Nick Gillespie takes on the race to regulate everything in the Chicago Tribune. Some gems. . .
Although “give me partially hydrogenated vegetable oil or give me death!” is not likely to become a rallying cry anytime soon, it’s worth pausing a minute to consider the country’s headlong rush to prohibit just about anything that bureaucrats–or simple majorities of voters–find offensive. . . . As Ald. Ed Burke (14th), who sponsored a similar measure earlier this year, told The New York Times, “I’m disappointed we’re losing bragging rights to be the first city in the nation to do this.” With attitudes such as that, expect to see the equivalent of an arms race among jurisdictions bidding up restrictions on all sorts of activities deemed unacceptable. . . . Most important, these bans reduce all of us to the status of children, incapable of making informed choices. Is it quaint to suggest that there’s something wrong with that in a country founded on the idea of the individual’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?