More Distrust of Individual Decision-Making
I thought I had written myself dry on this topic with this long post, which got a lot of nice links around the blogospere.
However, this article by Michelle Cottle quoted approvingly by Kevin Drum is such a great example of government-as-mom fascist control of individual decision-making that I had to link it:
As a nation, Americans are apparently too stupid (or stubborn) to recognize that Big Macs and Big Gulps aren't the foundation of a healthy diet, but thanks to several gazillion dollars in direct-to-consumer drug advertising, we all consider ourselves experts in pharmacology.
....No matter what kind of qualifiers, disclaimers, and helpful tips Merck scrawls across Mevacor's box (or, more likely, crams onto a package insert printed in type so tiny it will make your eyes bleed), a fair number of self-medicating geniuses will think that the best way to prevent heart disease is to take two Mevacor for every six pieces of fried chicken they plan to eat that night. Don't laugh. It will happen and happen frequently.
It must be so wonderful to be in Ms. Cottle's shoes, to have your life so absolutely perfectly put together that you have both the time and the superior intellect to take over my life as well. In two short paragraphs, she manages to highlight a number of statist tendancies that it took me thousands of words to describe. At the same time, she makes a hash of my categorization scheme by simultaneously combining traits of three of my four categories, including Nanny's (you can't be trusted with your diet), technocrats (we can make more informed medication choices for you than you can yourself), and socialist-progressives (you are merely an zombie reacting mindlessly to advertising). Wow.
