The nanny state infests our world

This phenomenon is obviously not exclusive to nanny state issues. The people who imposed so many absurd and unnecessary restrictions during the Covid pandemic were obviously under the same illusion.

Nanny state thinking is obviously patronising and authoritarian, but when it extends to controlling how we think and what we say, it becomes especially sinister. This is increasingly seen with people purporting to know what's best for, and to speak on behalf of, minority groups, policing what others say about them, and taking offence on their behalf. Contravene their rules and you are immediately branded a racist, homophobe or misogynist, subject to outrage, ostracism and cancel culture. They define it as hate speech and are well on the way to making it a crime.

And woe betide anyone from a minority group with differing views. A black or brown person who fails to go along with the racist oppression narrative, who is gay but doesn't find homophobia around every corner, a woman who doesn't subscribe to the male patriarchy concept, or a transsexual who expresses doubts about adolescent sex change, soon finds there is no wrath like that of a woke nanny stater whose sense of superiority is challenged.

It can reach peak absurdity when a homeless, penniless, destitute person is still considered unworthy because they are white, male, heterosexual, or enjoy any of the other imagined sources of advantage. It takes a rare kind of superior intelligence to come to that conclusion.

Irrespective of whether others would make the same choices, we should be free to live our lives as we choose provided we do not harm anyone else. Moreover, we should be free to think whatever we like and, provided we do not incite violence, to say whatever we like subject to nothing more than counter argument by those who have a contrary view.

But that is not the way it is. Despite many of us objecting to particular nanny state laws, there are just too many who think that overall they are OK. And that leaves us with an awkward question: if there are so many people incapable of making the right choices, requiring smart people to guide them, how can they possibly be expected to elect a government? Won't they get that wrong too?