Nanny Ninnies Goe Nuts Over Sparklers

We've been caring for the elderly relative again, and will be again this coming week, so blogging has been light. So it may be odd that the first thing I mention is . . . sparklers. As I often do to keep up with the news down home, I took a quick look at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's web site a moment ago, and the one story that jumped out at me (other than the tower killer who didn't jump) was word that sparklers are once again legal in Georgia.

Now, this speaks to me in a way it won't to those of you who didn't grow up there in the '60s and '70s. But throughout my childhood, sparklers were illegal. Yes, those tiny little hand-held wonders that have amazed children for generations were suddenly declared too dangerous to handle by the nanny-staters who make it their business to run our lives.

Of course, that didn't mean we didn't have them, any more than the banning of fireworks meant that we never lit a firecracker. As is usually the case when something the public demands suddenly becomes contraband, our demand was met by other means: we simply headed over the nearby state lines to Tennessee or Alabama and bought our fill. Everyone did, in fact, so much so that only the most sanctimonious, or uptight (often one in the same), law enforcement officers cited anyone for burning sparklers.

Now comes word that Georgia governor Sonny Perdue signed a bill rescinding the sparkler ban. As the bill's sponsor said:

"Everyone was doing it anyway," said Sen. Don Balfour, a Republican from Snellville who sponsored the sparkler bill. "There weren't many injuries, and there was not a single law enforcement officer in Georgia enforcing the ban on sparklers."

But of course it isn't that simple; it never is when the do-gooders become "concerned" and "afraid" that people are just too stupid to get by without their help. Some folks are already lobbying municipalities to outlaw sparklers at the local level, and in places they're succeeding. Their fears that children will burn themselves are grounded in reality, of course: that I don't deny.

Nevertheless, the logic they employ is frightening in our low-risk society. I'm not suggesting that truly dangerous stunts like bungee-jumping or hang-gliding wouldn't go on absent a ban on sparklers. Yet it's difficult to understand such actions (and I once seriously contemplated hang-gliding, since one of the best spots in the nation was close by when I grew up) absent an official, politically correct aversion to anything riskier than sitting at home. Except sitting too much, which will of course make you obese and kill you.

I toss the sparkler ban in with anti-smoking campaigns (I've never smoked and never will), anti-fat campaigns (I'm reasonably trim, I think), anti-drinking campaigns (moderation in all things), and anti-handgun campaigns (I take the Second Amendment seriously). All are designed to prevent people from taking care of themselves, and all (with the possible exception of the anti-smoking campaign's early years) are utterly ineffective at achieving their stated goals. For the most part, they're the playthings of establishment elites who lie awake at night, worrying that someone, somewhere, is doing something that isn't good for them.

I hope Georgians from Waycross to Hiawassee empty the shelves of sparklers this weekend, and hold one aloft in memory of our brave servicemen and women who've sacrificed everything for our freedoms. And, while they're at it, perhaps they'll remember that this year the simple act of lighting a sparkler is, in some small way, a victory over those for whom personal responsibility is a personal insult.