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"Click It or Ticket."
Such a clever slogan South Carolina safety officials came up with to save the lives of their benighted citizens. In late May and early June of this year, they ran a campaign -- a "14-day blitz" in the words of Knight-Ridder journalist, Chuck Crumbo, in an online story from July 23, 2001 -- to ensure that drivers in their fair state did not commit the unpardonable sin of operating a motor vehicle with their seat belts unfastened.
Now, sadly, this noble endeavor to protect South Carolinians from themselves is threatened by dirty state politics. Seems the South Carolina General Assembly recently decided in a rare instance of Clear-Brain Syndrome to forbid this glorious program dedicated to the welfare of their citizens.
The outrage is palpable.
Department of Public Safety employee Max Young, who heads the Office of Highway Safety, says that because deaths dropped 42 percent and seat belt use rose 5 percent, then, hey!, "That clearly tells us the campaign was worthwhile."
After all, fourteen other states have used similar programs to shield their citizens from their own foolish choices. We all know, don't we, that the more people believe or do something, the more right and proper that thing is?
The Click It or Ticket parade was endorsed by South Carolina Democratic Governor Jim Hodges. Too bad his minions chose to oppose his so well-reasoned initiative.
Echoing Max Young's the ends-justify-the-means approach, National Highway Safety Transportation Administration flunky, Belinda Jackson, said, "We've never seen this type of situation unfold in a state." (More's the pity. Would that such unprecedented displays of backbone became the norm rather than the exception in the state houses of this nation.) "It's a matter of saving lives and, in Click It or Ticket, we saw a campaign that made a difference." (Ah, yes. The eternal imperative: "Making a difference." Unfortunately, these nannies and tin dictators never bother to spell out precisely what kind of difference they're making. Apparently, as long as they're doing something -- anything -- that increases State power, then, heck, go for it.)
Even the American Automobile Association fell prey to this rank pragmatism, a crippled pragmatism that narrows the mental focus until all opposing facts and principles are excluded even from existence, let alone consideration. AAA of South Carolina vice-president, Tom Crosby, said , "The legislature continues to show a cavalier attitude toward public safety. How can a legislator consciously do this?"
(Those cads! Those bully-cowards! How could they be so...so...evil...and uncaring. Why, they must positively revel in being mean-spirited. No decent human being could object to saving lives. They must be brain dead. That's the only logical explanation.)
Gee. I wonder what Senator Joe Wilson of the Senate Transportation Committee thinks of such a characterization? If he were as unconscious as Crosby assumes he must be to oppose Click It or Ticket, let us hope he never regains awareness! Wilson said, "How could you not be in favor of highway safety? But where it becomes intrusive in people's lives, I think it is inappropriate."
Not just "inappropriate." Such intrusions are morally wrong and a gross violation of our rights.
As usually happens when someone dares challenge a statist program, the statist's immediate response is that "You don't care about X." Oppose state-run, tax-funded education? You're against education per se. Oppose the Drug War? You're against ending addiction and for increased drug abuse and crime. Oppose Medicare and Social Security? You're against old people living decent lives and having adequate health care; you want them to die in the streets and eat dog food. Against gun control? You're for blood in the streets and school shootings.
*Sigh* The litany is as long and tedious as it is shameful in its distortions.
The backers of mandatory seat belt checkpoints have no problem with thousands of state mandatory motorist stops to catch a handful of violators of a blatantly unconstitutional law. To heck with the inconvenience and time lost. No problem with the smoldering resentment against police engendered by such traps. Turn a blind eye to the swelling police state they are creating.
No, no. As long as "compliance" is increased by a measly five or ten percent, then there is no need to dwell on such annoyances as individual moral sovereignty, violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, or the increased dangers involved in relying too heavily on seat belts and the resultant riskier behavior exhibited by certain drivers.
The old refrain: "As long as one life is saved..."
It's the same justification the anti-self-defense crowd uses for victim disarmament laws. "Banning guns is justified if it saves a single life."
The eco-fascists rely heavily on that mantra by way of appeal to their false "precautionary principle": "We should ban chemical X [or greenhouse gases or freon] just in case it is dangerous, because we just don't know how many lives might be lost if we don't eliminate it."
The various Drug Czars claim that drug prohibition is worthwhile if it saves one person from addiction.
None of these collectivists and statists seem cognizant of the fact that "pragmatism" doesn't work. They are blissfully ignorant of the costs -- human and financial -- of their "pragmatism," the benefits of the opposing side, or the fact that most of their so-called benefits are nothing of the sort.
Whenever a statist wants to steal more money from your pocket or drape more chains over your shoulders, we are treated to the "if it saves one life" or "life has no price" lies. No one in his own sphere of responsibility acts according to this bogus principle.
For example, how many of you would bankrupt your family to treat an incurable disease you had contracted? Would you sell all your assets -- your car, your house, your life insurance, everything -- to try every conceivable treatment? Would you do this to pay for a million dollar cure...if you had to pay the total amount?
If the "no price" rule trumped all else -- after all, no price means any price -- would you sell your children into sexual slavery? Would you sell their organs? Would you kill them? But then you run into the dilemma of trading one "priceless" life for another.
Yes, any individual life is irreplaceable. None, however, is priceless in the sense the statists try to foist upon us. After all, we could save many lives by banning driving on the highways; prohibiting riding a bicycle; outlawing stairways in homes; preventing people from getting up in the morning...but then you merely trade one set of risks, one set of lives for another. Indeed, the so-called "fixes" designed to "save one life" frequently lead to a net increase in deaths.
For example, some well-meaning people -- and, oh, aren't they all "well-meaning" -- want to stop parents from holding infants in their laps while flying. These do-gooders want to force these adults to buy a separate seat for their offspring. Consider, though, that most parents with infants or toddlers tend to be younger. Younger people usually have lower incomes early in their careers at the same time they face increased costs for such things as daycare, baby clothes, and doctor bills. A full-price ticket for their baby might bust their transportation budget. This economic crunch might well induce more people to drive to their destinations rather than fly. But since driving is far more dangerous than flying, this supposed "safety measure" would actually kill more of those babies the "if it saves one life" crowd is trying to save.
Do such people care about these issues? Do they bother to think these problems through and, as Henry Hazlitt tirelessly pointed out in such works as Economics in One Lesson, evaluate all the facts in all contexts?
No. Of course not. They latch, leech-like, onto their pet project and block out all other considerations. They operate untroubled by the natural human tendency to operate from a "confirmation bias," that is, seeking out only information that agrees with them.
Ultimately, what this all boils down to is: what is to be judged an acceptable risk. The statists want to spend billions -- of other people's money, of course -- on marginal risks like eliminating DDT, dioxin, nuclear energy, guns in society, or banning cell phones in cars while ignoring more immediate risks like poorly designed highways, energy gaps, excessive taxes that reduce wealth, or regulations and laws that prevent progress and enhanced lifespans.
It's easy to say it's "worth it if it saves one life" if you don't personally have to bear the economic costs or if you don't care much about true liberty or morality.
Me, I know better.
The best principle most compatible with saving lives -- the principle that is not only the most practical but ethical, to boot - is maximizing freedom. Striving to achieve that results in more lives saved than any other course imaginable possibly could.
