[BluH2o]

The most perfect solution is to hire a car, like a limousine, with a professional driver, every time one goes out to dinner.

A solution yes, however it will put a big dent in spur of the moment dining out. The restaurant business can't be happy about the intrusiveness of law enforcement vis a vis the lowering of the sobriety test to a ridiculous .08.

[Unknowing]

Oh, I agree that the cost would come out of the restaurateurs' pockets, and having to hire a car would also reduce our fun and freedom. That's the sad point: since the People are willing to accept these roadblock traps, and even demand them as part of what you've called "nanny state" social regulations, we're stuck with them. The risks of carrying on as reasonably prudent free people have become too great in certain ways, it may seem.

All conduct is becoming, de facto, subject to strict liability with the growth of social regulation. The standard of care required to avoid various legal traps is becoming superlative, so that refraining from many actions becomes the more prudent choice. If one exercising ordinary reasonable care cannot be "careful enough," according to the law, to avoid the sanctions of the law, then any reasonable person will restrict his activities.

Social regulation undermines and curtails the American presumption of liberty, by my lights. I mean the baseline assumption that individual willpower should be trusted, fostered, and let alone by the agents of the state unless probable cause exists to interfere. That philosophy is so lost and gone from our law, though I appreciate the fact that liberty lives on within FreeRepublic.