Wisconsin Governor Doyle is a lame duck, with little more than half a year left in office. He may be thinking, now and again, about his next job. If he’s looking for a role as a nanny, scold, intrusive busybody, or condescending man, then his veto of a bill allowing limited raw milk sales will leave him in good standing. A business looking to hire someone who’d worry about everyone else’s business, would find a prime candidate in Jim Doyle.
Wisconsin is America’s Dairyland, but a dairyland only as special interests see fit. After the Wisconsin legislature sent Doyle a bill to allow dairy farmers in a dairy state to sell genuine, raw milk from Wisconsin dairy cows, Doyle decided to veto the bill. See, Governor vetoes raw-milk bill.
No one– no political group — believes more deeply in the ability of common people to decide for themselves than libertarians do.
When libertarians doubt the schemes and grandiose projects of bureaucrats and politicians, it’s because they see the harm to the good sense, skill, and judgment of common people. We see the proof and demonstration of our political convictions all around us: common people, just as we are, do extraordinary things through voluntary, cooperative arrangements on a scale that no public plan or project can match.
Those who seek to regulate ordinary Americans harm others and impede progress, often for no other reason than their political ambitions and patent narcissism. These selfish few look down on others, even though by any measure of talent or insight these political nannies are often far less capable than those they seek to regulate. (They see their own good judgment the way a thirsty man imagines an oasis.)
I would object to the meddling of a political class in any event, but I do so doubly when so many of those politicians, bureaucrats, and towns squires who afflict us are simply dull, excuse-making, rationalizing mediocrities. They are accomplished only in producing feeble, vainglorious pronouncements of their own supposed accomplishments, and collecting toadies and hangers-on to flack those pronouncements.
Wisconsin adults should be able to decide for themselves whether to drink raw milk. They don’t need Jim Doyle’s guidance; they’re more than capable of deciding on their own.
