Enjoy the Silence

America's Mayor Nanny is at it again:

Now listen up, if you can.

Mayor Bloomberg — who has already cracked down on smoking, junk food, trans fats, salt and super-sized drinks — is embarking on a new crusade: preventing New Yorkers from going deaf.

Hizzoner’s health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.

“With public and private support, a public-education campaign is being developed to raise awareness about safe use of personal music players . . . and risks of loud and long listening,” said Nancy Clark, the city Health Department’s assistant commissioner of environmental-disease prevention.

I suppose it would be churlish of me to suggest that one way to help people's hearing is to simply have Mr. Bloomberg shut up. C.S. Lewis still has the right response concerning Bloomberg and his ilk:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

As Lynyrd Skynyrd asked, nearly 40 years ago now, does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth.