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It’s not even true. One food chain after another is moving toward hormone-free, routine-antibiotic-free meat because we are still grownups who think about what we’re doing despite persistent state efforts to infantilize us. But the effort persists, and justifies maintaining and intensifying our skeptical scrutiny of Big Dietician.

The situation is more than a little surprising in historical perspective. In Canada, as in Britain from which our political culture and system sprang, citizens controlled the government, not the other way around. We had the right to mistrust the state. It did not have the right to mistrust us.

Nowadays that presumption has been turned on its head. From rules about salt in food to bicycle helmets to the height of railings on decks, the state constantly insists we are too stupid to know what is good for us. And endless limits on free speech and free association say we are too mean to be left to play nicely together.

It might seem paradoxical to say we are too dumb to eat by ourselves but smart enough to vote for Big Dietician. But of course the political system is hedged about with all sorts of rules, like restrictions on campaign finance, to restrain our stupidity or malevolence … for our own good, of course.

One crucial aspect of this reversal in citizens’ relationship to the state is on the right of self defence. In Canada, in theory, you’re still allowed to protect yourself. But you’re increasingly denied the necessary tools, not just guns but even pepper spray, that you could buy routinely three generations back. And if you do defend yourself in an emergency, the executive branch, in the form of the police, may well use its discretion to make your life surprisingly miserable in ways they too rarely do for those who initiate predatory violence.