Aux Etats-Unis aussi, l'Etat maternel fait ressortir l'enfant qui est en nous:

Nanny-state activities are government's best-known way of babying us. Government commands us to buckle up when we're in automobiles. It scolds us (and punitively taxes us) when we smoke tobacco. It forces us to pay special taxes allegedly for the purpose of making our retirements financially secure. And it forever is telling us that we will be abused, humiliated and impoverished by big bad businesses were it not for the state's benevolent intervention.
But the nanny state's consequences go beyond these particular insults. In particular, the more we relinquish decision-making responsibility to government, the more childlike we become.
Consider the response of a New Jersey woman to my suggestion that the Garden State's prohibition on self-service gasoline stations be lifted. "Oh, no!" she cried, "that would be disastrous! People here don't know how to pump their own gasoline. They'd spill it all over the place!" (...)