The Nanny State

“Do we really need a surgeon general at all?... There are plenty of private groups that are fully capable of instructing us on how to be healthy, wealthy and wise without government involvement. The American Lung Association can tell us not to smoke. Alcoholics Anonymous can preach sobriety. The American Medical Association can lecture couch potatoes on the benefits of losing weight and exercising more. Planned Parenthood and the Family Research Council can fight it out over when and how we should have sex. Surely someone can deal with overweight children. Given the government’s track record of efficiency, being the nanny for 300 million Americans seems a little beyond its ability.” —Michael Tanner on one of many government social services that are extra-constitutional

“The eight Democratic presidential candidates assembled in Washington recently for another of their debates and talked, among other things, about public education. They all essentially agreed that it was underfunded—one system ‘for the wealthy, one for everybody else,’ as John Edwards put it. Then they all got into cars and drove through a city where teachers are relatively well paid, per-pupil spending is through the roof and—pay attention here—the schools are among the very worst in the nation. When it comes to education, Democrats are ineducable... [N]ot a one of them even whispered a word of outrage about a public school system that spends $13,000 per child—third-highest among big-city school systems—and produces pupils who score among the lowest in just about any category you can name. The only area in which the Washington school system is No. 1 is in money spent on administration. The litany of more and more when it comes to money often has little to do with what, in the military, are called facts on the ground: kids and parents. It does have a lot to do with teachers unions, which are strong supporters of the Democratic Party. Not a single candidate offered anything close to a call for real reform.” —Richard Cohen

If we sit back and wait for the government to do everything for us, we are likely to end up like a lot of those who were stranded in New Orleans post-Katrina: stranded, exposed to the elements, and feeling utterly alone.