Will Saletan writes that he and his colleagues at Slate seem to be increasingly engaged in libertarian sallies at the food police and other nanny statists. “Are we becoming conservative?” he worries, wringing his hands. Not quite:

We’re what we were five or 10 years ago: skeptics and fact-mongers with a bias for personal freedom. It’s the left that’s turning conservative. Well, not conservative, but pushy. Weisberg put his finger on the underlying trend: “Because Democrats hold power at the moment, they face the greater peril of paternalistic overreaching.” Today’s morality cops are less interested in your bedroom than your refrigerator. They’re more likely to berate you for outdoor smoking than for outdoor necking. It isn’t God who hates fags. It’s Michael Bloomberg.

Yes, that’s the same Jacob Weisberg who wrote In Defense of Government and blamed libertarians for the financial collapse. Older and wiser every day.

When Saletan takes on the stretches that the fat-tax advocates have to make to justify government regulation of what we eat, he would have done well to cite Glen Whitman’s Cato paper on paternalism.

And as genuine liberals recoil in horror at the actions of liberals with power, it’s a good time to read Damon Root’s new Cato Policy Report cover story on liberals who fled “right” from the economic and constitutional malfeasance of the New Deal. Let’s hope Saletan’s “new Whiskey Rebellion” spreads beyond the pages of Slate.

HT: Jacob Grier.