Western governments' basic approach is to treat their citizens as children or incompetents, which is the exact opposite of the way the Founding Fathers set forth.
There are a handful of people I can recall who believed in me more than I deserved. My brother and I had a reputation for being good in math and science due to our German chemistry professor's father. In English, we were okay. During my sophomore year, I had a very special teacher, Mr. Joe McCloskey. He would tell us stories about his time in the Pacific theater during World War 2. At the end of the first semester, I tallied up my points from papers and tests and said that another B for Bauer in English is on its way. Grades came out and I got an A for English. There was no justification for it, but Mr. McCloskey believed in me. I never saw anything less than an A until I finished high school after that. I owe "Uncle Joe" a big debt of gratitude for being able to write these articles.
The Founding Fathers of the United States believed strongly in the people of the new country. The nanny state would be an abomination to them. They expected each person to be self-sufficient and the government to be as unobtrusive as humanly possible. This state of affairs is the exact opposite of the approach of the Western left today. Remember the Obama administration cartoon video, “The Life of Julia”? Julia, from cradle to grave, was a client of the state. Whether it was state-funded kindergarten or state-backed loans for education, the state was there for Julia every step of the way. It was never supposed to be like this. So how did we get here?
When meritocracy replaced the old boys’ club and noblesse oblige of the Roosevelts and Bushes, the top of the pyramid became the expert. People like Robert Macnamara and Henry Kissinger were considered infallible, though many of their actions in various administrations showed that they were quite human after all. With the rise of the expert came the erosion of the ability—real and perceived—of the citizen. The classic approach associated with this approach came from Michelle Obama, who had no formal position in the US government. She hijacked school menus to be more healthy—and less appealing. Stories appeared of students not eating the new food offerings and making drug-like deals in the parking lot for chocolates and candies. Michelle Obama said that even with her shiny Princeton and Harvard degrees, she could not know what was the proper diet for children. So she invoked the experts as being the final word on what children should eat. Men like Franklin and Jefferson would have said that if God gave men and women children, he also endowed them with the wisdom to know how to feed them and bring them up. Obama’s program failed due to the food being repugnant to the students who wanted nothing to do with it. Kids don’t go for arugula? Who knew?
The nanny state assumes that citizens are dull and incompetent. It goes so far to tell us what is misinformation and disinformation. They always decide things that they don’t like as fitting into those categories. When people pointed out that the Covid virus probably came from the virus institute in Wuhan, Fauci and his bigfoot government enforcers claimed that such claims were disinformation, though it turned out to be quite true. The government feared that people would learn subjects and come to proper conclusions on their own. They colluded with social media sites to prevent people from being exposed to the Hunter Biden laptop story as well as others—out of fear that the backwards rubes might conclude that the laptop was real, which it was. Mike Benz recently said that governments have now added a new flavor to their weaponry: “malinformation”. What could malinformation be? He described it as true information that runs contrary to the interests of the government. So let’s say a study shows conclusively that the vaccines caused illness and death or that electric cars are dirtier than their gas-powered cousins. The Western governments would ban such scientifically-accurate studies as malinformation that is too dangerous for the people to be exposed to. This is the nanny state: we know better than you and we will tell you what you are allowed to know.
Americans used to be very independent people. Those who moved out west to face the dangers and challenges of Indians, wild animals, and brutal mountains and weather were strong-willed and independent. There are still such Americans, but those on the left would like them to be as few as possible. They would love to legislate and regulate every aspect of our lives. The EU once decreed the shape and size of olive oil bottles to be placed on restaurant tables in Europe. The Italians and Greeks revolted over being told how to run their businesses. When I flew during Covid, I was told to cover my face while I chewed the food. Covid gave government officials enormous powers to tell us what we could do, where we could go, and with whom and when we could associate. It was a sugar high for them. They would love to tell us what type of car we will drive, the type of burners we will be allowed in our kitchens and whether or not we will have to throw out our air conditioners due to their excessive use of dwindling amounts of electricity produced by unreliable wind and sun. One official at the Israeli Ministry of Health took advantage of the Covid crisis to get revenge on his ex-wife by sending her several notices to stay at home due to non-existent exposures to someone who was ill with the virus.
When I was in Australia, I had the feeling that I had entered a place that would be the US if we had not made a revolution against the British throne. It’s a beautiful country with wonderful people, but it does not have the can-do, get-it-done attitude that you find in the US. Australia is happy never to be in the headlines, whereas the US makes the news, sets the standards, and is the leader in science, business and culture for the world. When I was sitting in a train station in northern China, I looked at what the local kids were wearing. They were all wearing Nike and similar shirts and shoes and blue jeans or Adidas shorts. They did not wear Mao jackets but rather tried to dress as they imagined their American counterparts do.
American success is tied inextricably with American individualism. The left’s goal of making the government involved in all aspects of our lives is the antithesis of the American ideal of the rugged individual. If you want a productive and successful citizenry, then do like Mr. McCloskey: give them credit and responsibility beyond what they deserve. As parents we do this often when we let our kids take the car or fly someplace with friends for the first time. Americans need to be trusted to figure out what is true and not. We do not need Mark Zuckerberg and Kamala Harris to do it for us.