Posted on 12/19/2005 8:30:57 PM PST by Pikamax
The road-rage lobby couldn't have been more wrong. Organisations such as the Association of British Drivers or Safe Speed - the boy racers' club masquerading as a road-safety campaign - have spent years claiming that speeding doesn't cause accidents. Safe Speed, with the help of some of the most convoluted arguments I've ever read, even seeks to prove that speed cameras "make our roads more dangerous". Other groups, such as Motorists Against Detection (officially known as Mad), have been toppling, burning and blowing up the hated cameras. These and about a thousand such campaigns maintain that speed limits, speed traps and the government's "war on the motorist" are shakedown operations whose sole purpose is to extract as much money as possible from the poor oppressed driver.
Well last week the Department for Transport published the results of the study it had commissioned into the efficacy of its speed cameras. It found that the number of drivers speeding down the roads where fixed cameras had been installed fell by 70%, and the number exceeding the speed limit by more than 15mph dropped by 91%. As a result, 42% fewer people were killed or seriously injured in those places than were killed or injured on the same stretches before the cameras were erected. The number of deaths fell by more than 100 a year. The people blowing up speed cameras have blood on their hands.
But this is not, or not really, an article about speed, or cameras, or even cars. It is about the rise of the antisocial bastards who believe they should be allowed to do what they want, whenever they want, regardless of the consequences.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
"I suspect you have no idea what you're talking about."
No point in getting snippy, Al.
This coming from a leftist is just too ironic.
You're confusing anarchists with libertarians. Libertarians want limited government. Anarchists want no government. Distinguish their philosophies more carefully next time.
LOL! No snippiness -- I was merely amused by your presumption to know what I think, based on my informed disdain of both socialists and libertarians.
"I was merely amused by your presumption to know what I think, based on my informed disdain of both socialists and libertarians."
Which does seem to imply that you would find government intervention a positive, more often than I would, does it not?
Care to elaborate?
Sure -- I have no problem, for instance, with speed limits near schools. I have no problem with reasonable regulations, roads, armies, or legitimate "common welfare" sorts of things. You know -- stuff that's spelled out by the Constitution.
I don't find that to be true. There are some well-intentioned Christian libertarians who seem to have forgotten that our rights come from God, and that He does not endow us with the right to do evil.
I find that most libertarians are simply libertines who care only about protecting their sins and their money.
"You know -- stuff that's spelled out by the Constitution."
I'm in complete support of a strict constructionist reading of the Constitution, myself. That "common welfare" thingie, though, has tended to get out of hand over the years.
Bring back tpaine!!!!!
I'll drink to that...
Monbiot, is that french for Moonbat.?..
Francis Dashwood wrote:
Screw the libertarians. Their only purpose here on Free Republic is to bash the religious folks, promote drug abuse and sex perverts, cause trouble for conservatives and help the Democrats...
______________________________________
The founder of FR seems to think otherwise:
REPUBLICAN LIBERTY CAUCUS POSITION STATEMENT
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-rlc/721810/posts
Replies
Address:http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-rlc/721810/replies?c=83
ThomasJefferson:
"So Jim, You advocate these positions?"
Mostly, yes. But I'd rather repeal the 16th and abolish the Income Tax and the IRS altogether. And I do not agree with disclosure of campaign contributions. This is a privacy issue. I'd also like to repeal the 17th. And I'd like to go through all of the ABC agencies and abolish those that are not authorized by the Constitution, ie, most of them. I would also like to see the RLC take a pro-life stance. In the very least, to recognize that the Federal Government has no say in the matter whatsoever.
Oh, yeah, and I'd also like to repeal most of the so-called federal crimes. I believe the Constitution leaves crime fighting to the states. Also, eliminate any chance of double jeopardy thru overlapping federal and state jurisdictions.
83 posted on 07/25/2002 8:35:16 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
You clearly have no idea what a socialist is, nor any idea what a Libertarian is.
Did you know that Ronald Reagan called libertarianism the "heart and soul of conservatism"?
Many modern "social conservatives" are really just mirror images of the "liberals" (actually they are not liberals at all, but statists) in that they both want to destroy individual and state freedoms......, they just differ on the kind of fed that should destroy them.
Much of the rage of the left would be abated if conservatives were true conservatives, seeking to DEVOLVE power from the fed. They hate Bush so much because they see themselves in him, greedily slurping power to D.C., to accomplish a social agenda. The fact that they do it does not justify conservatives ignoring the constitution to "get back" at them. The way to destroy statism is not to USE the power of the stste to fight what the last bunch of statists did...., it is to abolish the power of leviathan.
If that is the definition of conservativism, then I think it is dead. All we have are moralist statists, and deviant statists, with most "conservatives" unsure of what the word means anymore.
Do you have an absolutionist view of the 2nd Amendment?
As a matter of fact, the Constitution spells out no such thing. It rather leaves those matters to the states and the people, and forbids Congress from doing what it does anyway, which is poke their nose into every conceivable avenue. Now, as a result of such idiocy, we have Congress attempting to regulate the use of steroids in baseball, regulating gun proximity to schools, telling states that clauses agreed to by consenting parties that establish judicial jurisdiction are not binding, and all sorts of nonsense expressly forbidden in Amendment 10. They simply ignore it.
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