Posted on 01/27/2003 12:21:52 PM PST by shortstop
What do you think of seatbelt laws?
Are they a good idea, or a bad idea?
You know the ones I mean. They vary from state to state, but they’re basically alike. If you’re driving a car, and you don’t have a seat belt on, you can get a ticket.
Sometimes it’s just the driver, sometimes it’s everyone in the car.
You’ve heard the sob stories. They roll out some state trooper, or a paramedic, and have him tell you a heartbreaking story about how many accident scenes he’s been to, and how it breaks his heart to see the carnage, and how seatbelts are the only hope we have.
And we see how much the state loves us, passing laws to protect us, shielding us from our own stupidity.
And we’re grateful.
We see seatbelt laws as a sign of social progress, as proof we’re an enlightened society.
But are we right?
Are seatbelt laws a good idea?
The answer to that, surprisingly, has nothing to do with seatbelts.
Because there’s no question about that. If you don’t use a seatbelt, you are an idiot. The benefit and protection that come from seatbelts cannot be denied.
Buckle your seatbelt. Don’t start the car until you have, and until everyone else has as well.
But that’s not the point.
Seatbelt laws aren’t about seatbelts, they are about freedom. And the role of government.
The question isn’t, “Should you wear a seatbelt?” It is, “Can government force you to wear a seatbelt?’
And, in spite of what the state legislatures have done, the answer to the second question, in America, is clear. The answer is, “No.”
We are a free people. Our government, as envisioned in our founding documents, is small and weak. It is not meant to make every decision or to legislate in every area. It is not meant to run our lives.
And yet we have come to let it.
Piece by piece, inch by inch, American freedom has dwindled and dwindled.
We are the victims of tyranny in the name of compassion.
Slavery in the guise of protection.
Each benefit of government has come at the cost of a corresponding liberty.
We are safer, but we are less free.
And we have been robbed.
Because freedom is better than safety. Liberty more important than life, and self-reliance of greater worth than governmental paternalism.
We are a nation built on the belief that all power resides with the people. Government can only exercise the power it has been granted by the people. In America, the power of government was meant to be severely limited. In America, the government is to be the servant, not the master. In America, people are believed to be the best off when they are the most free, when they run their own lives and make their own decisions.
But our government treats us like children. It takes our liberty from us with hardly a second thought. It expands its power over us without restraint. It mandates by force of law in matters that are and should be entirely personal and private.
Like seatbelts.
Sure, the government says it is acting for our best good.
But, shouldn’t we decide as free individuals what is in our best good?
Doesn’t government’s desire to protect us from harm unavoidably separate us from God-given liberty?
Of course it does.
And yet we have taken it like sheep.
We have thanked and re-elected those legislators who have orchestrated our bondage. We have cooperated with the squandering of our national birthright. What others fought and died for, we have flushed down the toilet. Because we haven’t been smart enough to remember what this country is all about.
Freedom.
And every policy or decision of the government must pass a simple test: Does it diminish our individual liberty?
If it does, it must not be allowed. If it does, it is inherently unconstitutional. If it does, it is dangerously and unacceptably un-American.
We must be able to distinguish between what counts and what does not. We must not be confused by irrelevance. Like those sob stories the cops and insurance people tell about seatbelts.
They are beside the point.
Seatbelt laws aren’t about seatbelts.
They are about law, and the proper role of law.
And whether or not you wear a seatbelt is your business. It is not the government’s business. You are free to be stupid, and the government has no right to outlaw stupidity.
Seatbelt laws are velvet chains. We’re told they are for our own good, but they are nothing more than government oppression. They are Big Brother pretending to be our mommy.
And one more example of how we have come to accept what earlier generations of Americans would have fought to the death to resist.
Duh... just about every politician votes (wonder why? - pandering/prostituting for VOTES!) for this kind of excess - you can't legislate morality, but you can refuse to REWARD those that do. Social (as in SOCIALISM) programs will destroy this county if the politicians don't.
My kingdom for an honest poitician!
My daughter's mother-in-law is a retired nurse and she constantly told our grandkidsNOT to buckle up.
She said that she had seen too many severe injuries CAUSED by seat belts. (she fakes her own) Last year, our oldest granddaughter was riding in a car with three other girls.
There was an accident.
She was the only one of the four belted and the only one who wound up hospitalized, with a broken pelvis, from the seatbelt.
I personally know six people who would not have been here today IF they had been buckled in.
Why not? We are forced to pay for gooberment skool'n, publik housing, and so on. What makes you think you are not going to be made to pay, regardless? Lower rates, hah! What's next, honest lawyers?
Hawaii has the same - we figured it was ensure that there'd be more organ donors since it's so hard to get donor organs here in time with the long flight.
Dollars to donuts, the insurance companies were there first, demanding the state pass laws saying everyone must buy their products. That the government has, like a organized crime family, taken over the insurance industry, well...that's what happpes when you make a deal with the devil.
I don't have the history, but I don't have so much respect for insurance companies as to think it's likely. What seems more realistic to me is that the trial lawyers started making realistic actuarial estimation of a potential loss such a crapshoot that the insurance companies ended up running to the nanny state for protection.
Example...In Texas we have seatbelt laws, but you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet. Getting pulled over on a motorcycle for speeding without a helmet will only get you a ticket for speeding. Get pulled over in a car (which if you haven't noticed is by far much safer than a motorcyle)for not wearing a seatbelt and you can bet the cost will be more than the speeding ticket.
IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY !!!! LIVES HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT !!!!
"If you value your freedom to drive with no seatbelt more than the privilege to use tax-funded roads then you can always drive up and down your driveway and walk to the store."
The legislature has a duty in a Free society to refrain from dictating personal choices that are of no consequence regarding the safety and smooth flow of traffic of, and for, other drivers, pedestrians, or property on the highways. Notice I attached the the conditional, Free. That conditional places a definite bound on what the legislature can and can not do. When the legislature operates beyond the bounds of rights protection and fails to nourish and promote Freedom, it becomes a tyrannical body.
Seatbelt laws happen to be pure tyranny. They are most often justified to lower the cost of forced health programs by the state and preferential treatment for particular commercial operations. Those programs are another tyrannical act, because they don't exist without the force of government action and their sole purpose has nothing to do with rights protection, but are simply bogus charity schemes. Schemes that are used by autoritarian socialists to maintain economic benefit and power. It's nothing more than theft and a bribery for votes scheme.
"Likewise, your notion of what your obligations are while driving on public roads is a fantasy or a fraud."
My obligations while driving on the road are to follow the traffic laws, respect others rights and refrain from crashing, period. I have no obligation to wear a seatbelt. If you think Freedom is fantasy, or fraud, you are welcome to, but I do not. Freedom is a gift from God and those others that respect that gift.
"In your world, public roads are evidence of the nanny state and state troopers are equivalent to jack-booted thugs.
According to you. The fact is that public roads exist for transportation purposes, that's it. The laws that govern the use of those roads are restricted, in a Free society to those laws that promote the Free flow of traffic and protect individual rights. There is no justification to impose personal safety rules, such as air bag and seatbelt mandates.
"I am glad you are not in the legislature."
Your in the company of all the other authoritarians that hold Freedom in contempt.
"America: Home of Abortion on Demand - 42,000,000 Slaughtered"
It's a communitarian thing. It promotes cost effective population control, lowers health care bills and other various and sundry socialist expenditures. For a person that cares so little about individual rights, such as the sovereignty of will that is an essence of human life, why would it concern you? Do you want them as subjects to belt up and impose dictates, mandates and prohibitions, or to live as Free individuals to pursue their own interests, make their own decision and determine their own destiny?
EXACTLY!
The 9th clearly tells us that there are other rights NOT listed and that those rights are every bit as important as those that are listed.
Some of the wisest founders hesitated on the BoR because they knew that sometime down the road boneheads would claim that the listed, enumerated rights were the only ones that existed, that if it wasn't in the Consitution or amendments then that right didn't exist.
Boneheads is my word, not theirs, and there are plenty of them on FR.
To say that everything else not mentioned can be claimed to be a right by virtue of the 9th amendment is funny - such thinking is where we get the idiotic notion that there is a "right" to be free from insensitive language, etc. (insert any other PC crapola "right").
It isn't funny, it is so stupid that only a small group of people could even fathom that idea. I would have never thought of it had it not been for you! Congratulations, you are in a small group of people.
In your opinion, are there rights not listed that are retained by the people? If not why, if so, what might some be?
And we have our friendly neighborhood attorneys to thank for them.
Until tort reform becomes a reality, the number of laws will continue to increase.
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