Who whom?

David Farrar on Kiwiblog has come up with a rather sad list
of 85 things he reckons the Greens would ban. This is his
attempt to paint the Greens as “the ultimate nanny state
party.” For instance, he says, they would ban smacking,
factory farming, coal-mining, nuclear power and fizzy
drinks from schools. Such rhetoric is useful for filling
blogspace because it requires no original thought, just the
closing of one eye and the shutting down of half the brain.
If you want to talk bans, it would be just as valid to say that
the political right, among whom Farrar is proud to count
himself, would ban the minimum wage from going up, ban
Kiwibank from being a true people’s bank, ban freedom of
choice for workers in favour of freedom of choice for
currency speculators, ban students from critical thinking,
ban whatever gets in the way of the sacred right to make
private gain at public expense. The list is endless. There’s
one ban I would like to see, though, and that’s a ban on the
inane phrase “nanny state.” Fact is, the “free market,” with
its insidious ideology and its economic power, puts far more
restraints on the way we live than any state or government
ever does.