The Nanny State
By noderel:
Last summer I spent about 4 months in Idaho, rummaging through my files for photos that would help tell my history in hot rodding. I came across a written comment I had gotten in the mail, “What’s the difference between Aussie and American hot rodders?” It was in a note from a hot rodder down under.
The answer is that America is not nearly the nanny state that Australia is. Oh, the U.S. has more than an abundance of silly, some downright stupid, laws and traditions. But nothing like the restrictions placed on Australians by their own government. Sad comment is, they let all this happen with seldom more than a whimper.
I have an acquaintance who calls this the result of living in a Convict mentality. Your’e aware that Australia was settled by white people from England, the majority were prisoners of mother England, or now called POME’s as a reversal that Aussies call the English. The assumption of the English (and many other European powers) was that the common man was too stupid to fend for themselves, and needed overseers for the most menial task. Too willing were the upper middle class to step in and become taskmasters. This happened in America too, as you historians know.
Thus you get a Convict mentality. In America you get a Seige mentality, which has given rise to the Yankee penchant for guns. A way to protect against King George and the Red Coats. In one instance, you resist, in the other you submit. Apply this to something as simple as hot rodding, and you have the situation of today.
Aussies have a love-hate relatonship with Americans. They proclaim loudly how they dislike the American self-assurance, but secretly they admire it and want to emulate it. In hot rodding, you have a kind of free spirited cowboy culture, but the Government can’t allow this to go unchecked. Thus the condition wherein the common man obviously is not smart as the government, not smart enough to make anything as sophisticated as a vehicle, without government approval at every stage of construction.
You need a police state to keep a tight rein on the lawless mob, thus a system wherein the policeman is the sheriff, judge, jury, and hangman. Which leads to some interesting scenarios. In my family, the daughter lost control of her car where the pavement ended and gravel/dirt road continued. She rolled the car, went to the hospital, and hours later the police showed up. To issue her with a ticket for careless driving, give her deduction points on her license, and levy a fine (for payment on the spot, thank you). No witnesses. Only an interview with the driver.
Taken to another extreme, a rodder was trailering his car to an event in a neighboring state. At the border bridge, a policeman stopped him and demanded he unload the car. When the car was on the pavement, the policeman issued a number or warrants for items on the car that he alone deemed unroadworthy, demanded payment of the fines, and sent the rodder along. Try that one in the states and the judge would still be laughing. Or in my small town, where a driver decided he was too drunk to drive, parked in front of the police station and went in to ask if they would call a taxi. The policeman asked how he had gotten to the station, when he replied he had driven, he was immediately cited for DUI, fined, etc.
So, I tell whoever asks that in Australia the citizen is unwilling to do anything without permission, because he is told at every avenue that the government always knows best. Whereas in America the citizen doesn’t ask permission, and then if some official objects, the yankee just does it anyway. Fortunately for the Aussies, some hot rodders have this same bull headed attitude. Out there somewhere in the future, this is the independent attitude that just may pull the Aussies up by the bootstraps, and finally sunder them from Mother England. (Now, I’ll just sit back and wait for the Gestapo to show up on the porch to inform me of my varied misdeeds!) THAT is the difference between American and Australian hot rodders. In one case, the dog just rolls over to be kicked again, in the other the dog bites the foot doing the kicking.