| Seat Belt Laws: The rise of the “Nanny” State |
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| Monday, 31 March 2008 | |||||||||||||
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Written by Marc Webster Fast forward to the year 2010. You awake for another busy day. After stepping in the shower and rinsing the shampoo out of your hair, you are shocked to hear a man’s voice. In a commanding tone he states, “Sir could you please step out of the shower!” Panic grips your mind. You think to yourself, “Who is in my house and what does he want?” You peel back the shower curtain and standing there in full uniform is a city police officer. Panic suddenly turns to anger and humiliation as you realize the police are in your house because they are accusing you of a crime. “What did I do?” you ask nervously. The officer replies, “You are in violation of law 1174 subsection D, showering without a helmet!” Confused you ask, “But isn’t my personal safety my business?” “It doesn’t matter,” the officer snaps back. “It’s the Law!” He reaches for his clipboard, writes you out a ticket, places it in your hand, and then exits your house.
In addition to the revenue motivation behind seat belt laws, we also should look at the “Nanny knows best” or “Father knows best” paternalistic nature of many politicians. These self righteous busy bodies think of themselves as somehow better endowed with gifts of wisdom that the rest of us commoners somehow lack. Simply put, the government thinks it knows best how we should live our lives, and wants to be our “Nanny”. This mindset explains many of our current absurd laws such as anti-polygamy laws, helmet laws, curfews, the draft, and so on. Please don’t get me wrong. I always wear my seatbelt and encourage you to do so as well. My point is that if you as an intelligent adult wish to kill or maim yourself by not wearing your seat belt, then you darn well have the right to do so. I recently read a story of a man in Italy who was fatally wounded while attempting to run a police check point set up to enforce helmet and seat belt laws. The man, who was riding a scooter without the benefit of a helmet, was shot dead. Apparently the police thought it necessary to kill the man before he could crash his scooter on his own and perhaps injure his unprotected head. This incident graphically illustrates how things can go awry when governments decide to play the “Nanny”. Seat belt and helmet laws are two examples of the state trying to save us from ourselves.
The implication of the preceding scenario is pretty ominous. The motorcycle cop is telling the citizen, “I am an intelligent adult capable of deciding my own level of acceptable risk, but you on the other hand, are a bumbling dunderhead and cannot be trusted with the same calculations. Isn’t this the attitude that parents have in regard to their children? Is this the kind of attitude our elected officials should be copping towards those they are elected to represent? “I m-a-y k-n-o-t b-e a s-m-a-r-e-t m-a-n, (think Forrest Gump) but I was always taught that the government is “By the people and for the people.” Stated another way, governments are formed by the people to insure that the liberties of the people are preserved. The rub with seat belt laws is that they do just the opposite of that. They ignore the liberty of citizens and secure the interest of the state only. The interests of the state that are served here are revenue creation and control of the average citizen. Let me quote Ezra T. Benson, former Secretary of Agriculture, who makes some keen observations about laws in general. "I suggest we use this important test when reviewing the legitimacy or morality of any law. If it were up to me as an individual to punish my neighbor for violating a given law, would it offend my conscience to do so? Since my conscience would never permit me to punish my fellow man unless he has done something evil, or unless he has failed to do something, which I have a moral right to require him to do. I will never knowingly authorize my agent the government to do this on my behalf. I realize that when I give my consent to the adoption of a law, I specifically instruct the police (the government) to take either life, liberty, or property of anyone who disobeys the law.”
If you agree with our nation’s silly seat belt laws, I would encourage you to support equally absurd legislation like; Making it illegal to play dominos on Sunday, outlawing the flicking of boogers into the wind, or making it a crime to have an ice cream cone in your back pocket. On second thought your support is not needed. For all these actions are already against the law! (in Alabama) And just maybe someday (the ignorant and gullible willing), we will all be wearing helmets…in the shower. - - - Marc Webster is the IT Director for a Semi truck dealership in Salt
Lake City. He is the Father of 3 and an Active Patriot.
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Brian R. Mecham
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Using this test to contrast seat belt laws exposes them as the immoral sham that they really are. One would feel obligated to stop a neighbor from beating up his wife, or to intervene if a burglary was witnessed. But would any of you chastise your neighbor for failure to wear a seat belt much less take money from him in the form of a fine or even worse, lock him up in your basement? 
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I love the way you've pointed out how silly many of our laws are. It's too bad that some people in high places think they can and should decide what is best for us - and want to protect us from ourselves. |
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Ellen Stanley
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When the first seat belt law went into effect, the representatives of each State stated that they would NEVER use this law to pull people over for not wearing their seat belts. As I sat in a safety meeting in 1985, a highway patrolman was briefing us on the seatbelt law for company policy. When question time came, I stood up and asked how a law could have been passed that was protecting us from ourselves. He stated that he did not agree with the law but had to enforce it. Twenty plus years later, the representatives decide that money is more important than rights. The additional $10.00 fee for not wearing your seat belt when you have violated some other law of the road was not enough. Our forefathers stated clearly that in many of their works that "no law should ever be enacted to protect us from ourselves". Special Interest Groups are wrong and unnecessary! |
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Marc
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What is interesting about this article is how many "sheeple" have disagreed with it's conclusions. I feel the article is pretty watertight and after reading ET Bensons analysis of just laws how could anyone support such a stupid law? I wrote this articel for a english class in college. About 50 percent of the class agreed with it and 50 against. |
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