This seems to be becoming a mantra

But I'm perfectly willing to help beat the drum for it:

The Threat of the Paternalistic State (it'll be available to you regular folks too, soon)

By Peter Schwartz

A precondition of freedom is the recognition of the individual's capacity to make decisions for himself. If man were viewed as congenitally incapable of making rational choices, there would be no basis for the very concept of rights. Yet that is increasingly how our government views us. It is adopting the role of a paternalistic nanny, zealously protecting the citizen against his own actions. In the process, our freedom is disappearing.

...[T]he government is making two declarations. The first is that you are not responsible for your decisions, and that if you are stricken by emphysema--or are injured in a car accident or become too fat, society will take care of you. The second is that, as a consequence, you cannot be given the freedom to make those decisions in the first place--i.e., your freedom to smoke cigarettes or to drive without a seat belt or to eat what you want will be restricted. Once your life is deemed to be the responsibility of the state, you are no longer permitted to incur "social costs" by making undesirable choices.

Mr. Schwartz is chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Copyright © 2004 Ayn Rand® Institute, 2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA, 92606. All rights reserved.
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And think about this while we're at it:

The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.

-- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration and Protest of Virginia [1825]

The latter thanks to The Future of Freedom Foundation. I hope nobody minds me combining the two messages. (It wouldn't stop me anyway.... Well, maybe...)