The Reticulator

Lenore Skenazy is the chronicler of the movement to keep kids out of the outdoors except when closely supervised by hovering parents. A recent episode was titled, “Outrage of the Week: “We LOVE Seeing Children Outside (But Not Under Age 16).” It was about a housing development in Colorado that forbad children from playing outside, unsupervised, until they reached age 16. The ban has since been rescinded, to some extent, but there are still extreme elements of our society who do not want children taking on any kind of responsibility at all for their own well-being. These people are numerous enough to give Ms Skenazy no end of things to write about.

But suppose kids are kept off the streets, out of the playgrounds, and out of the yards. What are they supposed to do? Sit inside and watch television? Because some of these same types of people don’t want children reading old books, either. I learned from Walter Olsen in City Journal (by way of Banned for your Safety on LiveJournal) that Congress passed a book ban last year. (“The New Book Banning“)

It’s hard to believe, but true: under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

No Leviathan Anklebiter award for the Consumer Products Safety Division. Banned for your Safety and Walter Olesen each get one, though.

I’ve often noticed those wood & styrofoam roadside memorials with flowers and handwritten signs for people killed in road accidents. They’re tacky but I love them because they show a piece of life where people just go and do things without getting permission from some government person. It’s a bit of life that hasn’t yet been standardized, bureaucraticized, and MacDonaldized.

Except in some states, such as California, Colorado, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, regulators have stamped out the personal initiative aspects. And now West Virginia is trying to do the same.

I didn’t realize until now that that the people who put up these memorials deserve one of the Leviathan Ankle-Biter awards. So I hereby present them with one.

And here‘s a link to Matt Frost’s article at The American Scene where you can follow the links to more information about them.

When I did my first long-distance bicycle rides in Amish country 12-13 years ago, it brought back memories of my childhood. Kids were outside playing in their yards. Since then I’ve had Amish kids race me out on the road, pony vs bicycle, or bicycle vs bicycle. I like it. You seldom see kids enjoying the outdoors any more. I chalked up the change to video games and television. Now I’d add the Internet.

But I just now learned about another possibility that I must confess I hadn’t thought of: Parents are afraid to let their children play outside. I learned about this phenomenon from Lenore Skenazy, a columnist and reporter for the New York Sun.

She got into the topic when she let her kid go riding the New York City subway alone, for which she was greatly reviled by the safety-obsessed among us.

For her action, I hereby give her a Leviathan Ankle-Biter award.

She won’t bring down the welfare-police state all by herself. For all I know, she may have voted for Obama. But such behaviors are a threat to those who want to define freedom as security. (She did choose not to be one of the Obama groupies in the MSM. I haven’t heard whether the others avoid socializing with her because of her lack of fervor.)

She has a blog: Free Range Kids. The subtitle: Let’s give our children the freedom we had!