I’ve hated the nanny state since Illinois passed its indoor smoking ban in 2007. I wrote a column in the (Joliet) Herald News condemning the oppressive move as an infringement on freedom, personal responsibility and choice, and private property rights.

Since then, several more states has passed smoking bans, many cities and counties have passed transfat bans, Las Vegas and Orlando have criminalized feeding the homeless outdoors, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel has mandated that Chicago vending machines include “healthy snakes.” Marijuana and narcotics remain illegal, and there are many proposals in New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere to expand restrictions on the consumptive and dietary habits of law abiding citizens.

In my new column for the Indianapolis Star, I write about the subtle tyranny of the nanny state, and I express contempt for “self-appointed school masters who satisfy their puny visions of grandeur by interfering in the lives of tax paying, free thinking adults, and believe those adults are too stupid to determine their own priorities and preferences.”

How, when, and why did liberals become the scolds? The same generation that took LSD, freely fucked in the mud, and played air guitar with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock now lecture people for smoking Marlboros, eating doughnuts, and using plastic bags. Worse, they’ve raised generations of younger people who have the same bizarre insistence on interjecting their own pathetic dogmas into the lives of those in their neighborhoods and cities.

As my new article makes clear, anyone who believes these so called “minor” violations are unworthy of our attention are in for a rude awakening. The “enlightened” elite have an agenda, and it includes forcing the unwashed masses into compliance with their lifestyle.

Those of us who prefer to be left alone should make that preference clear. That’s what my new essay is about.