Writing in The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson takes a few well-directed pokes at the nanny state’s safety brigade, here represented by seatbelt zealots:
More must always be done. We must always be made safer, if not freer, and the law of unintended consequences must always be blithely dismissed. The last great project of the safety mobilizers, you’ll recall, was to make air bags mandatory in passenger cars. This was saluted as an epochal victory for safety until it was shown that an air bag could have an unexpected side effect on “America’s children”: It tended to decapitate the little guys.
As a result, needless to say, the federal government rescinded the air-bag mandate and…no, wait. That’s not what happened. The federal government kept the air-bag mandate and added some new ones–elaborate rules about who can sit where in private cars. When the mobilizers start mobilizing, the effect is always the same: Government mandates spread, the sphere of private decision-making shrinks, and perfect safety remains mysteriously elusive. The upside, from the point of view of the mobilizers, is that they will never be out of work.
…Kind of like Al Sharpton, come to think of it. He’ll never be out of work either if he can convince us to equate unbuckled car occupants with the widespread and latent institutionalized racism he assures us is everywhere.
Sorry, just thinking out loud. Carry on.
My son now wears this HUGE helmet when he rides his tricycle. At the play ground there’s this space age foam material beneath the plastic play ground equipment that is no higher than seven feet. Gone are the days of those 12 foot bee-hive structures suspended over blacktop. Riding down the freeway in the back of my dad’s pickup at 60 mph likely wasn’t the safest practice either. Post modern natural selection is surely dead.
Ah, I remember those days. “Carpool” meant stuffing 15 neighborhood kids in the back of an open-bedded pickup truck.
Just to be clear here, I have nothing against seatbelts. I always wear mine. But giving the police the power to stop potential seatbelt violators? Absurd.
Let me get this straight…
Instead of being able to put a kid in the front passenger seat where I am able to attend to the kid while keeping an eye on the road therefore avoiding a potential accident, the government wants me to put the kid in the backseat where I have to contort myself and take my eyes completely off the road to attend to the kid because that would limit the injuries in an almost-certain accident, an accident which could have been avoided altogether if the kid had been in the front seat in the first place?
I know a lot of ford pickup trucks had an option to turn off the passenger side airbag (no backseat to put the kids in). I can recall one time driving in a friend’s truck, after I smugly reprogrammed all his radio presets, he popped a key off his ring, turned my airbag, and proceeded to ram right into a brick wall. Well, ok, the last part didn’t happen, but the rest did, and it was quite funny. And no, I have no point to make.
Replace “Al Sharpton” with “Abe Foxman” and “racism” with “anti-Semitism” and maybe that’ll help you understand how offensive your offhanded dismissal of discrimination really is. As shrill and paranoid as Foxman can be, I don’t think anyone should have anything at all to say about Sharpton.
I have no reason to “replace” anything; I said exactly what I wanted to say. I could just as easily replace Sharpton with “Pedro” and “racism” with “self-serving, self-righteous, racialistic moralizing,” but that’s not what I wanted to say, either.
And I didn’t dismiss discrimination, either. I dismissed Sharpton. That you purposely confuse the two speaks ill of your intellectual honestly—which you’ve traded in for a faux moral highground.
Take it easy… I just wanted to try to give you the perspective of someone you so casually mock. I know you said what you meant to say, and I was simply trying to illustrate my point in a way with which you might be able to identify. There’s no “faux moral high ground” here at all. If you really believe Sharpton is just making it up, take a look around instead of just reflexively attacking him because you don’t like liberals. I also think that if Foxman can see anti-Semitism as being a significant problem in a country that is so clearly not anti-Jewish (if anything, this country is more philo-Semitic than anti-Semitic), then Sharpton is well within his rights to criticize the far more blatant forms of discrimination that many black people (and Latinos) are still faced with.
By the way, do you actually have any clue what you meant by “racialistic moralizing”? And if Foxman and his ilk aren’t self-righteous and self-serving, then how exactly would you define those terms? Your fragile ego is displayed clearly by the vehemence of your response to what was in reality a fairly mild criticism. I wonder if you would say “the widespread and latent institutionalized racism he assures us is everywhere” in such a sarcastic tone if you were speaking with a black person face-to-face rather than hiding behind the relative anonimity of the Internet.
You “take it easy.” You don’t know me, so assuming that I haven’t considered Sharpton’s positions carefully is a rhetorical leap you shouldn’t be prepared to take. Similarly, the idiotic statement that I am some how reflexively attacking Sharpton because I don’t like liberals (?) doesn’t serve your cause well, either. Because again, you don’t know me.
Did I somewhere say Sharpton was NOT within his rights to race bait? No, I didn’t. And I, of course, am within my rights to criticize him.
And yes, I know what I meant by “racialistic moralizing,” Don’t you? As to what Foxman and “his ilk” are or are not, I could care less. You dragged him into this. I wasn’t talking about Foxman, so I’ve nothing to say on the matter.
Re: the relative anonymity of the internet, my name is listed on everything I write. And I’ve said nothing here I haven’t said while lecturing in a classroom. In front of blacks, hispanics, Jews, asians, native americans, middle easterners, you name it. Under “greatest hits” (left hand column) you’ll see a few lengthy posts / discussions on race.
I did read your “greatest hits” posts on race, so I already have a fairly clear idea of your attitudes. For example:
This statement (among others) combined with the obvious sarcasm in your reference to Sharpton provide more than enough context to understand your views toward black people. You are hardly a KKK-style racist (obviously), and it was never my intent to say so. I would say, however, with a fair degree of certainty, that your views parallel the standard Republican party line that welfare and affirmative action are Bad because they amount to “reverse discrimination”. Of course, this view simply fails to take history into account. Can you honestly say you don’t believe that the lingering effects and modern manifestations of discrimination against blacks are not significant factors in creating the current socioeconomic picture? That’s really the essence of Sharpton’s message.
As for Foxman, I “dragged him into this” just to illustrate a point, and it should be a simple matter for you to acknowledge the same ethnic partisanship in him that you criticize in Sharpton. Also, your repeated statement that I “don’t know you” is unnecessary and completely beside the point. Your blog entries are more than enough to paint a fairly solid picture of your views on this subject. I don’t need to know you personally to understand your way of thinking. Are you really going to tell me I’m way off on the gist of your views? Please, if you in fact support some form of affirmative action or other programs designed to achieve economic equality, let me know and I’ll try to figure out which part of “government-sponsered [sic] social programs that rely on faulty ideas of “race” are divisive and counterproductive” allows for that.
From this post (under greatest hits) which evidently you didn’t read carefully enough:
Incidentally, I don’t put much stock in spelling gotchas. I don’t use a spell checker, and I’m human, so spelling errors and typos are bound to slip through here from time to time. But I bet it feels good for you to point them out from the “relative anonimity [sic] of the Internet,” eh?
Such a self-righteous tool you are, quick to lump everyone into little boxes. Which of course is not surprising given your defense of people like Sharpton.
Bye now.
One more thing. You write:
Had you actually read what I wrote, you’d know my answer to this. But you didn’t, so you don’t.
I have no time to debate with people who just wish to drop boilerplate and can’t be bothered to understand the position of their opponent. Which, in my case, is right on the front page here for everyone to see.
Incidentally, Jews aren’t eligible for race-based affirmative action programs. So Foxman doesn’t belong in this discussion. As to whether or not he sees anti-semites in his soup, such wasn’t the topic of my post.
So you deleted my post? Jesus Christ, Jeffrey… this is a recurring theme with you. If you’re going to be a whiny little bitch and censor everything you don’t like, maybe you shouldn’t bother with a comments section. Or maybe you should do what Serenity does and specify that only those who agree with you on every detail should comment. Again, the astonishingly fragile ego rears its ugly head. You really should stick to the recipes and condescendingly funny stories about your neighbor caricature if you can’t take any criticism.
Huh? What the fuck are you talking about?
Man, but do you ever like to hear yourself speak, “Pedro.” No, my ego isn’t fragile. But my time is precious. I keep banning you because you’re not interested in debate. You’re interested in practicing your mini-lectures on “right-wingers” and I am simply not interested in listening to that.
Had you really read the posts I pointed you toward, you’d see that among those people I debated were Steve Sailer, hardly a “liberal”—and that among those I agree with on “race” theory are Walter Benn Michaels, who’s practically a socialist.
None of which prevents you from dragging labels like “Republicans” and the like into every bit of your predictable diatribe.
It’s your ego that is fragile, “Pedro.” You don’t debate, you spew agitprop; you’re aren’t intelligent, you’re just reasonably well read. And so you have nothing to teach me that I haven’t heard. considered, and responded to a gazillion times before. You’re a redundancy, see? Now go run your own site. Please. Me, I’ll do whatever I like on this site. You’re welcome to go elsewhere if you don’t like what I write here.
If you’d like to speak with me through email, that’s fine. You can introduce yourself that way. I have no idea who you are, otherwise.
My, what large caliber foot-holes.