Chris Berg and it's oh oh oh that libertarian anarchist rag one more time ... go for it nannies ...

(Above: go team anarchists. Perhaps a little more work on the design? Click on to enlarge).

It's impossible not to admire the way Chris Berg beavers away in his home at The Drum, the ABC's home away from home for neo cons.

There's something quintessentially absurd, or at least post-modernist ironic in the sight of Berg blathering on about the nanny state on an ABC website, in a way designed to enrage the cardigan wearers, this time under the header The nanny state is coming ... for your democratic soul.

Look out Mr Berg, up there in the sky, is it a super free market bird, is it a libertarian plane, no, it's the nanny broadcaster coming for your scribbler sell-out soul. What next? Ten reasons we shouldn't allow the nanny broadcaster to steal our democratic souls by hosting a forum for neo cons?

In his usual way, Berg manages to conflate many anxieties and moral panics into the simplistic notion that the government is turning us into robotic machines worthy of 1984. His particular bête noire is the public health system, which chimes in nicely with the assorted bête noires and obsessions of the sponsors of the Institute of Public Affairs.

Not once does he mention the education system, the ultimate mechanism of the state, which is disappointing because I was hoping to be able to join him in a verse of Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall:

We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teacher leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all your just another brick in the wall

Indeed. Here no dark sarcasm, no dark sarcasm here.

School after all is just a grim preparation for the nanny state. Forget becoming a member of the indolent tertiary elite, do an honest yeoman apprenticeship, work, eat, consume and die.

The alternative, if you follow the Bergian line to its ultimate conclusion, brings you to the kind of adolescent anarchism that sees the streets of Newtown littered with revolutionary anarcho syndicalist posters:

On the one hand there is the existent, with it's habits and certainties. And of certainty. And of certainty, that social poison, one can die.

On the other hand there is revolt, the unknown bursting into the life of all. The possible beginning of the practice of freedom.

Dammit, and all I can see in that message is the misplaced apostrophe in the 'it's', like the grammarian pedant I am. So much for the anarchist revolution, bound down as I am by such a trivial need for rules. No freedom here, here no freedom as the yoke of the properly used apostrophe settles around my neck ...

Dammit, teachers, we'se don't need no education, no dark sarcasm of correctly used apostrophes. What we need is well-trained plumbers and electricians to work on Mr. Berg's home.

Of course Berg doesn't want to go too far down the path of the libertarian anarchists yearning for freedom:

Certainly, some nanny interventions have been going on for a long time, and, in retrospect, few find them are objectionable. Seatbelt laws protect people from the consequences of their own decisions and potentially the behaviour of others.

Aw shucks, and there I was thinking we'd have a Bergian revolution, and get rid of useless things on cars, not just seat belts, but indicator lights, and the brakes and the other fussy mechanical things checked over by the nanny state each year if a car's of an age.

How dare they intervene in my right to drive my car on the right hand side of the road in preparation for my trip to the United States!

Of course when you boil it all down, there's really only a few things that get Berg's wick lighted:

The Preventative Health Taskforce proposed 122 separate recommendations to clamp down on alcohol, tobacco, and weight-gain. It recommended seven entirely new bureaucracies be set up. It suggested twenty-six new laws and regulations.

Yep, it's the old Institute of Public Affairs reliables. Grog, and 'baccy and fiends with an attitude to fast food, a handy triumvirate if you're looking for concerned sponsors.

Well as Conan O'Brien noted on his talk show, now that Osama bin Laden is dead, the official No. 1 threat to America is the KFC Double Down. Unless it's Michelle Obama's devotion to vegetables and fitness and gardening. Take your pick.

Anxious to sound moderate and concerned, Berg tiptoes through the tulips of the nanny state:

Some critics have begun to describe paternalist interventions as indicative of a "bully state" mentality; a graduation from nudging to shoving. While this is true for some new and proposed regulations, it’s not clear that, say, imposing new, simplified food labeling laws is really bullying.

Yep, indeed. If you happen to live with a coeliac, and the food labelling laws get it wrong, you might be living with a dead person. Still there's an upside. If the IPA managed to get the labelling laws changed, I could sue the bloody socks off them. Sorry dear but I'll spend the money wisely ...

For Berg the nanny state is all about the government trying to protect individuals from themselves. This test fails when it comes to the first hurdle of the wretched smoker blowing smoke in my face, the pissed as a parrot drunk driver hurling his vehicle into mine, and the bloated lump sitting next to me, expecting that I'll shrink into the corner so the supersized one can spill to the four corners of the earth ... (oh okay, no slight on physically enhanced people is intended, because in the Tamworth way, I'm inclined to a superior size myself).

Anyhoo, I say all this without bitterness, I just say it to point out that, for all the grand philosophical rhetoric, Berg always comes around to a message from the sponsors.

That is, if I'm right in assuming, that the IPA get money from purveyors of tobacco, suppliers or manufacturers of alcohol, or fast food racketeers? I wonder if they do ...

It certainly makes it understandable as to why Berg's always on about public health, as if public health doesn't have better things to do than patch up smokers, drunks and fat people, and understandably get sick of the sight of self-destructive people checking themselves in for another patch-up job.

For Berg, it's all a matter of grand libertarian principles.

Public health activists are clearly frustrated by the nanny state critique. So they should be. They do not understand how substantial a challenge their ideas are to the philosophical assumptions which underpin liberal democracy.

To which we say a cheery bollocks. If the marketplace had its way entirely, it'd be shovelling junk and shit down consumer throats like there was no tomorrow.

Heck, they're doing it right now. Want to discover the source of all the problems in Alice Springs? It's the alcohol industry making sure everyone, white and black, can get as pissed as parrots at a drop of a hat in the noon day sun. Want to know why everybody in the working class arena is taking on whale-like dimensions? Well the KFC Double Down isn't just America's No. 1 enemy ...

But here's how Berg dresses up the philosophy bit:

If we can't trust people to choose their poison, then how can we trust them with a vote?

Of course we can trust people to choose their poison, we just can't trust their capacity to control the intake of their chosen poison, especially when it has addictive properties, of the kind you'll find in Berg's preferred poisons, be it alcohol, nicotine, or a nicely balanced mix of sugar, salt and chemical flavour additives.

But if he was really feeling in a proper anarchist mood, he should have answered thus: well of course we can't trust people with the vote, which is why voting should be entirely voluntary, and at the discretion of the responsible individual, who might decide to vote, in a citizenly way, or who might decide he or she can't give a flying fuck about actually being involved in such sordid affairs of state.

Well of course that's Berg's form, as you can see by his scribble in Informal Ballots: Blame Compulsory Voting. Truth to tell, the IPA would much prefer the sheep to just sit at home, and devour their poison of choice at a handsome profit to the IPA sponsors, and say nothing, not even a bleat every four years.

The reality is that the state doesn't have the capacity to manage the private lives of individuals and all the carry on about the way it does is just so much paranoid manure. Whenever I hear poker machines or pubs or clubs whining about how hard they're doing it, I chortle into a chardonnay.

For all that Berg rabbits on about paternalist philosophical stances, and people making their own portentous choices, when it comes to key matters, the state, for example, can do bugger all about people killing themselves, except when they get too old to be able to do the job themselves.

But you don't see Berg getting jumpy about the right to die with dignity - who'd want Philip Nitschke as a sponsor? Not the IPA, that's for sure ...

And when it comes to education, people can be as eccentric as they like, be it home schooling or fundie Christian schooling, or Muslim or Scientological schools, all handsomely supported by the taxpayer dollar. Seen the IPA getting agitated about the nanny state at work in the education system, underpinning the private sector with loads of loot? Or worrying about the way the government is building roads and tunnels all over the place, so that the private sector can rake in the cash in PP partnerships of the kind shortly to flood NSW?

Keep on hoping and wishing and dreaming ... you might even get to sing along with Dione Warwick.

Berg gets terribly agitated about public health proposals that restaurants be advised in relation to standardised portions in restaurants. What a diabolical scheme! How on earth will the fast food people be able to super size their customers, upsize them, and turn them into rough equivalents of a KFC giant, mega, family feast, super variety bucket, with bonus ultimate burger meal.

Got palpitations of the heart after that one? Well enough of the nanny state safety net public health system. Head off to America to get treatment there, just remember to take your credit card and your mortgage with you, in case you need to re-mortgage the home. Or you could always seek help from Dr. Berg and the IPA.

Knock knock. Who's there? A refugee from the nanny state.

Oh sorry, you should have realised it's all about you taking responsibility and making the portentous decisions for yourself, and we're sorry no one could tell you about all the things that might kill you, but we do have a simple message, which in English doesn't make much sense.

The dumb fucker addict the.

Say what? Of course it makes a little more sense in German, as Bart Simpson discovered. Die dumb fucker addict die.

Phew, really getting into training for the United States now, with The Motherfucker in the Hat on the list of things to see (sorry, boasting again).

Over there, it's called The Motherf**cker in the Hat, but this is an asterisks free libertarian anarchist site.

Still, thanks to the Bergian revolution, and the revolutionary uptake of personal responsibility, we're looking forward to the abolition of the need for cops.

Hopefully there'll be a few left in the street before they disappear for good, so that I can get as drunk as a skunk on IPA favoured brands of grog, and let loose some saucy rugby league inspired language on them ... Then I can assure them that any anger on their part should see them assume personal responsibility for their anger management. Will the IPA pay the fine, I wonder, or will I have to assume personal responsibility?

The funniest irony in all this, is as we've noted before, that all this talk of a nanny state first came from a Conservative British MP, Iain Macleod, in The Spectator in 1965, or so the wiki tells me.

Poor Macleod, now long gone, must be rolling in his grave, as he watches the Conservative UK government carry on about a happiness index (Happiness index to gauge Britain's national mood). And it's not just the British. Conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy is also on the happiness bandwagon ... (thanks be unto Bhutan for the GNP, or Gross national happiness indicator. Sure the alleged Nepalese kicked out of Bhutan might be a tad unhappy, but think how that's sent the GNP soaring for the rest of the citizenry).

Well we look forward to brave attempts by Berg and the IPA to roll back John Howard's gun laws, support the legalisation of all drugs currently supplied under the counter or in the street, and abandon the rules of the road so that people can learn to drive responsibly and on their merits, guessing which rules or behaviours that might be suitable, and so sparing us all that nanny state advertising about little fingers. It'll all help with the conservative government happiness agenda ...

Then we can move on to education, and working conditions - I fancy a turn to the kind of treatment dished out to workers in Apple plants in China - and abandoning silly ideas of safety nets and minimum wages.

And after all that's done, perhaps we can address the sanctimonious, righteous special pleading for a post-nanny state, which always seems to devolve to a deep concern that the citizenry might not be able to scoff all the burgers they want, followed by a healthy pack of smokes to give those around them a fine range of passive smoking illnesses, and as many six packs of beer they feel they need to consume, to get them in the best shape to drive home ...

It's the IPA Bergian libertarian anti-nanny state way, and if you believe that kind of tosh, golly do we have some grand anarchist freedom fighting posters on the streets of Newtown just right for you ...

I was reminded on another site of what George Bernard Shaw once wrote, a kind of 'ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country', anathema to all those who burble on about personal responsibility and personal freedom, and abhor the state, or for that matter the obligations of being a citizen (such as the huge burden of voting once or twice every three years or so):

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Silly old socialist tosser.

Waiter, bring me another triple Bundy and coke, I feel like getting as pissed as a parrot to show what I can hand on to future generations. It's the responsible Bergian Australian way ...

(Below: yes I've sat through an anarchist meeting, and discussed the rules of the meeting at endless length. Don't ask ... but please be assured that you get a nice cup of tea, just as you used to get from the ABC's tea lady with her splendid trolley).