New York City banned artificial trans fatty acids at restaurants this week, becoming the first city in the country to limit the use of a food ingredient I had to look up to be sure what it was. Trans fats, as they’re also known, are a type of unsaturated fat linked to heart disease. The kinds that most of us eat are industrially created as a side effect of partial hydrogenation of plant oils.

One would think that Michael Bloomberg would have bigger fish to fry than telling restaurants what they can use to fry their own fish. Keeping the streets clean and safe for the most important city on earth and its more than 8 million inhabitants would be quite enough for any normal man.

But Bloomberg is not normal. He is a health nut.

Living a healthy life and encouraging friends and family to do the same isn’t enough for a health nut. He must force his preferred behavior — usually abstinence from an enjoyable activity — on his unsuspecting neighbors.

This story continues below
Advertisement

It’s bad when you get stuck hearing a sermon from the guy at the dinner party on the benefits of wheat grass tofu smoothies. It’s worse when he has $5 billion, gets elected mayor and feels a need to set an example the whole county can be badgered in to following.

Bloomberg’s New York was in the vanguard of the ever-expanding public smoking prohibition movement, and there’s no reason to think this trend won’t spread too.

Ours used to be a country where capitalist acts between consenting adults were nobody else’s business. Anyone who tried to butt in was told to butt right back out. Now we shrug and mutter thought-free phrases about needing smart laws to make us safer and to protect the children.

What’s next? Raising the drinking age to 25? Why not just raise the driving age to 25, and make kids under 12 wear football helmets and pads while riding in a car? We’d all be safer that way.

Ben Franklin’s dictum about the man who would trade liberty for security deserving neither gets mentioned a lot these days in discussions about civil liberties during the War on Terror. No one wants Big Brother government, but most are pretty cool with hall monitor government.

Perhaps it’s because of declining fertility rates. With an average of just two children per American family, parental emphasis on safety is naturally more intense than ever.

Perhaps it’s because of better overall health and longevity. People who don’t die in a coal mine or behind a plow at 40 have the luxury of worrying about their cholesterol.

And perhaps its because fewer of us want to — or are able to — have faith in a life after this one. If this is all we have, we want every second we can get.

But life is an inherently risky enterprise. If we want richness, passion and pleasure, we must sometimes sacrifice prudence.

Some people think a cigarette, a bag of fries or a motorcycle ride is an acceptable risk. Others don’t. But each is right if the choice left to the individual.

But democratic societies want to be led even as they wish to remain free, Alexis de Tocqueville said in “Democracy in America.” And we tend to grant our representatives the power to decide which impulse to satisfy.

“Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence,” wrote Tocqueville. “It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

Aaron Keith Harris writes about politics, the media, pop culture and music and is a regular contributor to National Review Online and Bluegrass Unlimited. He can be reached at aaronkeithharris@gmail.com.