For our safety. . . Again

The agitprop arm of the insurance mafia – the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety – “shared” (in the cloying left-wing language that has replaced proper English) a video that “clarifies” the “importance of a properly adjusted headrest of a car seat.” You know, those things that obscure the rear view and are now on every car seat, in the interest of “safety.”

That’s interesting in that sense hypothetical an advantage is imposed (these headrests are required, that is, we are actually forced to buy them) at the expense of an objective disadvantage. That’s what you can no longer see as clearly behind and even to the side of you, which almost certainly increases the chance that you won’t see it – and thus walk into it or back into it.

The idea, of course, is that if someone else bumps into you from behind, you’re less likely to sustain a whiplash injury. And that may be so.

But what is interesting from a moral philosophical perspective is that it is not up to us to weigh and decide the costs and benefits. If we lived in a free country – note that you almost never hear that anymore – emancipated adult people would have the freedom to decide for themselves whether it is “safer” to be able to see what is behind them – and on either side of them them – or “safer” to limit that view so that their heads are held in case they are hit from behind.

Of course, we do not live in a free country – a fact borne out by the fact that adults are not emancipated. They are regarded as the idiotic children – forever – of their ‘parents’ in government, who know best and decide best. These decision makers have decided it’s better to have super high, whiplash-reducing headrests just in case (never mind what it costs and never mind what You want) than to be able to see what is behind and on either side of you.

But the real motive here is not so much to educate us as to infantilize us. It’s an important distinction. Children eventually grow up and become emancipated adults. American adults are never allowed to grow up, let alone emancipated.

Americans—many of whom no longer have any concept of what a “free country” is because they were born too late to experience what it was like when America was at least plausibly somewhat free—have grown up accepting and even want to be treated like they are were idiotic children. They have absorbed the ridiculous idea that the government knows best, which is ridiculous because it is based on a false premise.

If people are too stupid to know what is best, what about the people who make up the government? They are rarely the best and brightest. But they are insufferably ‘worried’ – and have acquired the power to express their ‘concern’.

That’s why you had to pay for seat belts in a new car if you wanted to buy a new car. Within just a few years of that happening, you had to wear them – and if you didn’t you could be punished – just like a little child at school being beaten for disobedience. It is interesting to note that real children are no longer spanked That is seen as abuse. But emancipated adults get a beating – and worse – when they refuse to respond to the command to ‘make an effort’ for ‘safety’.

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