MARK STEYN: License to Dye.

Let’s just run that again: In Illinois, if you don’t do your domestic-abuse training course every two years, you’ll lose your hairdressing license – and your livelihood.

As I write in After America, in the Fifties one in 20 members of the workforce needed government permission to do his job. Now it’s one in three. The original justification for requiring a government permit to cut another person’s hair is that a salon contains potentially dangerous chemicals such as coloring products. Making the license conditional upon acing sexual-assault training courses is not just the usual Big Government expansion but the transformation of the relationship between a private business and the state:

The rule was inspired by the spirit of camaraderie in hair salons, said State Senator Bill Cunningham, one of the chief sponsors of the amendment. For some women, those salons are a safe space, where they can sit among other women, drop their guard and confide about life as their hair is braided or colored, or their nails trimmed and painted….

As Ann Althouse comments:

So, it’s a great place for government to plant informants…

Just so. Just as the Stasi turned neighbors and relatives into spies, the State of Illinois is making your stylist one.

Read the whole thing.