Mention in The Hill

A nice early write-up by Arthur Delaney in The Hill (second item):

D.C. is a Nanny State capital

The D.C. Council holds its own among our nation’s middling fascists and petty tyrants, earning decent billing in Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi’s new book, Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children, due in stores Sept. 18.

Harsanyi tells Hillscape that the D.C. Council ranks “pretty high” among nannyish legislatures across the country. In other words, he says, “they’re awful.”

Nanny State is an aggregation of dozens of instances of parental policymaking across the country, always in the name of promoting the common good. Harsanyi characterizes these disparate cases — from bans on playing tag in Oregon schools to prohibitions against dancing in New York clubs — as a “concerted movement” down a slippery slope, always with pernicious consequences for civil liberties.

“When you take them one at a time, they’re sort of not very important, but when you really take all this stuff, I think it really is a movement,” he says. “It’s a movement of paternalism that both parties partake in.”

In his book, Harsanyi laments a “dramatic about-face from our traditional attitudes toward overreaching government … When exactly did we lose our right to be unhealthy, unsafe, immoral and politically incorrect?”

In the District, our forfeiture of that right is in mid-process. Just in the last year, D.C. Council members have pushed a smoking ban, a trans-fat ban, a single-beer ban, a noise ban and a fireworks ban, to name a few. The smoking ban alone is what lands the council in Nanny State.

Harsanyi lauds Republican council member Carol Schwartz for being one of “the few big-city politicians who has had the guts to challenge paternalistic encroachments of government.” Schwartz was the only council member to oppose the smoking ban. In 2005, her final act of resistance was to offer a satirical bill to prohibit alcohol in the District. When introducing it, she borrowed the language of the anti-smoking crowd:

“We all know that bartenders and wait-staff are constantly harassed by drinking customers. Bouncers are even beaten up by drunks. I care about these workers and their safety,” she said. “I’m also now looking at some other legal choices to ban — like driving or sex — for they, too, can be dangerous to your health and the health of others.”

(Schwartz quickly removed her bill, having made her point.)

One section of the book is headed “Smoking is healthier than fascism.” Harsanyi writes that he adopted the motto after seeing it on a T-shirt in a D.C. bar.