We are all Idiots who Have to be Saved from Themselves
“Forced by the verdict of a German court, a long-established fishmonger in Hamburg had to attach a sign above his shop’s counter recently, which informs his customers that “fish may contain fish bones”. Packs of peanuts meanwhile contain, as requested by law, the hint that they “may contain traces of nuts”. For the same reason, irons nowadays often bear the request to please not iron things while one is wearing them. Who would have thought?”
The above is from a recent report in the Austrian press. German best-seller author and journalist at “Der Spiegel”, Alexander Neubacher notes in his new book “Total Beschränkt” (“totally restricted”) that this “over-protective policy” actually creates the very helplessness which it ascribes to citizens. He asserts: “Prohibitions are triumphing over reason – the more restrictions, the more morons” (in the German language, the sentence lends itself to word play: “je mehr Beschränkungen, desto mehr Beschränkte”).
He points out that “the State wants to wean us from thinking with ever more regulations, and makes us into idiot citizens who have to be saved from themselves”. The paternalistic infantilization of citizens by the Nanny State is nothing new, but it has become such a scourge in Europe that it has actually spawned an entire literary genre of complaints by now, one that is apparently selling extremely well.
Citizen, you clearly need help: the image Europe’s bureaucrats have of their fellow men
(Photo via taringa.net / Author unknown)
According to the article, Mr. Neubacher’s book should be regarded as the new “standard work” on the topic. The bureaucratic nannies in the EU have provided him with a formidable wealth of material.
Thus the reader learns e.g. that on German territory, bicyclists using an electric bicycle that “only supports pedaling” may have a blood alcohol level of up to 1.6 per mil without being in danger of losing their driver’s license, whereas drunkards using an electric bicycle that “also works while idling” may not exceed a 0.5 per mil threshold. In parts of Berlin, no second bathrooms, no open chimneys and no elevators may be added in apartment renovations; on drilling platforms and wind farms in the North Sea there not only have to be medical supplies and cookies in storage in case of emergencies, but also a “pack of cards”. Prohibitions, says Neubacher, are generally overrunning our daily lives like “knotweed on a cemetery wall”.
Beware the giant knotweed
(Photo via phyllophilus.blogspot.co.at)
Responsible Parties
Montesquieu, who died in 1755, formulated a general rule for a well-run state that has been long forgotten: “If it is not necessary to make a law, it is necessary not to make a law”.
Neubacher not only provides an extensive encyclopedia of the protective siege, he also names those responsible and their motives: politicians, he says, believe they need to be seen to “do something” – and it is easier to pass rules and regulations concerning completely unimportant details of life, than actually doing something substantive. So these regulations are in a way decoys, designed to distract from the politicians’ ineptitude.
Charles de Montesquieu: purveyor of good advice that has been ignored
(Image © Bridgeman Art Library / Versailles)
With regard to this, we would however note that we are even more worried that they might actually do something “substantive”, so our concerns certainly differ from Mr. Neubacher’s in this particular respect.
Neubacher also points out that an entire industry has sprung up under the guise of supposed “consumer protection”, with numerous influential industry lobbies benefiting greatly from regulations and paternalism, which have created “profitable, crisis-resistant business segments, that make a lot of money on the back of Nanny State regulations”.
This is e.g. immediately obvious when considering the ban prohibiting the use of incandescent light bulbs in the EU: allegedly introduced to “save the planet”, the ban’s man aim has always been to “increase the profits of Osram”, which along with other lighting producers lobbied heavily for its introduction. Ever since, Europe’s citizens have been forced to sit in lighting reminiscent of a morgue. As Lord Christopher Monckton remarked to this, given that this morgue-like lighting is highly likely to discourage reading, the continued dumbing down of the population has probably been given a major shot in the arm by the light bulb ban.
Among the many examples for connoisseurs of the prohibitions and regulations created by the “preventative-bureaucratic complex” in Neubacher’s book, we also find the recent establishment of a cemetery for lesbian women in Berlin – where men, you guessed it, are prohibited from being buried. Thus the bureaucrats have ensured peace of mind for members of Berlin’s lesbian community even after they have shuffled off this mortal coil. One cannot even escape the nannies by dying anymore.
Inauguration ceremony of the new “lesbians only” cemetery in Berlin.
(Photo source: AFP)
