Buckle Off

Seabelts in cars are not unlike the “vaccines” in that those pushing both of these things say we ought to have no choice about such things. It’s especially obnoxious as regards seatbelts because it is impossible to make even the cloying argument that someone else’s not “buckling-up” threatens the “safety” of anyone else.

Keeping people “safe” – especially from themselves – is the proper business of the parents of minor children. When it becomes the business of government, the government has become the parent.

That is no way for grown-ups to live.

Seat belts are not objectionable, as such. Although that is how opposition to forcing people to “buckle up” is generally framed. Because it is much easier to shut people up by framing them as being opposed to something that might be reasonable and sensible, as such.

Like seat belts.

They can decrease your chances of being hurt – or hurt more seriously – if you crash your car. Wearing a seatbelt may even save your life, if the crash is severe enough. No one possessed of any sense questions this – because sensible people do not question objectively true things.

But note the italics above.

The words “can,” “if” and “may” have been italicized to emphasize another thing that is objectively true about seatbelt-wearing.

Or not.

It is that seabelts are a potential benefit. “Buckling up” can decrease your chances of being hurt – if you crash your car. Wearing a seatbelt may even save your life, if the crash is severe enough.

But if you do not crash, “buckling up” makes no difference. This distinction is important. It is the difference between something actually happening and something that might happen. Put another way, it is a risk-reward evaluation. The kind of judgment call it was once generally understood adults had a right to make. If you choose to enlist in the Marines because you want to receive the rewards that attend being trained and acquiring marketable job skills, you run the risk of being sent into a combat zone in the event there’s a war.

You might be killed.

But you run the risk because you decide that – on balance – it is worth taking.

Seatbelts are not dissimilar. Some prefer to run the risk of not “buckling up” because they just don’t want to buckle up – and that ought to be enough. Adults – in a free society –  ought to have and once did have the right to just hop in their car and go for a drive without having to worry about being forced to “pull over” by a “buckle up” enforcer.

There was a time – it was not so long ago – when the very idea of being parented in this was regarded by most adult Americans as preposterous; the worst sort of effeminate tyranny.

But that was before America became an effeminate police state. On in which “safety” is of more “concern” than crime.

That happened because “for your own good” (and “the good of society”) was accepted by too many Americans. Once an adult submits to being parented on this basis he can expect to be parented further. There is no end-point to it because risk attends life and so there is always something the tyrants who think of themselves as our parents can claim will make things less “risky” – “safer” – for us. And so they have – and will continue to do – until enough of us decide we have had enough of being parented by tryrants, including within our own cars.

At some point – probably not far off – the nannies will say it is too risky to allow people to drive when it is raining. Certainly when it is snowing. If that sounds silly – think about it.

It is time to unbuckle.

More finely, it is time to get the government out of the business of forcing people to “buckle up.” And not just because forcing people to “buckle up” is a petty tyranny but because of the greater tyranny it has empowered. If the government has the rightful authority to force grown adults to “buckle up” then it also implicitly has the same authority to impose a million other tyrannical things, too.

During the “pandemic,” people were subjected to effronterous tyranny in the name of “health” – a working synonym for “safety.”

Observe the two words are often used together.

It is not a stretch to argue that “masking” was enabled by the whole “buckle up” thing by habituating the populace to this sort of thing. The slippery slope isn’t a cliche. It’s a truism. It ought to be etched in stone.

It ought to be taught to kids.

“Masking up” would have never been the thing it became if enough of us had refused the tyrannical orders to to “mask up.” If enough of us had found the balls to ignore signs and defy teenagers peddling “masks” at the entrances to stores, the “masks” would have come off a lot sooner than they did.

It is important to be clear here: Refusing to wear the “mask” if you did not want to wear a “mask” was not a repudiation of “masking” as such. Just the same as not “buckling up” does not mean you are demanding others not “buckle up.”

It is a stand against everyone being forced to wear both of them. As far as the “masks,” those of us who did not want to wear one never went after the people who did. It was always the reverse, which is very telling about the actual motives of the people who insisted everyone else “mask up.”

Of a piece with the motivations of those who insist everyone else “buckle up.” We who prefer not to are targeted – but do not support targeting those who “buckle up,” if they want to. Because we regard them as adults who have a right to decide for themselves and not as our children over whom we (or the government, on our behalf) have parental authority.

If enough of us refuse to be forced to “buckle up,” it will become harder to enforce “buckle up” laws. Those who think otherwise ought to remember that it was mass disregard for the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed  Limit (NMSL) law that eventually led to its repeal after 20 long years.

Mass disregard causes whatever-the-edict-is to appear absurd after a time – because most people are reasonable and (ipso facto) if most people scorn and ignore an edict, the obvious implication is that the edict is absurd. The event styled “Prohibition” furnishes another example. Back in the 1920s, the government – effeminate neurotics – tried to force people to stop drinking alcohol, even a glass of beer, on the basis of absurd claims that even a glass beer led to alcoholism, wife-beating and worse.

When people had enough, it was over.

As easy as that.

. . .

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