Wimp Factory Tooling Up
22nd March 2014
Freeberg sounds the alarm.
We have a culture that is friendly to the little laws; it comes easy to us to complain that such-and-such is happening, unregulated and we need yet-another-little-law. Maybe an actual regulation, maybe just a new soft, cultural hand-slapping. No, we don’t have Hooters because a blogger complained. We have Hooters because of the people who wanted to keep Hooters out, or rather, because of the tension that built up around their mindset. It’s a case of the pressure building up under the blockage.
Half of us relieve our daily tensions by finding some refuge where we can get away from the little-laws. The other half of us, unfortunately, seem to escape similar tensions by passing those little-laws. Mencken said puritanism was the nagging fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time? What we’ve got is the widespread nagging fear that someone is able to do something they want to do. Not so much a desire to control others, as a phobia against liberty. Subtly different.