My new lunch-hour book is "Legacy: Paying the price for the Clinton years," by Rich Lowry. In one chapter he quotes Alexis de Tocqueville regarding the nanny-state mentality. I feel the sentiment is worth revisiting, considering our current political debates. And I quote:
"It only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood...It daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own facilities...Government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men's will, but softens, bends, and guides it...It does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not tyrannical, but hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and hard-working animals with the government as its shepherd."
To paraphrase...a big government brings about a small-minded citizen.
— Lauren Ricks, Staff Writer
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