bigmacbear (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bigmacbear) wrote2007-03-04 06:01 pm
bigmacbear) wrote2007-03-04 06:01 pm
The Boo Ban and the Nanny State
So the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association wants to ban booing at high-school athletic events. Looks like ABC is running this story nationally as well.
If the Association knows what's good for it, it will drop this idea like the political hot potato that it is. It is (judging from the comments at the Post-Intelligencer) extremely unpopular, utterly unenforceable, clearly unconstitutional, and probably un-American.
Two themes from the comments at the P-I stick in my head though:
1. One poster suggests that this could be the seed of a general backlash against the "nanny state" in general, the impulse behind such things as the smoking ban, the creeping ban on alcohol enforced by lowering the DUI limit, as well as some of the ridiculous situations caused by unwillingness to allow others to accept risks for themselves that we might not choose to accept (usually aggravated by the insurance industry) such as the disappearance of swingsets and jungle gyms from public parks and the banning of pets (leashed or otherwise). Maybe we can put Tim Eyman to good use for once.
2. A number of people blame "liberals" for nanny-statism and other efforts to control people and eliminate civil rights. I tend to think this is just more use of "liberal" as a pejorative, as a knee-jerk reaction that reflects unwillingness to think on the part of the accusers. Even if nanny-statism has taken hold disporoportionately in the "blue states", I think it's more an issue of urban areas tending independently to social liberalism and nanny-statism, and it is possible to advocate for more of one and less of the other.
If the Association knows what's good for it, it will drop this idea like the political hot potato that it is. It is (judging from the comments at the Post-Intelligencer) extremely unpopular, utterly unenforceable, clearly unconstitutional, and probably un-American.
Two themes from the comments at the P-I stick in my head though:
1. One poster suggests that this could be the seed of a general backlash against the "nanny state" in general, the impulse behind such things as the smoking ban, the creeping ban on alcohol enforced by lowering the DUI limit, as well as some of the ridiculous situations caused by unwillingness to allow others to accept risks for themselves that we might not choose to accept (usually aggravated by the insurance industry) such as the disappearance of swingsets and jungle gyms from public parks and the banning of pets (leashed or otherwise). Maybe we can put Tim Eyman to good use for once.
2. A number of people blame "liberals" for nanny-statism and other efforts to control people and eliminate civil rights. I tend to think this is just more use of "liberal" as a pejorative, as a knee-jerk reaction that reflects unwillingness to think on the part of the accusers. Even if nanny-statism has taken hold disporoportionately in the "blue states", I think it's more an issue of urban areas tending independently to social liberalism and nanny-statism, and it is possible to advocate for more of one and less of the other.
no subject
Really, I don't think it's liberalism that's at fault as it is those who don't want to take responsibility for their own actions that has brought on this "nanny stateism" that's going around.
Before you and Gary moved here we had city attorney who thought he was such a hot shot. Mark Sidran who tried at one point to put through a noise abatement law on how loud one can laugh in the city after a certain hour, the law on panhandling etc that he tried, and did in some cases get through. thank God he didn't get the noise abatement law passed and what it entailed were those who moved in from the suburbs into the city and expected it to be as quiet as where they had come from.
Glad we saw the light and booted him from office.
I've never felt Tim Eyeman to be all he's cracked up to be to be honest.