The Return of Clover, Mark I

Of course things like speeding and drunk driving are wrong in the moral sense. You are choosing to threaten the lives of many people.

The biggest delusion Libertarians labour under is that their actions only effect themselves.

I Agree the bottom line here is we need to quit punishing people for what they might do. This allows anyone to be arrested anytime. If I walk down the street carrying a hammer, I could possibly kill someone with it. Should I be arrested for the fact that I could possibly kill someone? Ridiculous! If there is no victim there is no crime.

I listened to most of this: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2011/11/26

“Joining Ian Punnett, Paul A. Trout (book link), retired professor at Montana State University, for a discussion on how ancient mythology about animal predators in search of human flesh has factual roots based on mankind’s early history. ”

It’s quite the insight into the clover mind.

Clover biopsy 5: “your post tells me you have done dumb things for years. I like your statements like “based on infrared spectroscopy (IR absorption) which is the same principle most breath alcohol analyzers rely on” You can not even tell me what equipment they were using for testing that you said was wrong. You can not tell me what the temperature was when they were using the test equipment…….You complain about 15 minutes being taken away from you but at the same time you spend hours making things up.”

Actually “dumb” denotes the inability to speak. I’ve never suffered from that affliction; quite the contrary. 😀 I have undoubtedly done some stupid things in the past and have every reason to believe Clover has too. We are both human after all. But at least I can acknowledge that fact and not try to come across like some self-righteous crusader trying to rid the world of drunk drivers and speeders because I falsely believe I am morally superior and do not err. So Clover, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Before you pick up that rock and try to smash my rights with it, remember that “there is none righteous. No, not one”. That includes you. Look it up.

Then Clover spews on about all the things that I didn’t tell her, asserting that I “can not” tell her (Clover, it’s “cannot”). In fact had I wanted to bother, I could have easily provided Clover with more detailed information because I did look it up. But I was waiting for a valid technical argument in response indicating the she was interested enough to “look it up” herself. She could have countered with the specific equipment specifications, operating conditions and events disproving my statements. But our Clover, although claiming to know something about “electronics”, seems to lack the requisite technical expertise, so she resorts to derision and accusation instead. Clover will make a good democratic congresswoman some day, I’m afraid. Move over Pelosi, Clover’s on her way to take your job.

I skipped the bulk of the rest of this particular post because analyzing it would be redundant; just more of the same emotive blather. However, her last statement was interesting because the technical information I allegedly “spend hours” making up is easily verifiable with a few simple searches on the Internet. On the other hand, the events I described relating to my encounters with a particular Virginia State Trooper are indeed anecdotal, but were in my sphere of personal experience. However, Clover often relies on things she has NOT experienced in an effort to validate her own opinions. So she should not consider the things I actually have experienced any less valid. I can reasonably infer from her accusation, that I ‘make things up’, that Clover speaks from her own heart and imputes the delusions found therein to me. Deep down Clover knows that she twists facts and ‘makes things up’ herself to support her self-righteous positions; therefore I must be doing the same thing.

With respect to time taken from me by the state versus time spent writing: one minute you Clover or anyone else takes from me without my consent is stealing and is therefore a violation of my rights. The time I spend writing stimulates my mind. I am passionate about writing and find it enjoyable. There is no comparison between the two, so you err in another of your conclusions. It appears to me that Clover writes to assuage her pain and despair. Clover probably lashes out at us because she suffers emotional anguish over an “incident” caused by a “drunk driver” or “speeder” and lumps us in with them. Clover personifies the old saw “Misery loves company” and wants us to join her. Clover also refuses to understand that Constitutional restrictions on government power were put in place with the intent of stopping people like her from oppressing the rest of us with ever more complex and onerous rules and regulations. When they herd her into the turnstyle at the camp entrance naked, in front of leering DHS “officers” she may realize then that it wasn’t really “for her own good”. Then again, maybe not.

Disclaimer: The conclusions I have drawn about our Clover are based solely on what she has written. I am sure that much of what I have inferred about her is at least nominally incorrect because (as far as I know) I have not had any association with her other than here. She is my fellow creature fully entitled to her own opinion, beliefs, rights and freedoms, which I stand ready to defend despite our differences. But based on what I know about human nature, I suspect my hypotheses are sufficiently accurate to make Clover uncomfortable. If so, I sincerely hope that discomfort inspires her to learn, explore and educate herself on a continuous and ever broadening basis. If I am wrong on any points, Clover may intelligently and reasonably correct me point by point. I believe Eric will allow her to do that. Otherwise she also has the right to remain silent, and if she can’t provide reasonable and enlightened discourse, I would encourage her to do so.

I have noticed the great improvements in the site layout and content. Thanks Dom and Eric.

I have noticed that a much larger portion of our young population is politically active than they were 25 years ago when I was in my 20’s. A much larger group actually care about liberty and freedom, something that they experienced a lot less of than we did back then, although cops started being dickheaded, steroid jacked ass creeps back in the good old 1980’s. I trace a lot of our economic and liberty problems to those days when we had the actor in the white house telling us that everything was just dandy while underneath, clovers and junk bond salesman were taking our individual and economic liberty away through regulation, litigation, manufacturing outsourcing, commercial contracts and ID requirements…

When I can, I try and participate in what this new generation is doing. I also think that the Occupy Wall Street movement has been demonized by the media. Whether you agree with their specific demands, you have to admit that they have guts to stand up to the police.

Clover biopsy 4: “do you think I have any right to drive down the roadway with safe drivers around me? The supreme court ruled that I do. They ruled that it is reasonable to stop people during a safety stop and talk to them to see if they are fine to drive. Statistics show that thousands of lives have been saved by the states that have these safety stops.”

What I think is irrelevant. What The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (The Supreme Law of the Land) says is: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So unless there is probable cause, the officers of the state are required by law appeal to a judge for a warrant specifying which crime it is they have suspicion to believe has been committed. If and when that judge approves it, only then may I be stopped, questioned, searched or otherwise impeded. What the Supreme Court determines should now be “public policy” does not change what (at least some of) the framers intended. If Clover had actually studied U.S. history and understood the language as it was used when the Constitution was written she would know this. Instead she will trade everyone else’s Liberty for her own false sense of security; which is in fact harm done to me and my peers. It is a violation of our rights. The fact that Clover wants to use violence prone men with guns to enforce her will on the rest of us, at our own expense no less, tells a lot about how her mind works.

Does she attempt to educate and persuade by proving the necessity of changing the Supreme Law of the Land beyond a reasonable doubt? Clover prefers to take “administrative” shortcuts. Rather than working to change the Constitution, since she feels so strongly about this, Clover appears to believe that a lawlessness end run around it is acceptable since it makes her “feel” safer. It doesn’t matter if what she wants is “technically” illegal or morally wrong, because in her mind more restrictions equal more safety.

If she can find like minded people in government to support her position, it justifies her bizarre worldview for her. Since “dubya” said the Constitution was just a “G-d piece of paper”, so it must be. She doesn’t stop to consider that ambitious men have always used fear and security as excuses to garner more power for themselves. Clover and her ilk are the power mongers’ dream; what better path to absolute power than on the backs of those who ask for slavery and oppression? Sadly there are apparently a lot of other people, the Supreme Court Justices included, that support this “public policy” over what the law says.

Once more Clover proclaims there are statistics available, but she declines to reveal them for our perusal. So just like an overprotective mother making her son get down off the monkey bars, Clover would stop everything from happening around her that she deems dangerous. Why, we might ask? Because SHE SAYS SO and that’s the only reason we need. After all, it’s for our own good and it makes her angry that we don’t appreciate her concern for everyone else’s “well being”; our Liberty be damned. If I were in front of her right now, she would probably try to slap me to “knock some sense” into me. If blocked the blow, she would then file assault charges because my forearm hit her hand. Then she would try to have me put in a cage “for my own good”. To Clover and everyone like her, up is down and it’s gravity that’s wrong.

Clover biopsy 3: “groups do not make mistakes…….Studies have shown that the vast majority of drivers do not adjust their driving to the conditions. The majority of people drive the same speed no matter if it is raining or the sun is shining. A large group of people do not slow down if the roads are snow and ice packed. The vast majority of people do not slow down in heavy traffic unless someone gets in their way. Just because a handful of drivers compensate when the conditions are not as safe like I do and you say that you do, it does not make it safe because the majority do not.”

Here we go again. Groups do indeed make mistakes: witness the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, internment camps for Japanese Americans in the U.S., concentration camps for Jews in Nazi Germany, the Gulag in the USSR, destruction of American Bison herds, ethnic cleansing of the Plains Indians, legalized slavery, ad nauseam. If the roughly two hundred million dead at the hands of government during the 20th century don’t prove the fallacy of group-think to Clover, nothing can. In many instances several different groups erred violently at the same time! And this list is hardly all inclusive.

However our Clover rambles on about “the majority of people”, “A large group of people” and “The vast majority of people” making the mistake of not slowing down due to poor driving conditions. So first we have the assertion that groups don’t make mistakes followed immediately by the contradictory assertion that groups do make mistakes; fascinating. I would ask, if the “vast majority” of people do not compensate for changing driving conditions, where is all the carnage? The daily news should be rife with mass automobile homicide putting humans on the same footing as the Snail Darter or Spotted Owl. No wait, they aren’t really endangered either, are they? Once again no empirical data is provided to support her “facts”.

Eric wrote a piece recently about the people who get into the “fast” lane and then plod along at *exactly* the speed limit, or maybe a couple of mph slower just to be safe, and never move over, either never glancing in their rear-view mirrors or not caring that ten cars are stacked up behind them. This “speed kills” conversation seems to be pitting the same two sides against each other: drivers who are paying attention and know their skills, versus drivers who have no idea how impaired their driving really is.

I’ve been driving on US roads for 45 years and have noticed a definite decline in average driving abilities. I attribute this to a steady increase in the number of mind-altering chemicals our society is awash in. One in ten Americans are now on anti-depressants, which can have a mellowing effect that lightens your right foot on the gas. Fluoride is put in the water specifically to make the population more docile (even if they tell you it’s to prevent cavities). Millions more are on pain killers, which often have a warning right on the bottle about not driving or operating machinery while you’re on them. Perhaps the most widespread of all is Aspartame artificial sweetener, of which a major part of the molecule is wood alcohol, and for which one of the reported side effects (among many) is a mental fog which makes decision-making difficult. This is the impaired-driver syndrome I see most often, where they can’t seem to make a decision and so slow down to a speed that matches their brain function.

These two sides, impaired and unimpaired drivers, end up driving each other nuts. Impaired drivers don’t know it, and assume everyone has the same attention and skill level as themselves, so speed seems frightening and reckless to them. For drivers with perfect presence of mind and fast reflexes, speed limits are unfair limitations of freedom and we just wish the zombies would get out of the way.

Clover biopsy 2: “Eric says that speed does not kill. Driving 75 mph compared to 55 mph increases your chances of death and major injury many many times. Driving 85 mph increases the risk many more times………….The only reason speed limits were increased is because the use of seat belts and added air bags makes 65 mph safer than 55 mph was in the past but the libertarians are against safety anyway and want air bags and seat belts removed.”

Eric is quite correct: speed does not kill. I have traveled in excess of 500 MPH in a Bombardier CRJ-700 on numerous occasions and yet I remain extant. How can that be if speed is lethal? Am I immortal? So driving 75 MPH, or worse 85 MPH, increases my chance of death or major injury exactly how many times? Note that this assertion is disconnected from any reference to actual roads, geographic boundaries, weather conditions, traffic or any other verifiable data to support it. I’m not saying that there aren’t increased risks and costs that go with higher speeds. All I ask is that one produce a verifiable unbiased risk / benefit analysis if one wishes to persuade me.

I do find her statement amusing that “The only reason” we now have higher speed limits is because of “seat belts and air bags”. She ignores the strong possibility that speed limits were raised because that’s what a large number of her fellow countrymen wanted. She fails to acknowledge or apparently even to comprehend that blanket statements based on emotion without empirical supporting evidence lend no credibility to her arguments.

Recently JFR posted that Clover is probably female. I too lean heavily toward that possibility. I don’t want to stereotype based on the actions of one specimen. So I will qualify her as a “primitive female”. By describing her as “primitive” I wish to convey that Clover is primarily driven by emotion, feelings and intuition. What do I base this assessment on? Much of what Clover posts is reflexive lashing out and highly emotive. Clover cannot be reasoned with. And Clover will not respond in kind to valid and logical points made by others. If she feels like she’s losing an argument she typically responds with a non sequitur or even outright nonsense. From this I deduce that in person, Clover will resort to screaming and slapping if you fail to concede the point in a debate. Later she will deny she engaged in this type of behavior. Clover acts like a spoiled 14 year old girl. Like most people, Clover enjoys attention, so Clover this is dedicated to you little girl.

Based on Clover’s bias in her preceding posts, I infer that she has lost a child or another close family member due to “drunk driving”. Possibly her loss was by the actions of the deceased. Speed was probably a factor in the accident also. Clover has never gotten over this. In all likelihood, Clover never will recover because she sees it as her fault somehow. Therefore clover has gone MADD with grief. WE (as in the liberty minded) are perceived as her enemies. WE say things that offend her delicate sensibilities and this makes her even MADDer. We must be stopped or our dangerous ideas could spread.

Soooo….let’s take some recent Clover quotes, slice them thin, put them on a slide and see what we can learn about her. I’ll call them Clover biopsies and do this by installments. Here goes:

Clover biopsy 1: “Is the majority wrong that thousands are killed by drunk drivers? Is the majority wrong that drinking 3 or 4 drinks in a short amount of time decreases everyone’s driving ability that does it? Is everyone wrong that more severe accidents are caused by increased speeds? Yes the majority might be wrong in a very very small percentage of time but the fact is that an individual is wrong at a far far greater percentage of the time. At least as a group they have the resources to do testing and analysis of statistics and behavior. ”

You will notice that Clover doesn’t actually cite any sources, provide any links or otherwise independently confirm her assertions. Frankly, based on her anecdotal ramblings we have no idea whether or not “thousands” are killed by drunk drivers or in what time frame or even the geographic location where this supposedly occurred. We can presume by Clover’s repeated and erroneous use of “everyone” to make her case, she imputes her beliefs to the entire human race. After all she knows she’s right based on her limited life experience, so “everyone” else must know these same things also. Those who don’t know these things are simply wrong in Clover’s mind.

She assumes that “the majority” is correct more often than the individual. Clover fails to understand that “the majority” currently believes that paper is actually money and that the Federal Reserve banks are here to stabilize our economy. I doubt I need to explain that to anyone here other than Clover or Gil (and I have no desire to bother). But…from a historical perspective “the majority” (including many educated men) believed the world was flat, you could potentially sail off the edge and that the sun rotated around the Earth.

Groups potentially having the resources for “testing and analysis of statistics and behavior” may be true. But that does not mean that they can or will do these things. But if the group decides to, is agenda driven and political in nature (and most groups are to some extent) then the results will probably be biased to favor the group’s own beliefs and purposes. The groups I’ve been involved in, and agree with, do just that. It’s human nature. So unless Clover can produce some scholarly and unbiased scientific studies to confirm the broad-brush swath that she paints, I will continue take her ramblings with a grain of salt.

This is the second time I’ve wondered over to this site. I’m not a car buff but I appreciate your political perspective. Great thread here.

The reason I’m writing is just to say that Clover is obviously a woman!

Maybe you already know that but just in case you don’t, I thought I’d add my 2 cents.

In re: Clovers last asinine post. Actually Clover I have a great deal of experience with continuous emissions monitoring instruments based on infrared spectroscopy (IR absorption) which is the same principle most breath alcohol analyzers rely on. Some do use platinum fuel cell technology or a combination of methods. As Dr. David Hanson at the University of New York at Potsdam points out; applying one pint of contact cement to a sheet of plywood can yield a BrAC reading of .12, up to twenty minutes later, in an alcohol free individual. Alcohol free diabetics and even dieters can easily show .05 due to acetone in their breath, since practically all ethyl group substances will react the same as ethyl alcohol. Breath Alcohol Concentration does not even relate directly to Blood Alcohol Concentration, but is extrapolated. Some BrAC analyzers assume the cell volume of blood to be 47%. But it varies by gender. The lower your cell volume of blood, the higher your BrAC reading. If you have exerted yourself, are excited or have a fever your BrAC will read high (8% per deg. F body temperature). Breath Alcohol Analyzers are so accurate that the state of South Dakota, wisely, won’t even allow them to be used as evidence in court. Do you understand the concept of “beyond a reasonable doubt”? I’m pretty sure you do, but you just don’t agree with it. You think you know what’s right and want everyone else to comply with your beliefs. It must be hard to be humble when you’re so great!

I’ve worked on sophisticated military and industrial electronics (to component level) since 1977. Before that I acquired my amateur radio license at 12 years old. I can assure you that radar, breathalyzers, combustion analyzers, oxygen sensors, radiation monitors and a whole host of other instruments and electronic devices are subject to failure and inaccuracy on an all too frequent basis. I work on these devices every day. You would be shocked at the tolerance band of some of these “precision” instruments. A flue gas particulate analyzer I maintain relies on laser backscatter technology and has a tolerance of +/- 25%. At least down under, in Gil’s neck of the woods, the Victoria police recognize a 20% tolerance band for their Breath Alcohol analyzers to allow for different body types. They know it isn’t accurate.

Clover, you cite studies that show all the lives and money saved due to lowering the BAC limit to 0.08. Exactly how does one prove a negative? Here’s a good example: I have a talisman hanging on my back porch that keeps elephants, tigers and polar bears away. I can prove it works, because I have never seen any of the above in my back yard. In fact it works so well I’ve never seen any of these animals in the entire county! Government or even NGO sponsored studies attempting to prove what hasn’t happened are essentially worthless.

Automobile technology has improved tremendously at the same time that BAC limits have been lowered. We have traction control, anti-lock brakes, enhanced suspensions and better tires. You’re assuming that these factors haven’t played into lower accident and fatality rates. Remember, DOT / NHTSB studies are brought to you by the same people that are telling you that the inflation rate is only 3.5% per annum, when any head of household that’s been using Quicken for the last three years can show you 11% (never mind Shadowstats’ numbers based on the original way of calculating inflation in 1990). The point is Clover, your government will and most certainly does lie to you. Education and improved automotive technology are far more likely reasons why we’ve seen lower accident rates. I know you prefer to think it was men with guns forcing those nasty drunk drivers to their knees. State sponsored violence or the threat thereof just gives you a woody doesn’t it?

I hope I never have occasion to see you seated on my jury, since you seem pretty sure everyone is guilty and needs to prove themselves innocent. After all Clover, that Jewish couple that lived next door to you in Dresden back in ‘39 must have been doing something illegal or the Gestapo wouldn’t have dragged them out of their apartment in the middle of the night, now would they? And you can’t be too careful about who’s traveling the roads, that’s why the SS has those safety checkpoints set up all over the Homeland or was that Fatherland? That wasn’t you, you say? Perhaps not, but it was your kindred spirit. And that is the spirit of totalitarianism. That’s probably why you won’t tell us what you do for a living; I suspect you’re a government thug. Your mother must be proud.

As to how much time the police and the courts have cost me; hours and hours. My first experience with the Virginia State Police was at 17 years old. I was on my way home from my girlfriend’s house about midnight. I had a 62 Ford Econoline van. The right front wheel bearing had started to whine and shortly thereafter that old 200 six started missing on one cylinder. I was running 45 in a 55, not weaving or giving any appearance of being impaired. When I asked the trooper why he pulled me over, he explained that I was driving too good! Then he wanted to search the vehicle and I told him no. I asked for his name and badge number so I could file a complaint with his supervisor. He responded “guess”. I told him I wasn’t in the mood and wanted to know his name. He shined the light on his name tag: Guess. That was the only funny thing about it. Total time detained: approximately 15 minutes. I’ll never get it back or the sleep I lost being so upset over it.

I got out of the Air Force and moved back into rural Virginia. I encountered numerous license / sobriety / safety checks. I finally had enough and asked one trooper if he’d taken the same oath I had in the military. You know; the one about upholding and defending the constitution from all enemies foreign and domestic? He said he had. So I asked what does the Constitution say? He was dumbfounded. So I asked what the difference was between what he was doing and the Gestapo asking me for my papers? Amazingly enough he got downright belligerent and told me to just hand over my license and registration if I didn’t want to be detained. Total time wasted on roadblocks, probably 30 minutes I’ll never get back.

Next encounter, coming home late at night, no alcohol involved and I fell asleep. I was out in the country, ran off the road and hit a tree. No one except me injured. I was wearing my seatbelt, but the inertia lock stopped me after I put my elbow through the windshield protecting my face. Being a dutiful and still brainwashed Virginian, I called the accident in to the State Police. I explained the whole thing to Trooper Friendly, who promptly wrote me a reckless driving ticket. I asked him if I had lied and told him that I’d run off the road avoiding a deer would I be getting this ticket? He said no. I then stated “So honesty isn’t always the best policy then, is it?” He was visibly tight over that. I went to court, beat the ticket without a lawyer and he was pissed. Total time lost: at least 8 hours.

Almost two years later a group of drunk yahoos in a Fox Body Mustang came around a 45 MPH curve at God only knows how fast as I was crossing the intersection and clipped my front bumper. They locked ‘em up, slid 109 feet sideways, sheared off a guy wire and broke a light pole with the driver’s side of the ‘stang. They claimed they were running 45. There was beer all over the car, the driver was drunk and so were the passengers. I called the law. Guess who shows up? That same trooper that wrote me the reckless ticket. I told him about the beer in their vehicle, the apparent speed they were traveling, showed him the point of impact and the damage to the utility pole. He waited an hour and fifty-five minutes to administer a breath test on the driver that hit me. He proclaimed him sober, then proceeded to write me a failure to yield ticket (thank God there were witnesses). I asked him if he was going to take pictures of the utility pole and skid marks and measure them. He took pictures alright, but when we got to court, it turned out that the camera didn’t have any film in it. How convenient! He did everything he could to nail me, but I had sufficient evidence and witnesses, so once again I got the ticket thrown out. Total time lost: probably 30 – 40 hours between the four hours at the scene, all day in court and the time it took to prepare my defense.

So much for your drunk-driving laws saving me time and money, huh? The other driver was trashed. It should have been open and shut. Wrong. As Will Grigg pointed out: there is no situation so bad or human experience so tragic, that the police can’t make it worse. Cops are often hunters Clover. That’s why a lot of them get into that kind of work. When a cop is convinced you’re in the wrong (regardless of whether you are or not) that makes you prey. If you slip out of his grasp, expect retaliation. After my last experience with this gentleman, he started hassling my sister presumably to get at me; he was a real hero there to protect and serve. He had so many complaints against him the state moved him to another county, instead of doing the right thing and dismissing him. But he was probably generating a decent revenue stream, so we wouldn’t want to kill the goose that lays golden eggs, would we?

But the best encounter was my next door neighbor for seven years. Dealing meth, stealing from me, stalking my wife. He and his “ol’ lady” are confidential informants, so your wonderful war on drugs system allows them to do as they please with impunity as long as they keep info flowing to the cops. He cooked meth and sold it, received stolen goods, drove around with no plates or insurance and beat and abused his son. When we’d had enough and went to the police, they sent us a dirty cop to work with. He put our lives in jeopardy and after a couple of years of living hell, he was arrested on felony charges and put in jail. The neighbor continued to operate with impunity and my wife no longer felt safe there so we had to move. Total cost in time, due to your beloved statist system: at least four years of my wife’s and my lives, her peace of mind, my land and house I had paid off. By the way, that puke is on disability so we’re paying for his house and land.
So your precious system has cost me a lot over the years; it works wrong when you need it the most and simply doesn’t work at all in some privileged cases. The Anarchists make a good point in my experience. Now if we can find a practical way to get there. I’m not going to bother wasting any more time on you Clover, because you are a statist and will never change. I just sincerely hope you get all the government you deserve and then some.

Big fan of Heinlein myself here.
Gotta say, the whole “clover dialogue” is just…..tedious. It’s the same old bromides, same old jingos, always a duck and weave…no real serious thought behind the posts….just tiring. I keep hoping to find someone, on some site, who can articulate the statist position well and defend it. I’m continually disappointed.

I love driving when there’s a newly paved road, before it has lanes painted on, signs, speedtraps, etc; mostly because you actually get to see people behave in coordinated and reasonable fashion because they DON’T WANT TO GODDAMN DIE -i.e, emergent behavior in their own interest; as opposed to because daddy government told them to. This reminds me of those stories people tell about traffic in India or Saigon -where what appears to average westerners to be absolute disorder, is actually surprisingly safe. Or better yet, of those cases in european cities where experiments in removing signs and traffic lights actually rendered their streets safer.

In my experience, people who have been accustomed to a statist mentality for very long absolutely hate driving in the conditions I described above. I guess it’s like what Morpheus tells Neo about people who have been in the matrix for too long.

I have an idea. Send Clover and Gil to a a special clover section of the site so that we don’t have to see them. Call it the clover patch.

eric,
I gotta say, the worst part of your site is the free rein (reign?)you give Gil and his like. Such a waste of reading effort I am forced to skip over. If they ever say anything worthwhile will you let me know?

We agree that pointing a loaded gun at someone is threatening but so is a drunk on the road or someone driving in a reckless manner. There is no difference. My life is still threatened and the loss of my property is still threatened.

Drunk driving: You say you do not agree with drunk driving penalties because some people may be able to drive drunk. The fact is if you have had more than a couple of drinks in a short amount of time you should not be on the road. Show me the person that is capable of driving as well after having many drinks as they are sober? The facts are against you. The facts also show that since the crackdown on drunks, everyone else is a bit safer. Yes we are not completely safe because we have limited resources to keep all the drunks off the road. I and everyone else should not have to be off of the road during the hours when people drink to be safe. Where are my rights? The limit that is now set does not make you illegal with one or two drinks and that is a fact that is proven with a lot of testing even though some people have their driving affected negatively with as little as 2 drinks.

It comes down to you want people that drive dangerously to have more rights than everyone else. I have the right to drive on the road with safe drivers around me. You do not want that.

You ask?What makes a group wiser or more morally righteous than an individual?

I say that at least as a group you can add some common sense that is lacking in many. You know, the ones that think they can drink a dozen drinks and drive and at the same time drive 95 mph down the interstate. As a group you can look at the stats that are ignored by the individual that says that speeding is a safe way to drive or drive drunk or tailgate or speed and weave through traffic. A group that looks at the FACTS know that these actions are wrong.

Yes it does come down to what a Libertsrian thinks what harm is done. You crash your car and someone else ia killed then it would your duty to presume the other person was at fault anyway and minimise your jail time.

“The other driver should have seen I was driving much faster then him so he at fault by changing lanes when he did.”

“That pedestrian should have seen how fast I was going so she shouldn’t have tried to cross the road when she did.”

“The other drivers should have seen I was a tad tipsy by my wobbly driving so they should have given me a wide berth.”

“I pay taxes and by extension own these streets so I’ll drive however the hell I want on my property.”

Being relatively new to your site, I missed a lot of the original Clover. His positions sound like what the late, great Robert A. Heinlein was referring to when he observed that since the baby can’t eat meat, then everyone should eat pap. Perhaps it is that Clover does not trust himself, and then projects this lack of self confidence onto everyone else. It is a common failing of parents toward their children-Hell, I’m guilty of it still-but the loving parent learns to close his/her eyes and let the kids go. Statists can never let go, and this is especially true when they achieve power.