How much is too much government?

There are a lot of complaints about our country becoming a nanny state. The recent Supreme Court ruling that government can't ban the sell of violent video games to minors was pretty even, 80 agreed with the decision and 70 disagreed according to informal ViCad poll. They were three negative comments to our forum's question of the day" Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling on violent video games?"

The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against the state of California, but I agree with the dissenting summation written by Justice Stephen Breyer, one of the two dissenters in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, pointed out the court's double standard. "What sense does it make," he asked, "to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?"

What sense, indeed. Breyer went further: "What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman — bound, gagged, tortured, and killed — is also topless?"

Another fine question. Breyer pointed out the inconsistency in order to defend the California law. He would have ruled that the video-game ban is constitutional — just as some laws against selling obscenity have been upheld.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2080289,00.html

I've seen a lot of comments saying that it's up to the parents to restrict, and I guess permit children what they can or can't watch. I’ve heard many times that there's too much government intrusion in our lives. I wonder if that's a blanket statement in restricting any more government laws? Ron Paul uses this reasoning for his objection to the civil rights laws. He said it was an intrusion on property rights. I guess Ron Paul and these posters are saying that parents and the free market will police itself. That's a good theory but is it based, in reality?

I don't have a barometer or a gauge to measure how much government we need, but I've come down on both sides because I take it on a case by case basis. I may not be against red light cameras, but I'm a strong opponent of the Patriot Act.

Hey this  is Texas, where they pass a “anti groping law” and then turn around and approve legislation that requires mothers seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound examination and listen to a description of what it shows in the same legislative session.