Government Knows Best

Type "New York City Council" and "ban" and "2007" into Google. Here's some of what you find:
• A New York Times story: New York City Council Approves Ban on Metal Bats
• A BBC News story: "Racial slur banned in New York."
• A CNN story on how New York is considering banning "ultrathin" models.
• A New York Sun article on how New York City is contemplating banning feeding pigeons.
• A link to the Humane Society's effort to ban horse drawn carriages.
And that's on the first page alone.

In Britain, in a perfectly typical event quickly forgotten, police tracked down and nearly arrested an 11-year-old boy for calling a 10-year-old boy "gay" in an e-mail. This was considered a "very serious homophobic crime" requiring the full attention of police, traffic cameras are now trained on drivers to arrest them for eating in their cars.

And in both Britain and Canada, the old Hitler Youth slogan, "Nutrition is not a private matter!" has taken on a new life. One expert this week argued that obesity must now be treated like Global Warming, requiring stern government intervention.

On countless fronts, the natural pastures of daily liberty are being paved over by bureaucrats, politicians and other do-gooders. They aren't merely fixing problems as they come up. They are laying-down a path to a world where people like them are in charge of our lives, in large ways and small.

The old story of the frog who doesn't jump out of the pot because the heat is turned up so slowly comes to mind.

[I recently listened Michael Bloomberg address the World Bank on CSPAN. The man's beliefs are literally indistinguishable to the worst despots in history: government-forced behaviors at every level - frightening]

Jonah Goldberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism.