One of the biggest reasons we've gotten so far away from that, is literally because of people like them always trying to get the Government to regulate things or step into every facet of people's lives.

They're terrified of giving people the ability to make their own choices, in case they make the wrong choice. And so they will inevitably set on the course of totalitarianism because if you assume everybody to be a drooling idiot, what other course have you got, and then express great surprise when a shitbag ascends to power, because we were only offering a job with total control over an entire population, who would have thought that would be popular with the "shitbag" demographic?