The Nanny State Reaches Its Apex

It’s finally come to this. They’ve outlawed guns, banned smoking, criminalized fatty foods. You’d think New York’s nanny statists had done just about everything possible to protect grownups from themselves, right? I mean, what else could they do — make it illegal to jump off a tall building?

Well, yes.

Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. (who else) continues his quest to be New York’s #1 all-around wet blanket — remember his war on art supplies? — by introducing a bill essentially outlawing daredevils. Specifically, his bill would prohibit climbing and jumping off any structure taller than 25 feet.

Vallone claims he is trying to “protect citizens from being landed on,” but that of course is pure unadulterated baloney. Vallone is a garden-variety spoilsport and bully, the sort of neo-puritan who is afflicted with, as Mencken put it, “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Or as my friend Ernie Hancock likes to put it, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who just want to be left alone and those who won’t leave them alone.” Vallone is the epitome of the latter.

Manhattan Libertarian Party