I don’t drink and drive even after one or two drinks, as there would be a good chance that I’d lose my job (and become unemployable) after a conviction. Also, I have no respect for drunk drivers. Being in my mid-20s I enjoy a good party, but one of the things that always goes through my head before I go out is “How am I going to get home without getting behind a wheel?” It’s not a toughy... either stay home or fork over money for a cab.
That all said, MADD is a neo-prohibitionist movement that is populated by nanny-state liberals. Former employees have said that for many of these women its not a common-sense approach to drunk driving, its all out prohibition. Most of the leadership in that organization are women who have lost family members to drunk drivers, which tends to add emotion over logic in their arguments. The reason why MADD has a voice is because unlike other issues like abortion, it’s hard to find an angle on this issue without sounding like you’re pro-drunk driving.
You sound wiser than your years...I wish I was at your age
There's not a cab within 200 miles of me.
Now, what?
Very good question. They're a known and politically important demographic -- about 6% of the population -- known to be virulently hostile to, inter alia, firearms ownership and young black men (fear).
The ones in MADD are also supported by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The number's old -- 20 years at least -- but back then, IIHS was providing something like 80% of MADD's budget, while also driving the formation of other groups like SADD (Students Against Drunk Driving). GEICO also had a group of their own waging "astroturf" grass-roots political campaigns against radar detectors: GUARD was Group United Against Radar Detectors. (To this day you can't get a GEICO policy if you admit to owning a radar detector. And they ask. Lying about it, of course, is constructive fraud.)
MADD is therefore an "Astroturf" movement like GUARD and SADD.
When, two years ago last month, Houston City Council got ready to vote on red-light cameras (and admiralty law, no-trial "convictions" of thousands of drivers per day), a representative of MADD (a former chapter president) appeared and spoke in favor of the cameras in just such emotive terms. It was a very psychodramatic speech, an appeal and cri du coeur for justice against the evil .... red-light runners. The key being to understand that these people are evildoers.
My own city councilwoman gushed her thanks to this woman for coming down to "motivate" Council to do the right thing. I spoke against the measure as part of a spreading abrogation of civil rights and an otiose crony-capitalist, money-grubbing "remedy", citing material I dug up on former House Majority Leader Dick Armey's website (Armey has been a crusader against this trend toward "Robocop justice"). And the local ACLU gadfly spoke against them as well, speaking right after me, citing Fourth Amendment "privacy" issues (which nobody quite seemed to get). Then Council voted, and waved the thing through -- poof, no more jury trials for *this* offense. And of course MADD's former president was all for it.
[ERJCaptain] It’s not a toughy... either stay home or fork over money for a cab.
You let them win like that? Let them drive you out of the public space, for doing something they disapprove?
Most of the leadership in that organization are women who have lost family members to drunk drivers, which tends to add emotion over logic in their arguments.
Absolutely, and the insurance companies are leveraging their pecuniary interest (radically higher premiums from convicted drivers, and behavior mod -- stay home, stay off the streets, and you won't be filing any claims!) using that kind of emotionally-blinded energy and drive.
The reason why MADD has a voice is because unlike other issues like abortion, it’s hard to find an angle on this issue without sounding like you’re pro-drunk driving.
You still have to fight them, you have to take the hit and fight back with study data, and more data, and more data. As their argument becomes threadbare, they'll turn up the volume (like the Million Moms, NARAL, Code Pink, and all the other femlib groups) until they become shrill. Then you start winning, because nobody likes a shrill harpy screeching in his or her ear.