One of my all-time favorite blogs, the Coyote Blog, has a post up about Statism and the Technocrats:
Over the past fifty years, a powerful driving force for statism in this country has come from technocrats, mainly on the left, who felt that the country would be better off if a few smart people (ie them) made the important decisions and imposed them on the public at large, who were too dumb to make quality decision for themselves. People aren’t smart enough,they felt, to make medication risk trade-off decision for themselves, so the FDA was created to tell them what procedures and compounds they could and could not have access to. People couldn’t be trusted to teach their kids the right things, so technocrats in the left defended government-run schools and fought school choice at every juncture. People can’t be trusted to save for their own retirement, so the government takes control with Social Security and the left fights giving any control back to individuals. The technocrats told us what safety equipment our car had to have, what gas mileage it should get, when we needed to where a helmet, what foods to eat, when we could smoke, what wages we could and could not accept, what was and was not acceptable speech on public college campuses, etc. etc.
He goes on to discuss the recent Plan B review, the breast implant mess from Clinton’s term, and other topics.
Reading this reminds me of why I am glad to be a Libertarian, and not a Republican or Democrat. Even though I disagree with the Libertarians on foreign policy, the military, and the war on terrorism.
The point here.. it’s my life.. and my money. Leave it alone.