To paraphrase Florence King ("If Christopher Hitchens is a Marxist, I want to be one, too"), I hereby pull the lever for Tom Stoppard's "timid libertarianism."

Here's the playwright complaining of nanny-state annoyances in today's Britain:

He describes his politics as "timid libertarian." Yet he can rev up a pretty bold rant on Britain's "highly regulated society," which he thinks is "betraying the principle of parliamentary democracy." There was the garden party he threw recently, for example, where because there was a pond on the property, he was required to hire two lifeguards. "The whole notion that we're all responsible for ourselves and we don't actually have to have nannies busybodying all around us, that's all going now. And I don't even know in whose interest it's supposed to be or who wishes it to be so. It seems to be like a lava flow, which nobody ordered up. Of course, one does know in whose interest it is. It's in the interests of battalions of civil servants in jobs that never existed 10 years ago."