There has been one campaign after another to raise the driving age in every state. One showed a kid with a frown on his face staring at the camera, and the nice, fair poster said, “Do you want Him driving on where YOU do?”
I wouldn’t want ANYBODY with that expression of his NEAR me.
I mention this because it was the first time I had ever testified before a committee, and I was alone. I was barely sixteen so I could keep my license if they raised the age, but I KNEW something. I knew that, at the least with the statistics at that time, raising the age to 16 would do no good at all.
I knew that the 14 to 16-year olds had a lower accident per mile rate than most of the other two-year groups. I knew that in Europe, where you had to wait until you were twenty-one, the deaths per mile were triple the American rates.
What was really impressive about my speaking there was that it was a an omen for the rest of my life. First, I was the ONLY witness on the anti side. Second, the long line of witnesses for the trendy side were the same ones who line up for every single trendy cause today.
There must have been twenty guys with their collars backwards. If these guys believe their business is keeping people out of Hell, they would have SOMETHING to do besides marching about capital punishment and abortion. Most of them were Episcopalian so I doubt they really believed in anything but their social status.
But everybody but me had been there before, usually on some other Fashionable Issue of the Day.
They bitched and moaned about “young drivers.” But the statistics they were quoting were about the infamous 16-25-year-old male drivers. The law would do nothing to bring down THEIR accident rate.
I guess that was one of my earliest Mantras, trying to get off the moaning and screeching and talk about REALITY. But you would certainly have recognized the pro witnesses, and the lone person on the other side.
#1 by BGLass on 05/04/2010 - 7:16 am
This sort of post is what makes youth culture so important. Kids should NEVER EVER talk to older people b/c they’re all nazis. Was the driving age ever under 16? Probably, even recently, there was no driving age.
Motor voter and Help America Vote acts deep-sixed the Arrive Alive thing. Only now that you mention it –I was a kid– I vaguely remember lowering speed limit, seatbelts, the safety stuff. Most of my life, driving has just been about foreigners voting.
So maybe safety was really about foreigners, too, but I think the license used to be a ‘right of passage’ thing; driving, an after-dinner passtime. Who would “take a drive” now? And anyway, that was a family activity, and we don’t have those, either.
Hearing such things as post always make it sound like there was once a society that cared about people dying on the road anyway. A real society might have talked about safety. Even if it was for bigger government, it wasn’t yet so big nobody cared about life and death. Now the same Episcopalians want to lower the age, so more foreigners can work in the government and vote for special trinkets (“rights”). Exact opposite.
Voting and Driving are two different categories of experience— but once more, it all boils down to Legitimacy in the U.S. When you are “legal.” Who GETS TO SAY you are Legal. My first political memories are flag desecration of the U.S. flag and their president was killed. Then tons of people who don’t look like me waving the same flag– so it lost meaning as what it was before. So it goes.
#2 by Dave on 05/04/2010 - 9:50 am
Minds that are rooted in lies want to pretend and it is the narcissistic nature of this kind of mind that leads it to seek out the permission to pretend.
Accordingly, narcissistic feelings associated with the word “fashionable” gives permission to minds that want to pretend. The narcissistic feelings associated with words like “conscience” and “compassion” performs the same role. And minds that want to pretend are minds that are weak.
This explains most, if not all, of the anti-white whites.
Reality based minds, in contrast, have only to see it.
#3 by Simmons on 05/04/2010 - 10:08 am
Well said Dave.
The word “Responsibility” kills off that weak minded stuff like DDT kills bugs.
That is why we have respectables and semis, because they are showered with gratitude if they avoid that word in connection with the Left.
#4 by DeepfriedElvis on 05/04/2010 - 8:58 pm
American history is a constant series of contractions on your liberty. Sort of like entropy always increases with time. Have there ever been any instances of government expanding your freedoms? I was shocked to see that now in many places they are nitpicking regulation regarding bicycles, requiring helmets, tags, illumination, etc. When I was a kid a bike was like a toy, now days in Oregon the cops arrest kids who peddle around the lot behind their homes “for not having helmets.” And the bicycle is just a microcosm of multitude aspects of our lives that are now regulated but were formerly free, such as building permits for even the most minor details. Heck they card 40 year olds these days for a drink. I watched them card a guy with graying hair, I thought it was a joke. No doubt global warming taxes and permits are next if liberals have their way.