Professor Noam Chomsky: The Nanny State

Source:Chomsky's Philosophy- Uncle Sam's Big Government.

“Noam Chomsky – The Nanny State”

Source:Chomsky's Philosophy 

Noam Chomsky’s definition of a nanny state, is what almost every else including people who favor the nanny state on both wings of the American political spectrum, would call corporate welfare. Where government at taxpayers expense subsidizes wealthy successful corporations and individuals. That is not a nanny state, but corporate welfare.

A nanny state is big government that tires to do too much for the people themselves. Make decisions for individuals that they ( meaning big government ) believe should be left to big government and not individuals. Like how much and what people should and can eat, or what and how much they can drink. (tT use as examples) Big government telling people who they can sleep with and marry, when romantic couples can start living together, would be other examples of a nanny state.

There are two ideological forms of the nanny state both in America and in the rest of the world. One coming from the Far-Left which seems to get more publicity than anything else when it comes to big government as it relates to personal issues, is very secular to the point that Far-Leftists would even outlaw religion if they could and have in most communist countries. Far-Leftists both democratic in a socialist sense and authoritarian in a communist sense, who believe they’re the only smart moral people and have all the answers to the point that even questioning them is somehow immoral and should be punished by government force. The Communist Republic of Korea ( which is what North Korea really is ) is a perfect example of that.

The other form of the nanny state in America and in other places in the world, tends to have Far-Right fundamentalist, theocratic, religious tones, as well as nationalist, tribalist, fascist tones. That they ( the supporters of this fascism ) are the real Americans or whatever nationality you want to use, that they’re the only real Patriots ( not from New England, necessarily ) and everyone who disagrees with then are immoral and hate their country. We saw this with Senator Joe McCarthy and his McCarthyism movement in the 1950s and backers of the so-called Un-American Activities movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s. And their religious and moral values are so superior to everyone and everything else, that their values and religion should be the law of the land. And that anyone who violates these values should be in prison or even worst. You see this in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (To use as an example)

Corporate welfare and the nanny state, even though they’re both related to big government and backed by big government, are two different things. One is about subsidizing wealthy individuals and corporations at the expense of everyone else. The other is about telling people what they can’t and can’t do and trying to use big government to manage people’s lives for them. Because they believe that personal freedom is dangerous and just the freedom to make mistakes and commit immoral acts, as they would see it. Corporate welfare and the nanny state, both come from big government, but aren’t the same things. 

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