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Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and other Boneheaded Bureaucrats are Turning America into a Nation of Children Hardcover – September 18, 2007

by David Harsanyi (Author)

16 customer reviews

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When did we lose our right to be lazy, unhealthy, and politically incorrect?

Move over Big Brother! An insidious new group has inserted itself into American politics. They are the nannies—not the stroller-pushing set but an invasive band of do-gooders who are subtly and steadily stripping us of our liberties, robbing us of the inalienable right to make our own decisions, and turning America into a nation of children.

As you read this, countless busybodies across the nation are rolling up their sleeves to do the work of straightening out your life. Certain Massachusetts towns have banned school-yard tag. San Francisco has passed laws regulating the amount of water you should use in dog bowls. The mayor of New York City has french fries and doughnuts in his sights. In some parts of California, smoking is prohibited . . . outside.

The government, under pressure from the nanny minority, is twisting the public’s arm into obedience. Playground police, food fascists, anti-porn crusaders —whether they're legislating morality or wellbeing—nannies are popping up all over America. In the name of health, safety, decency, and—shudder—good intentions, these ever-vigilant politicians and social activists are dictating what we eat, where we smoke, what we watch and read, and whom we marry.

Why do bureaucrats think they know what's better for us than we do? And are they selectively legislating in the name of political expediency? For instance, why do we ban mini-motorbikes, responsible for five deaths each year, and not skiing, which accounts for fifty deaths each year? Why is medical marijuana, a substance yet to claim a single life, banned and not aspirin, which accounts for about 7,600 deaths?

Exhaustively researched, sharply observed, and refreshingly lucid, Nanny Sate looks at the myriad ways we are turning the United States into a soulless and staid nation—eroding not only our personal freedoms but our national character.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Denver Post columnist Harsanyi's libertarian opus makes the case that government meddling in private lives demands our full attention. Whether bureaucrats are banning trans fats, trying to reduce drinking or legislating where citizens can smoke, Harsanyi objects. Such regulation, he believes, insults a freeborn citizenry. As he puts it: the five most frightening words in the English language: something needs to be done. Aiming at predictable targets like New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, he finds no meddler too insignificant to escape his contempt, including a Dublin, Calif., councilwoman who tried to further tighten the city's antismoking law. Harsanyi also trashes the religious right for trying to legislate morality. But the book would have benefited from more anecdotes and original reporting, instead of incessantly naming overzealous do-gooders. Moreover, Harsanyi barely considers business's role, as these dangerous do-gooders fight fast food and tobacco companies armed with hundreds of millions of marketing dollars. There's not much new, but fellow libertarians may enjoy getting carried away by the flood of Harsanyi's outrage. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Besieged by do-gooder legislators and activists pushing health, safety, or "family values," Americans have been subjected to bans on everything from trans fats to cookie-scented ads in bus shelters to happy hours. Harsanyi offers a catalog of rules imposed by "Twinkie fascists" and "playground despots" who are micromanaging all manner of bad habits and immorality that threaten to remove from citizens the right to choose how they live their lives. For example, he notes that the Centers for Disease Control has evolved from an agency concerned with infectious diseases to one concerned with overeating. Conceding that one person's idea of government intrusion is another's idea of prudent policy, Harsanyi stakes a claim on common sense as the judge. Laws against illicit drugs and prostitution are good for the public welfare; laws against smoking outdoors are intrusive. This is not just a rant against overzealous legislators but a thoughtful look at how the government is overreaching into everyday life and how Americans are quietly going along with it. An interesting look at freedom and personal responsibility. Bush, Vanessa

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Product details

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Broadway; First Edition edition (September 18, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0767924320
ISBN-13: 978-0767924320
Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.2 x 9.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 16 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #412,074 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #472 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Political Freedom
- #1047 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Civil Rights & Liberties
- #1265 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Commentary & Opinion

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applewoodTop Contributor: Blues Music

Modern Times - and the inevitable results of a powerful paternalistic State.

June 13, 2013

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I came to this book after reading Harsanyi's more recent Obama's Four Horsemen: The Disasters Unleashed by Obama's Reelection. It was good, but I like this one more. I love reading this kind of account of do-gooding gone bad (James Bovard, John Stossel and PJ O'Rourke have all written informative and entertaining books along similar lines), and this is one of the best - fact filled and often funny (and more often disgustingly absurd).

I guess what I especially like about this book (compared to Obama's Four Horsemen, which tended to pit his detractors against supporters, or Republicans and Libertarians against Democrats in a divisive and polemical way) is that he is here pitting individual freedom and liberty lovers of all stripes against the busy-body-do-gooders who often get to control in the nanny state. Obviously both these groups are not neatly divided along party lines. To me this more closely defines the real divisions in our modern culture, and I wish party politics more closely reflected this. As it is right now only the tiny (1% in the last presidential election) voting block of libertarians express this principled liberty loving stance openly and consistently, against the supposedly 99% of Americans who are much more comfortable with paternalistic big government and it's power to tell (force!) people what to do. I can only believe the 99% are ill-informed.

Harsanyi covers a wide range of easy targets in 7 chapters (food fascists, neo-prohibitionists, anti-smokers, playground safety/fun police, morality cops, do-gooderery's increasing effect on public and private life, and the costs of all this - intended and unintended). He spends enough time on each to give you the details (historical and specific) to provide plenty of fodder to chew on and regurgitate at your next friendly social gathering. And I'm sure it will elicit more first hand stories of abuse and meddling from those around you, especially if you are having the (endangered) privilege of sharing a few drinks together....

As I said earlier, this is a potentially uniting topic, and one which the average sensible American needs to reclaim from those pushy nannies who are getting the laws and regulations passed (usually in the name of protecting the children, or national security, or saving the earth, while we all just helplessly watch). The current nanny state has become a huge careening snowball, and I can't believe 99% of voters really support it (most I know just run and duck). Eventually avalanches and run-away trains come to a stop, but in the case of laws and regulations and social norms it takes a more conscious effort to reclaim our liberty and freedom.

If the 20th Century was defined by the communo-fascist revolutionary do-gooder New World Order impulse (a la Wilson, Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin, FDR, Hitler, Himmler, Mao, and Hillary Clinton), the 21st Century will be the time to revive the values of liberty and individual responsibility. Harsanyi makes this crystal clear in his closing remarks about the nanny state's obsessive concern for safety;

"When citizens believe even minor menaces are removed and no longer their responsibility, it erodes self-sufficiency. When we believe government is our babysitter, we have a tendency to disengage from the process. Risk compensation is a theory that applies to all areas of life." (p. 229)

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Ben Masters

Excellent book! (with thoughts on one of the chapters)

April 3, 2012

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Just got this book yesterday, and paged through it, especially the chapter called "Yahweh...or the Highway." The people mentioned in here who preach against any overtly sexual television oftentimes forget that they don't have to watch it. If we said to them, "You must watch 'Two and a Half Men'" despite their efforts to avoid it, I think that it wouldn't be too much for them to be how they are. Unfortunately, albeit we never said such things, these people still attack us for watching what they preach against.

Personally, I don't like shows like that, preferring it the way it was on DVD and in computer video clips. However, if anyone wants to look at what's on now, I have no problem with it. I used to be very judgmental of those people, but now, I'm more of a "live-and-let-live" libertarian.

That said, I think that Mr. Harsanyi hit the bullseye about the nannies who try to take our liberties away with regard to this, what we eat, our pet care, etc. Great book!

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Jennifer Sopranzi

I Don't Need a Nanny!

January 10, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Thomas Sowell calls them "the anointed." David Harsanyi calls them "Nannies." They are the paternalistic social engineers who have appointed themselves the guardians of the public good.

This group of elite social engineers have appointed themselves the protectors of the public whom they treat like children. Like children the American public cannot be trusted to manage their own lives and must be protected from their irrational decisions by the Nanny elites, those annointed to protect us.

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to dangers from which we must be protected by our Nannies. The list includes fast food, playground equipment, alcohol, smoking, etc. In their quest to protect us from ourselves, these paternalistic social engineers enact often innnane and insulting regulations designed to relieve us of any personal responsibility for our lives. Not to be deterred by a scarcity of data the Nanny class often resorts to scare tactics, "creative logic," and twisting the facts to suit their arguments.

Many of the Nanny laws described in the book would be funny if they were not real. But they are real laws--real laws that take away our right to make our own descisions, and the responsibility to accept the consequences of our own decisions.

I would have given the book four stars if the author had included more discussion about why the American public seems so willing to be treated as a bunch of incompetents. Eventually children outgrow their Nannies and assume an adult role. But the American public seems willing to give up their adult responsibilities. The Nannies are not taking away our right to make our own decisions. We are willingly surrendering our rights to our new Nannies. Harsanyi's book describes the results of this surrender, but neglects to explain why we surrendered in the first place.

I would recommend this book. But after you read Nanny State I also recommend that you read Thomas Sowell's The Vision of the Anointed, a much more difficult book but well worth the effort.

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