Some people criticize what they view as the government’s increasing interference in people’s lives. They say the government should get out of people’s way, and stop meddling in things that it doesn’t have business regulating. A few of these critics say that things were better in earlier eras, when the nanny state wasn’t trying to run every part of people’s lives.
What most people don’t realize is that we simply had a different kind of nanny state back then.
For a long time, Canadian and American governments imposed heavy restrictions on things like divorce, property ownership, and homosexuality. Women were treated as being dependent on their husbands, and often not allowed to own property or businesses without the husband’s consent, or to vote in elections.
Divorce was also heavily restricted – in extreme cases, like 19th century Alabama, couples needed the state legislature’s approval before a divorce was legal. Homosexuals were arrested and jailed for their sexuality. Various U.S. governments imposed the abhorrent “Jim Crow” laws that restricted black peoples’ freedom in many areas of life, such as where they could go and live, and who they could marry.
The Canadian government, as part of its self-appointed goal to “civilize” aboriginal peoples, empowered its Indian agents to control aboriginals’ ability to leave their reserve lands, their abilities to acquire food and property, and even who they could marry.
Today, governments are frequently criticized for the restrictions they place on economic transactions, developments that might impact the environment, or the acquisition of property such as land or guns. These claims can often have merit, and the government needs to back off on some of its restrictions. However, the people who compare today’s “nanny state” to the supposedly freer times of earlier eras tend to forget how the governments of those eras frequently ran a much more insidious nanny state by trying to control much more personal and intimate parts of peoples’ lives.
Fundamental liberties such as peoples’ freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of religion (with laws that made life more difficult for people who belonged to different branches of Christianity, or adhered to other religions or were atheists) were routinely violated in the name of enforcing morality and the common good.
Sound familiar?
Oftentimes, these changes were imposed based on Christian principles on things like divorce and sexuality. More insidiously, some of them were imposed based on the belief that black and aboriginal people were somehow “uncivilized” because of their ancestral cultures. In practice, that meant that peoples’ freedom to live many aspects of their lives the way they wanted was heavily restricted by governments. Despite modern governments supposedly being more controlling than older ones, our modern governments are actually less controlling of peoples’ lives in many ways.
Twenty-five years ago, Preston Manning wrote that true Christianity distinguishes itself from spurious Christianity in that true Christianity does not try to forcibly impose its solutions on people who do not want it.
We would do well to heed his words.
Jared Milne is a St. Albert resident with a passion for Canadian history and politics.
