“This may not be the best example, as most people agree with the restraints as a public safety issue”
I agree, it’s not a good example. I was an adult at the time and remember it well when you didn’t have to have seat belts. Driving is a privilege not a right and when you are belted in, not only yourself and passengers are better able to survive a crash but you are better able to control a car if you are belted in.
Actually it’s the perfect example as the second statement shows. When a law is passed infringing upon freedom eventually the public will come to justify it by the type of reasoning expressed above. There’s always an excuse given for loss of freedom such as “it’s a privilege”, “you can better control the car”, my insurance rates will go up, it’s for the children, etc. None of them are valid reasons for government interference in something that poses no threat of harm to anyone else.
Actually it’s the perfect example as the second statement shows. When a law is passed infringing upon freedom eventually the public will come to justify it by the type of reasoning expressed above. There’s always an excuse given for loss of freedom such as “it’s a privilege”, “you can better control the car”, my insurance rates will go up, it’s for the children, etc. None of them are valid reasons for government interference in something that poses no threat of harm to anyone else.
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But people don’t oppose them once they get acclimated to the idea. The reasons seem perfectly valid now, but didn’t then.
“You’re affecting others. First responders should have to scrap you off the pavement when you could have used your safety restraings”. “Your family shouldn’t have to suffer your loss when you could have got away with a few broken bones”. Etc. Etc.
The only way to demonstrate is to use an example that you haven’t grown to accept yet (which are getting fewer and fewer), such as ‘You should be taxed for or restricted from collecting rainwater on your own property when drinking water is scarce because natural elements don’t belong to you’, or ‘You’ll need to apply for and pay for a permit to walk anywhere off your own property because of the civil expenses and liability to promote your safety and permit your ease of access’. These will sound a bit absurd to you now, but decades into the future, they may not. They would start out as temporary measures (which are never temporary) during time of crisis or change, or they will be phased in by being applied only to certain groups of people, and not everyone.
I didn’t mean to start a huge tangent, but the whole point was, where does it ever end?
When is Europe going to stop wresting sovereignty and power away from the nations and peoples of their ‘union’? Look at how difficult it is for UK to reverse or escape it. There is never an option in these matters, even when they are portrayed as such in the beginning.