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Sieg Health!

by | 1:27 pm, November 8, 2008 | Comments Off

The United Kingdom is an interesting land.  They ban toys in pediatriciains’ waiting rooms because toys carry germs.  A war hero who survived Dunkirk is denied his own request to carry his regiment’s flag in a Remembrance Day parade lest his frail old bones suffer under the weight of flag.  The government proudly uses surveillance tactics to identify and shame people who drink wine at home.  Children are forbidden to have sugar in their tea or to play tag at recess.

The head of Britains’s equivalent of OSHA says absolute safety is an impossible goal and that common sense is lacking in current policy.  Tom Mullarky, who heads the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, still worries about people making ill-informed choices and worries over how much to intervene.  But there is now at least one voice calling for the government to take on a roll of making information available so people may make their own choices, and, more importantly still, calling for people who put only themselves at risk to be left alone.

Yet for all this paternalistic interference and nanny state totalitarian zealousness sucking the fun out of every second of life, Britain isn’t all that safe, reports the madcap gang over at Death by a Thousand Papercuts.  Citing a UN report from the Office of Drugs and Crime, they report that the outcome of a policy of disarming citizens so as not to provoke criminals has led to Britain being more dnagerous than the Balkans. 

As I sit here, perched precariously on the edge of the bed, scowling at my laptop, America the Beautiful plays softly.  Let’s hear it for random selection on the Rhapsody music player.  But can we avoid the fate of the nanny state?  As P.J. O’Rourke pondered in Attack of the Safety Nazis, the prevalence of flame retardant infant sleepwear indicates that somewhere in the US government exists a plot to use our children as pot holders.  Seriously, it’s no coincidence that the steady erosion of freedoms in the name of safety and the rise in serious, real threats to safety go together. 

Attack liberty from one side and you attack it on all sides.

And while Europe can go on having sugar free tea and wondering why crime is up when they’ve banned all the weapons, we ought to be above that.  For we are nation deliberately founded on risk.  Excepting an IRS audit, most things that are dangerous are also fun.  Which is why I could get all parternalistic and go another 500 words admonishing you to buckle up, wear sunscreen, and improve your posture. 

Or I could go hang gliding.

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