It’s like people have forgotten why certain laws exist. First of all, I think things like helmet and safety belt laws are stupid. I’m a huge fan of survival of not just the strongest, but also the smartest. I wear my seat belt all the time not because I fear legal consequences, but because I don’t feel like taking a trip through my windshield if—L. Ron Hubbard forbid—I get in a car accident. (Also, my car gives me crap if the passenger doesn’t buckle his or her seat belt. That voice on a long drive alone would drive me to insanity.) If some moron doesn’t want to protect himself, then he should be able to do that.
But I see why that law exists. All right, fine. That’s reasonable, I guess. But there are other adjacent laws that MAKE NO FUCKING SENSE. If you are at a red light, and you take off your seat belt to remove your coat because it’s getting kinda’ hot, you have just broken the law. If you start your car before putting on your seat belt, you have just broken the law. If you pop off your seat belt as you’re settling into a parking space in order to save time because you’re running a little late, you have just broken the law.
WHY?! What is the point of this bullshit? Is the government so hard up for money they’ve got to nitpick their constituents? Seat belt laws exist to save the lives of morons. Whose life are you saving by ticketing the people who have done anything in that previous paragraph? The argument could be made that someone could still crash into you while you’re parked. That argument, however, would be stupid. If that was the case, perhaps we should make walking or standing around illegal, because you never know when some asshole is going to jump the curb.
Here’s another example: if you talk on your cell phone while your car is on, even if you’re parked or at a stop light, you are breaking the law. I’m not talking about the jerk offs who text while driving. Put the leeches on those fuckers because they’re not just a danger to themselves, they’re a danger to others around them. However, people who are merely on the phone are still watching the fucking road. They are aware of their surroundings. If the car in front of them comes to a sudden stop, they’ll know that they need to stop, too. They’re just having a conversation, or maybe we should ban conversations with passengers in the car, too. Don’t believe me? Then why is it legal to have radios in your car? Think about all the times you’ve looked away from the road to change the station. Or how about GPS systems? On mine, you can’t really fiddle around with it if you’re in motion, but that’s not true of everyone’s. How much attention are you paying to the road if you’re trying to put in the address to a bar you want to go to?
Fellow drunkards? (You knew this was coming.) I’m not going to get into the argument as to whether or not driving drunk should be legal. You know my stance on that. However, if you’re a good responsible citizen after a night of having maybe one too many drinks, you can’t just walk to your car and pass out inside of it. It is illegal to be intoxicated inside your car, even if it’s not turned on, even if you’re laying down in the back seat. And some bars don’t even have parking lots; in a lot of places, your car is parked by the sidewalk, which means if you don’t get it home, you’ll be, you guessed it, ticketed for parking it over night. Even worse, depending on the law, you might even get towed and have to get your car back from the impound the next day (and you’ll probably be hung over for that). Yet it’s illegal for you to drive it home while intoxicated. This is so unfair it borders on discrimination against those who like to imbibe. While it may be dangerous to drive drunk, it is not dangerous to do anything else I have mentioned here. Why is this even an issue? And the same goes for open container laws. Louisiana doesn’t have these, so they’re good in my book. Everywhere else, however, will ticket you for this, even if no one in the car is actually drinking from it. Picture this: you’ve brought some alcohol with you to a friend’s place. You guys didn’t really drink much of it (meaning, you’d probably blow a .04 if put to the breathalyzer), but you want to bring it home with you for future enjoyment. Can’t do it. That’s illegal.
These are just a few examples of the legal system running amok. Hell, feel free to post your own examples in the comments below. People are always concerned about laws covering just about every aspect of our lives. We don’t need that much. Generally speaking, we all know right from wrong. We all know which laws are actually important to obey. (For the aberrant cases who don't know this, that's why we have the law.) Why don’t we just trim the fucking fat? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a thin law book instead of the entire library you see in most lawyers’ offices?
Well, that will never happen. Taxes aren’t enough to run a government, apparently; they need money from fines on stupid laws because, and this should come as no surprise, even ordinary people with their brains in the right place break these laws. That’s because there’s nothing wrong with doing so. If the government collapses (and believe me, that will happen before ANY government cocksucker votes to cut his own pay), the politicians will be out of their sweet jobs, perks and all. And here’s another thought: when was the last time you’ve ever heard of the government legalizing something? They’re always bending their every effort to ban everything they can. Why? Money, chum. That's the be-all-end-all.
Hell, it’s not all doom and gloom, despite all of my ranting. Here’s the cool thing about being a free person—and for all of this legal insanity, make no mistake, each and every human being on his planet, with the exception of prisoners, is free—is that you can make your own rules. Maybe that sounds a bit childish, saying that I can do whatever I want, but it’s true. Today (I wrote this a few days ago), on the way home from work, I talked to a friend on my phone. Last week, I had a few drinks at a friend’s place and then drove home. I haven’t smoked weed in many years, but, well, I have done that. I speed all the time (unless I’m drunk; I don’t want to bring attention to myself, after all). I have fucked women in public. I say horribly inappropriate things in any social setting. I don’t censor myself around children. (I used to, but I’m too old to play bullshit games. And they are games; there is no reason why you can’t say bad words in front of a kid because there are no bad words.) Guess what: after I did all of that stuff, no one got hurt. The world didn’t end. Hell, no one even noticed.
To quote Robert A. Heinlein, “Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.” Words to live by.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
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