Lawyers Took Our Diving Board

Steve Moore in Opinion Journal:

But the diving-board dilemma is not just a legal matter; it's a cultural one. We Americans have become so risk averse when it comes to our children that we now see unacceptable dangers from even the most routine activities. We have created peanut-butter-free school zones, "soft" baseballs, army figures without guns, parks without seesaws, and full body armor for bike riding.

Poor kids. When I was fifteen we went cave-crawling above the North Umpqua, navigated class three rapids on inner tubes, and jumped out of trees twenty feet above the water. That's where I broke my foot.