

And so he begins his look at excessive government regulations concerning the food we eat; the alcohol we drink; the cigarettes we smoke; the toys our children play with; the content we see in movies and on TV, and what we listen to on the radio; how we earn a living; and what is the real price we're paying for all this "protection".

It all began with mandatory seat belt laws. To save lives. Who could be against that? That is the issue here. The kinds of behavoir being controlled are things that we probably should be doing. The author points out that, with education, most reasonable, responsible adults will choose to do these very things - without needing a law to force them. As freedom-loving Americans, our concern should be that we have the ability to choose to do unhealthy, stupid, even dangerous things. If we want to.

We all know that foods high in fat, sugar, and salt are bad for us. And that we shouldn't eat too much. But do we really need legislation requring restaurants to limit their portions, or to offer healthier menu choices? And yet, these are the kinds of regulations being proposed - and pased - in cities and states all over the country.

Likewise he talks a great deal about MADD (mothers agains drunk driving) and their efforts to raise awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving. Some of the laws that have been enacted in response, though, go beyond MADD's reasonable original message. He provides anecdotes of cities that have enacted zero-tolerance ordinances and tells the story of one woman who was arrested and forced to spend the night in jail after driving away from a restaurant where she had a glass of wine with her dinner. Her blood alcohol level was .03% - well below the widely known cutoff of .08%. But the city had a zero tolerance rule, so anything above 0.0% was fair game. He tells of another city that didn't let things go even that far and sent police into bars to arrest intoxicated patrons before they had a chance to drive drunk - some of whom wouldn't have been driving anyway since they didn't have cars with them that night. All these efforts had MADD's approval. However the woman who founded the organization is not longer associated with it. She says that her goal was to get people to stop driving drunk. It was never to get them to stop drinking. She admitted that most of the probems are with drivers whose blood alcohol levels are well above the old limit of .10%, closer to .15% or .20%. So the national mandate that states lower their legal limit to .08% or risk losing federal highway funding? Surely to some benefit, but enough to justify the invasion into our personal and state-level decision-making?

Smoking is harmful to our health, as everyone knows. But is occasional exposure to light second-hand smoke as lethal as proponents of smoking bans might have us believe? He tells of cities who have banned smoking everywhere except inside of detached single family homes. Smokers in those places are not permitted to smoke inside their condos or apartments or cars. They also cannot smoke outside in public places, and are subject to complaints from the neighbors if they smoke outside their own homes.

The chapter on children's toys touched on a sore spot of mine. He insists that "we must protect the children" is the rallying cry of "nannies" everywhere. That's why we can't drink or smoke in public, why we shouldn't be able to watch an adult movie on cable or visit an adult site on the internet. And that is why our kids are no longer allowed to have swings or slides in an increasing number of playgrounds aross the country. It's also the reason for all those asinine warning labels on childrens toys. All it takes is for a handful of children to be injured or killed in connection with a toy (without a doubt a tragedy for those families) for it to be forcably removed from the market and from the millions of other children who might have played with it quite safely and happily. Sometimes tragic accidents happen. That's life. He offers a perfectly wonderful anecdote about the Red Rider BB Gun that was taken off the market because there had been "nearly 15 deaths" due to "design defects" associated with it in 30 years. He forgives us for assuming that more than 15 people might have broken their necks by tripping over the toy guns on the basement stairs in all that time.

As much as I enjoyed the book, it is not without faults. He blasts the special interest groups for throwing around statistics that are unsupported and sometimes just plain wrong in order to get an emotional response out of the public. (400,000 people a year die from eating trans-fat? That should be illegal!) But he responds by throwing out his own statistics, also without clearly disclosing how they were determined, and not letting the reader decide which they want to believe. I didn't take his counter-claims for fact any more than he accepted the original statements. But, for me, his points were well made all the same.

As Americans, we are slowly being robbed of our liberties - bit by bit - when we allow the government to take the place of our doctor or our mother or our own common sense in deciding what is good for us and our families.

"Micromanaging our lives won't make us safer, healthier, and more decent. Only self-control will." (pg 233)… (altro)