Mexico's Glorious Disorder Puts Nanny State to Shame

Having just returned from a week in Mexico, and therefore being an expert, this is what I have to report: It is just like Canada – 30 years ago.

By Jack Knox

People smoke in restaurants. They ride in the back of pickup trucks. There do not appear to be seat belt laws (or, frequently, seat belts). Half the pasty-white population of Canada frolick in the water with nary a lifeguard in sight.

A vacationing builder from the United States stood poolside and gazed dumbfounded at the construction workers clambering, untethered, high atop the concrete skeleton of the condo complex being erected next door. “Seventy-two feet up and not one of them is wearing a safety lanyard” observed the American, his voice a mixture of admiration and horror.

It was, in short, gloriously unregulated – just like Canada used to be back when kids could take peanut butter sandwiches to school and skate without helmets.

In Mexico, smiling street vendors served up food that had basked in the sun longer than an Albertan after a six-margarita breakfast. The water front walkway had no railing, not even a yellow line painted along the edge to prevent inattentive strollers from tumbling, lemminglike, to the jagged rocks far below. Parasailing tourists soared high in the sky before plunging straight into beaches packed with first time jet skiers-and not one of them had to sign a liability waiver before doing so.

On New Year’s Eve, the fireworks burst directly overhead and fell at the feet of delighted celebrants. The floor of the bus that carried us downtown was fissured with thousands of cracks, just one pothole away from exploding into a cloud of rust-coloured dust.

The municipal planner appeared to have been drunk. All the properties in town had seemingly been tossed into a giant paper bag, given a good shake and dumped on the ground in a dizzyingly haphazard manner. A gated mansion sat by a Quonset hut crammed with truck tires, which was beside a franchised chicken joint, which was next to a cornfield, followed by a car lot, a hospital and a farmhouse.

To repeat: The disorder there was glorious.

In Canada, we have allowed ourselves to be regulated, sheltered and shepherded to the point that our national costume should be the fluorescent orange safety vest. We have banned lawn darts, mandated bicycle helmets and robbed our playgrounds of any apparatus that spins until you trap a limb/throw up/have fun.

Few of the rules in which we wrap ourselves are objectionable when viewed in isolation (smoking in restaurants? Yuck!) but the cumulative effect of all of these directives is a nanny state that smothers us until we are incapable of moving, of making our own decisions.

The result is society with a false sense of security. It absolves us of any personal responsibility. Coffee too hot? Sue McDonald’s. Slip on the sidewalk? The city should have cleared the ice. Fall off the cliff? There should have been a warning sign.

So viva Mexico! Down with over-regulation and those who would inflict it upon us.

Source: Times Colonist