You've made a good point, of course, and perhaps I'm just still smarting from having been required to show ID before being allowed onto Coney Island Pier on Tuesday (which infringement on liberty I've already had stopped dead in its tracks), but no... Today's rule makers are focusing on more personally invasive, day-to-day issues than those you've mentioned, our right to die (gasp) included, if not in particular.
America seems to have reached a point at which what used to be "problems" are now "causes," and the "cause bandwagon," having become an important instrument of vote-getting, is getting its invasive tentacles into many of what I consider to be the untouchable nooks and crannies of our lives.
I'm waiting for someone to propose a rule requiring us to carry "Calorie Ration Card[s]" to be presented before we're allowed to buy certain foods and beverages, and I'm not being the least bit facetious in saying that, because why rely on personal responsibility? (The recently proposed, and mercifully defeated, onerous NYS tax on certain beverages is a case in point.)
(For years, one of my pet ideas has been to produce and sell transparent plastic appliques, to be stuck to car windows, that will make it look like people are wearing seat belts...a
huge seller for at least a month until they're legislated into oblivion. I use my passenger-side seatbelt
only as a courtesy to the drivers who will get ticketed for allowing me ignore the law.)
Edit: Ref.
deadly irony
