When high officeholders start talking in family terms, prepare to be treated like a child. A few months ago, Al Gore tried to capture the wise and kindly character of the Clinton administration by disavowing traditional liberalism. “The federal government should never be the baby-sitter, the parents,” he said, but should be “more like grandparents in the sense that grandparents perform a nurturing role and are aware of what parenting was like but no longer exercise that kind of authority.”
Who says government officials are willing to stop exercising that kind of authority? In fact, the vision of government as Great White Father is still pervasive among those who are supposed to serve us. They are the ones who know best; we are the ones who must be instructed, controlled and generally protected from the bloodcurdling consequences of being permitted to think for ourselves.
This week’s case in point is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s new rule on automobile air bags. This federally mandated safety device, it turns out, can be deadly: Some 49 children and 38 adults have been killed when the bags deployed in accidents that otherwise would not have been fatal. Embarrassed by the rash of deaths, the agency was forced to acknowledge that, contrary to what we had all been assured in the past, air bags are not necessarily good for everyone. It then spent months pondering whether to let motorists have the air bags disconnected.
The case for allowing individual choice was strong. The benefits of air bags are familiar to all, and the dangers have gotten ample publicity. Although most people are undoubtedly safer with air bags, some are not.
In a better world, motorists would have the option of buying a car with or without them. But as long as that radical policy is deemed unthinkable, the least Washington could do is let the poor schmucks who are forced to buy these devices decide for themselves whether to keep them or get rid of them. Even Bill Clinton, who is generally able to suppress any libertarian instincts, promised that “dealers will be able to deactivate the air bags of any owner who requests it.”
In the end, though, the idea of giving up control was too much for the bureaucratic mind to process. NHTSA, ignoring the president’s pledge, decided to let some people have on-off switches installed–but only those rare and lucky motorists who meet the agency’s standard of need.
You must submit an application attesting that you fall into one of four categories: You have to put an infant in the front passenger seat, you have a medical condition that makes air bags especially hazardous, you’re too short to keep 10 inches between you and the steering wheel, or you “cannot avoid situations–such as a car pool–that require a child 12 or under to ride in the front seat.”
If your application meets with approval from your betters, they may generously allow you to reclaim a small measure of control over your own life. But be warned: If you falsely claim to meet one of these eligibility requirements, you may be prosecuted for perjury–and probably also for being so gullible as to actually believe that nonsense in the Declaration of Independence about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Air bags are only one illustration of how we are all being sewn into a cocoon by the state, shielded from real and imagined harms but also prevented from assuming the basic responsibilities of adulthood. That process is also on display in the proposed legal settlement, which awaits congressional approval, that would let individuals collect damages from the tobacco industry for being so wicked as to sell them the cigarettes they cheerfully elected to smoke. It was hardly a surprise that a 61-year-old Washington state man took this reasoning one step further and sued the dairy industry for selling a product (whole milk) that he blames for clogging his arteries.
The federal government isn’t even comfortable trusting the public with the truth. It publishes dietary guidelines that say, “Current evidence suggests that moderate drinking is associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease in some individuals.” But vintners have yet to receive permission to discreetly publicize this fact.
They don’t propose to say that wine is good for you. They merely want to suggest on wine labels that drinkers send for copies of the guidelines. But assorted professional busybodies have objected, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has yet to decide whether wine makers should be allowed to advise consumers to read what federal nutrition experts report.
Federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey, explaining recently why he wasn’t out campaigning against state medical-marijuana initiatives, replied, “I’m not America’s nanny.” Maybe he isn’t, but there is no shortage of candidates for the job.
