Legislators have way too much time on their hands. It’s become increasingly evident given much of the nanny state policies being put forth. Take for example the fast approaching uber-liberal state of Minnesota.
It wasn’t enough last legislative session that the DFL (Democratic Farm Labor party) was in hot pursuit to ban glass bottles on beaches and boats, trample upon freedom of assembly and private property rights in their quest for smoking bans, and asserting the right of bowel relief, in a business owner’s employee only restroom, for those afflicted with any loose bowel sort of ailment. No, that apparently wasn’t enough of an encroachment into your daily life.
So, comes the next wave of government intrusion into one’s personal life as we slowly chip away at our beloved free society.
First, came a ridiculous legislative proposal to expand on the safety booster seat law by extending it up to children the age of 8 rather than the age of 4 as exists under current law. Once again, the state makes their case that they know what is best for your child. It ought to be extremely offensive to every mother and father across the state of Minnesota that the legislature thinks you don’t have the best interest of your child in mind every single time you take them somewhere in your automobile. Who better has your child’s best interest at heart you or some bureaucratic busy body at the Capitol?
Of course, there are parents who don’t take responsibility for raising their children properly. However, A) they are not the majority but rather the minority. If even such a legislative proposal were just, it dismisses the second of my points B) which is the right of said parent to be held accountable by a jury of their peers.
Let us suppose that a parent didn’t provide a booster seat for their 7 or 8 year old child and they end up severely injured in a crash as a result. Under current law, that parent could be held negligent for their actions should a jury of their peers find them to be at fault.
Extension of the mandate is not only unnecessary, it amounts to nothing more than a revenue raising tactic by the big government nanny state bureaucrats. Need more evidence?
How about another provision in the Transportation Bill, this one a proposal to change the current seat belt law from a secondary offense to a primary offense. This means that rather than being first cited for speeding, making an illegal u-turn, or driving with a broken taillight and then getting an additional citation for not wearing your seatbelt, you may now be pulled over simply for failing to buckle up.
What's to say a trooper wont end up pulling you over and come to find you actually ARE wearing your seatbelt all the while a guy with an alcohol content twice the legal limit goes wizzing by?? It also expands on government's already overreaching authority to establish probable cause.
Now, I always wear my seatbelt in the car (even if I’m in the backseat). But, how is your decision to not wear your seatbelt going to affect me? Simple answer is that it’s not.
While the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws has been a horrendous financial burden to society, the greatest cost is really not money. It's the loss of freedom. Seat-belt laws infringe a person's rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth Amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; they deny through prior restraint the right to determine one's own individual personal health-care standard.
While seat-belt use might save some people in certain kinds of traffic accidents, there is ample evidence that in other kinds, people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because they used seat belts. Some people have been saved from death in certain kinds of accidents only because a seat belt was not used. In those cases, the malicious nature of seat-belt laws is further revealed: such persons are subject to fines for not dying in the accident while using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians.
The state has no authority to subject people to death and injury in certain kinds of traffic accidents just because it hopes others will be saved in other kinds of accidents merely by chance. The state has no authority to take chances with a person's body, the ultimate private property.
Of course they would tell you otherwise as they assert that not only you, but your child is the property of the state. Consider Minnesota Senate File 3138 which aims to legalize involuntary genetic research on your children without your knowledge or approval (generally through a prick to the heel of the child following birth I’m told). The purpose you ask? To create genetic profiles, conduct research that may be objectionable and more. The DNA of 780,000 children is presently held by Minnesota's government. Is it not completely Orwellian to think that the government is in the business of compiling data on your child without your consent?
Yet were this not sufficient, for the adults in Carver County, Minnesota, County health officials want to subject all 63,000 of you to mandatory physical exams and health assessments in their pursuit of making your county the “healthiest in the nation”. According the Star Tribune article, the data “would be used to help public and private health agencies tailor or expand programs to treat, prevent, or reduce medical problems such as diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol.”
Or, dare I infer the culmination of the data is in conjunction with the state’s quest to be your sole provider of healthcare. With this data and them as your healthcare provider, they will make decisions regarding your healthcare needs and what services can and will be provided to you given your healthcare analysis.
Friends, what we are witnessing at present is by far the greatest assault on your Freedom, your Liberty, and your quality of life; a life which is wholly your own.
Aren’t there any of you out there that quite frankly, like me, just want to be left the hell alone to live your life, work hard, care for yourself and your family and to anything else you deem important in your life without government bureaucrats dictating and facilitating every aspect of your life??
2 comments:
While the DNA info being held without consent by your state's government is troubling, with respect to your other issues Soapie, isn't it merely the federalism in effect, in which states can make laws not covered by the US Constitution as they see fit for their state?
Indeed it is. And, while I applaud the concept of Federalism and I could very well move to another state, the point herein and the point of Federalism or not has to do with legitimate functions of government and government's purpose existing for no other purpose other than to protect the Life and Liberty of its citizens. It is not to encroach upon them.
It was as true 20 some odd years ago as it is today:
Government is still the problem and not the solution.
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