And I'm a person sympathetic with a lot of liberal positions, in case you were wondering. Thanks to decades of positive reinforcement, feel-good psychology books and a love of blandness, liberals are terrified of exhibiting just, honest anger.

As a result, they can't stand up against the Limbaughs, Coulters, O'Reillys and their talk-show imitators across the nation. They're afraid to speak. They have determined that the moment someone is called a "Nazi," that's as far as they dare go without Doctor Phil tossing Prozac down their throats and committing them to the rubber room. I'm sure that timidity would be effective against the real Nazis. (And there are a number of them in public life right now.)

About the only emotion permitted to liberals is sorrow - over the people who died in that bridge collapse (why didn't you get angry when that mayor spent a fortune on a freaking baseball stadium?), over lost rights (why does the Speaker of the House accept the Constitution being crapped upon?) and over Katrina victims (where were the liberals screaming in anger at the Bushies' indifference-if-not-outright-genocide at relief efforts?)

After all, if you weep, you aren't hurting anyone else. If you get angry, you might risk changing things for the better.

As a feminist, it is precisely your kind of deconstruction, speech and thought policing that has brought us to this nanny state.

EVERYTHING IS ABOUT MISOGYNY!!!

Please Carol, get over your vagina.

We are in a nanny state, not because we hate you because you have a vagina, but because we are being treated NOT AS CRIMINALS, but as children.

Now with that explanation Carol, you can see it has nothing to do with your vagina, and nothing to do with the fact that we hate wymnyn, but because we resent being treated as children.

You can now go back to contemplating your vagina and how everyone hates you for it.

...terms like "the daddy state" could be used interchangeably with the term "nanny state" etc.

They can't. At least not if one wants to carry the same condescending tone implied by Anonymous' post.

And I didn't mean to confuse the issue by posting anonymously myself. I'll correct that this time.

Nannies re-entered the popular consciousness after a long absence in the past few years. And most uses of the term "nanny x" refer to treating someone like a child, much as one would see on shows like Nanny 911.

The police, on the other hand, have been warm and fuzzy heroes since 9/11, much like firemen. And you'll still hear people referring to "police states" when they are discussing things like illegal wiretapping.

"Fashion police" became popular when no one was really talking about nannies. Also, "fashion nanny" just sounds stupid--although you can imagine someone saying, "What, are you my mom?" in such a situation.

It's a bit of an awkward time to rail against real authority run amok. You can't use "police" anymore, as they are now all our friends. You can't use "Nazis" because it offends people who survived the Holocaust (and their descendants). "Stormtroopers," "fascists," and "brownshirts" are still pretty good, though.

These terms are not interchangeable. They convey different nuances. "Police" signifies someone who prevents you from doing something against the rules. "Nanny" suggests someone who is telling you what is good for you (because you're not wise enough to know yourself).

I think Carol Lay is crying "misogyny" quite irresponsibly. "Nanny" is a really useful term for what's going on these days. There are all sorts of interest groups these days who want to tell you what's best for you. And while it would be pretty ridiculous to call any of the Western countries a "police state", it just might make sense to call one or the other a "nanny state".

Oh, hey tomreedtoon - you have GOT to be kidding. You don't hear or see liberal-progressives expressing anger?

to the speed in which young women flee from feminism?

Or as an actual comedian once put it, You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did you eat yet or what?' And Tom Christie said, 'No, JEW?' Not 'Did you?'...JEW eat? JEW? You get it? JEW eat?

A little thought would tell you that it's stupid to try to insult the police by calling them "police."

"Ma'am, we're here to serve you a court order because your restaurant is in violation of the city's ordinance against trans fat."

"What're you, the food police?"

"Well... yes, ma'am, I guess you could say that's what we are."

As others have pointed out, the two words are not interchangeable. Nannies treat people like children; police treat them like criminals. In addition, when you insult someone by calling them "the [whatever] police," it implies not just that they have no business trying to enforce their opinions, it also implies that they have no actual authority over the matter under discussion. With nannies, it's a different matter; someone somewhere has given or wants to give them authority over something they have no business policing.

While you're yipping about misogyny, how about noticing that there are male nannies and female police officers?

But I live in a Police Nanny State. First they criminalize everything then they intervene and micromanage every aspect of your life in order to extract fines fees and penalties from you.

All of these comments trying to belittle the term 'nanny' seem to just prove her point.

Which, as I take it, seems to be that in the private sphere, in women's domain, power is silly and belittling. But in the public, as with police, it's respectable and manly.

Children as well as citizens both are rightly under the control of a nanny or police officer respectively.

You were children once, and you were under a woman's control most likely. You are a citizen now, and you are under men's control in the form of government. They're comparable, but one is not respected.

And yeah, there's female police officers and single fathers. Which one do you think our culture normalizes?