How free are you if an 11 year old cannot sell cupcakes to help cancer patients and eventually save for her very own car?Answer: Not bloody free at all.
HANDS UP!
The Cupcake Commissars :: SteynOnline
by Mark Steyn • Jan 30, 2014
I learn, via a Tweet from Walid Zafar, that "Mark Steyn... specializes in whipping right-wing readers into a froth of know-nothing indignation." So once more unto the breach!
After America (a personally autographed copy of which can be purchased here, he pleads) has an entire section on the state's relentless crackdown on children's lemonade stands, church bake sales and the like. It's called "As UnAmerican As Apple Pie", and begins with a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture inspector's raid on the Friday-night fish fry at St Cecilia's Church in Rochester, at which he declared 88-year-old Mary Pratte's homemade coconut cream pie, Marge Murtha's apple pie, Josie Reed's pumpkin pie, and Louise Humbert's raisin pie verboten in the Keystone State. The Coconut Cream Commissar informed the ladies they could only bake pies for church fundraisers if they paid $35 for a permit and agreed to have the kitchens at their homes inspected by him. As I wrote in my book:
In a small but tangible way, a person who submits to a state pie regime is a subject, not a citizen – because participation is the essence of citizenship, and thus barriers to participation crowd out citizenship. A couple of kids with a lemonade stand are learning the rudiments not just of economic self-reliance but of civic identity. So naturally an ever multiplying number of jurisdictions have determined to put an end to such a quintessentially American institution. Seven-year-old Julie Murphy was selling lemonade in Portland, Oregon, when two officers demanded to see her "temporary restaurant license". Which would have cost her $120. When she failed to produce it, they threatened her with a $500 fine, and also made her cry. Perhaps like the officers of Saudi Arabia's mutaween (the "Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vices") the cheerless scolds of Permitstan could be issued with whips and scourges to flay the sinners in the street.
If you're not, per Mr Zafar, "frothing with indignation", you should be. What's the point of a First Amendment and a Second Amendment if a cowed citizenry meekly goes along with the proposition that a seven-year-old girl selling lemonade on her front lawn requires the approval of the state?
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