Meditations on the ‘Nanny State’

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
This column was written but not published.

Government can't be all things to all people

With the close of the legislative session last week, Oregon Senate minority leader Ted Ferrioli complained in the Oregonian that our state is fast becoming the “nanny state.”
Sen. Ferrioli’s specific complaint was in reference to legislation banning smoking in bars, bingo halls and bowling alleys. He also didn’t like bills requiring schools to limit the distribution of junk food, requiring deposits on water bottles and protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination. “Oregonians don’t need senators to make their life choices for them,” said Ferrioli. “Welcome to Nanny Land.”
Whether this sort of legislation is positive for Oregon or not is a matter of individual judgment. But in one regard I agree with Sen. Ferrioli. The public expectation for what government should provide is becoming increasingly unrealistic, given budgets, authorities and Oregon’s tradition of individual rights and independence.

And its not just Oregon. It’s the rest of the country as well.

Just about once a week there is a story that runs on CNN about the victims of Hurricane Katrina and what, in the opinion of Anderson Cooper, is not being done for these people by the government.

I don’t want to sound hard-hearted, but where did the idea come from that the government is supposed to make your life completely whole again when natural disaster strikes? A little help to get you through the immediate crisis seems to be the sort of thing a generous and compassionate government ought to do, but does our government really owe you a new home, new furniture, a replacement vehicle and a new job and all you have to do to get it is fill out stack of papers? It seems to me that the founding fathers would be appalled at what we have become.

I wonder what our citizens today would ask for if they were catapulted back 150 years in time: would they want calvary troops to accompany their wagon trains across the desert to ward off Indian attacks? Would they expect paved roads across the Rockies to make the roads easier for their wagons to traverse? How about government-maintained sign posts along the way directing them away from ill-advised shortcuts through the Utah desert. CNN would have you believe that paying taxes “entitles” citizens to such amenities. Ted Ferrioli would shake his baby rattle.

Locally, we are seeing much the same thing of late.

I continue to be amazed daily at the types of phone calls the county receives from people seeking the assistance of local government to resolve all sorts of problems. A recent newspaper article quoting a sheriff in Arizona referred to the new role of law enforcement as “babysitting.” That’s what it feels like.

Some of the more ridiculous things I’ve been confronted with since I took office 7 years ago include these gems:

One lady called and wanted to know where she should file the paperwork to have the county pay the undertaker for the cost of burying her father. (This is not a service which your taxes pay for.)

One gentleman called and wanted to know if the county would purchase him a new set of dentures. (The county doesn’t buy dentures.)

An elderly gentleman called and asked if the county could force his neighbor to move a pile of dirt out of her back yard. The dirt, he said, was disturbing the view from his patio door.

One lady wrote and asked if the county would consider adopting a “no shooting” ordinance countywide. (We won’t. This is not Multnomah County.)

Several people have called and asked if the county would bring them gravel for their private driveway or send a county blade (No, because pretty soon everyone would want a load of taxpayer-funded gravel for his or her driveway or ask for county staff to come compete with local contractors.)

If people weren’t so serious about these requests, they would be funny. But they are serious, and their expecations bear pricetags and therefore, their requests are anything but funny.

The Bill of Rights Is Also A Bill of Responsibilities

By Scott R. Cooper, Crook County Judge
first published in the Central Oregonian, July 2007

Vesting your rights means carrying out your responsibilities

A time honored part of the Independence Day holiday is public soul searching about what it means to be an American.

Inevitably, this conversation will turn to a discussion of rights.

Americans are very proud of their rights. We have whole lists of them: taxpayers rights, voters rights, individual rights, the list goes on. And why shouldn’t we be proud of this distinction?

No country before our ever granted its citizens rights as broad as ours. Even today our Constitution is modeled by other emerging democracies.

But what too often goes overlooked in all this talk of rights is talk of an equally important concept: the idea of “responsibilities”. This is important because the exercise of rights without the acceptance of responsibility is just another form of tyranny. That tyranny occurs when you use your rights to keep someone else from pursuing “life, liberty and happiness” (which incidentally is not a Constitutional right but rather a goal outlined in the Declaration of Independence).

If we are to preserve the independence which has made this country great for the past 231 years, we must be cognizant that implicit within our cherished Bill of Rights are unstated corollary responsibilities. If they were written out, they might look something like this:

Amendment I
You have a right to free speech, but you have a responsibility before speaking to be informed. You have a right to exercise freedom of religion, but you have a responsibility to recognize that others may believe differently and are just as entitled as you to pursue their beliefs.

Amendment II
You have a right to bear arms, but you have a responsibility to handle your firepower safely and to teach your children to do the same.

Amendment III
You have a right to have no soldier quartered upon you in your home, but you have a responsibility to be respectful of the brave men and women of the U.S. military who defend freedom for the rest of us.

Amendment IV
You have a right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure of your home and your person, but you have a responsibility to obey the law, to promote good morals and to generally behave yourself in such a way that searches and seizures aren’t necessary.

Amendment V
You have a right to due process of law but you have a responsibility not to turn the law against your neighbors as a weapon. Seeking compensation for damages above and beyond what you’ve actually suffered or using the law simply to stop others from their activities is a perversion of the law and the protection we all derive from it.

Amendment VI
You have a right to a fair trial but you have a responsibility not to allow justice to be perverted by playing legal games to avoid the consequences of your crimes.

Amendment VII
You have a right to trial by jury, but you also have a responsibility to do your part for ensuring the integrity of the jury system by responding to a jury summons.

Amendment VIII
You have a right to avoid cruel and unusual punishment, but you have a responsibility not to desire the same for others. Justice is done when the misguided are brought to penitence and restored to a productive place in society, not when the misguided are punished for years on end without hope of reprieve.

Amendment IX
The rights of the people are paramount in the our Constitution but nothing in the Constitution relieves you of your responsibility to have compassion for your fellow citizens and human beings in distress, wherever distress may be found.

Amendment X
The rights not enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the respective states, but the responsibility for the welfare of the whole United States belongs to all of us.

The founding fathers of our country understood the importance of guaranteeing rights. They had surprisingly little to say about responsibilities. I think they probably couldn’t envision a world where someone might sue for hundreds of millions of dollars because she spilled hot coffee in her lap. Nor could they imagine a world where the mention of god or evolution in the schoolhouse might lead to discipline of a teacher or where governments might seek to take guns out of the hands of ordinary citizens.

But even though they couldn’t imagine such things, they would have recognized immediately the problem that accompanies the exercise of rights without the corresponding exercise of responsibilities.

Attention to both is what makes us and keeps us truly free.