With the steady encroachment of the nanny state in Virginia, it won’t be long before Mary Poppins launches a bid for governor. (If Mary Poppins is too obscure for the younger generation of readers, nominate Nanny McPhee.)
Booster Seats: New legislation mandates the use of booster seats for children seven years or younger. I agree, booster seats for small children do make sense. Here’s what Gov. Timothy M. Kaine says: “This legislation was the number-one priority of traffic safety advocates this year, based on research that clearly shows most 6- and 7-year-olds are too small to be properly secured with seat belts and shoulder harnesses.”
I just don’t buy it. There’s a point of diminishing returns. I have an eight-year-old, and I can tell you that the idea of driving him a year ago to basketball practice or Little League in a booster seat would have ludicrous. Our society already coddles and infantalizes our children in too many ways. This is just too much.
Restaurant Smoking: Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has done his best to ban smoking inside restaurants. I don’t smoke and no one in my family smokes — except one renegade daughter — but I don’t have a problem with other people smoking in restaurants. Restaurant owners should be free to institute their own smoking policies on their own property: ban smoking outright, allow smoking anywhere, or set aside smoking sections. There is no shortage of restaurants in Virginia. If I don’t like cigarette smoke, I’m free to find a restaurant where there isn’t any.
Kaine has shrewdly side-stepped the property rights objection by defining the issue as an employee safety matter: Waiters and waitresses should be allowed to work in environments free from second-hand smoke. My question: If that’s the real reason, why not ban smoking in all workplace environments? (I probably shouldn’t push that line of logic too far: That’s what’s coming next.)
Stop Light Cameras. The “photo red” bill gives localities the option of installing photo-monitoring systems to enforce traffic light signals. God forbid that national security organizations, without a court order, eavesdrop on telephone conversations originated by overseas terrorist operatives to contacts in the United States. But monitoring Americans who might run stoplights? No problem.
George Orwell described a suffocating totalitarian future in 1984. Mankind’s nemesis was Big Brother. He didn’t foresee today’s threat: rampant do-gooders telling everyone else how to live. Our nemesis today: the smothering embrace of Big Momma.