From Seatbelts to Here We Are
January 20, 2025
The imminently former Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, recently told The New York Times that the federal government’s attempt to force practically everyone in the country to submit to being injected with the drugs it pushed on behalf of the legalized drug cartels commonly styled the “pharmaceutical industry” was absolutely warranted. Not only that, he pointed out it was nothing really new in that it was – in principle – something that had already been accepted in law as well as in practice by most people.
“Should we require people to wear seatbelts?”
Gotcha!
Becerra is right – in the sense that people are indeed required to wear seat belts and given that, of course they can “absolutely” be required to submit to pretty much anything else the federal government (that is, federal apparatchiks such as Becerra) decree is necessary because “safety” – or “public health,” which amounts to essentially the same thing.
This goes back a long way. At least 60 years, which was how long ago the federal government asserted the authority to be found nowhere in the Constitution to force car makers to force their customers to pay for seat belts in new cars, whether they wanted them (or to pay for them) being an irrelevance. Their “safety” – as defined by the apparatchiks of that long-ago day – became the justification.
Once that principle was established in law – and accepted in practice by an insouciant public that sighed and said – No big deal; I don’t have to wear the damned things – the federal government had the power to require that people wear them. This power was asserted not long thereafter.
It is now, as everyone knows, an actionable offense – meaning, an armed government worker can legally force you to stop and “pull over” and force you to accept a piece of paper that says you owe the government money – for not wearing a seat belt. And if you refuse to wear it, you can be arrested and manacled and placed in a cage. This would have amazed Americans of 70 years ago, for whom such petty authoritarianism would have seemed unimaginable in America.
How long will it be before Americans are forced to wear a bib while eating?
Why not? The federal apparat has already asserted the power to force them to wear a “mask” while breathing. Is it not of a piece?
Does it not follow?
Of course it does. Becerra is right. Haughtily so, as his sneering comment to the Times conveys. How could anyone logically argue against the federal government’s pushing of “masks” and then drugs on people given the acceptance in law and practice of the federal government’s pushing of seatbelts on people?
This is a crucial point lost on many people, who view things – such as the federal government’s forcing of car companies to force car buyers to accept having to pay for seatbelts in cars back in the 1960s – as just a “small thing” without any connection to other things.
That is, without precedent-setting implications.
Lawyers such as Becerra (and Hamilton, 236 years before him) understand the importance of such precedents. They are how you expand upon precedents. They are how you move the ball forward.
This is why it is so important to never give them an inch. Because if you do, they will take a mile. Every. Single. Time.
No doubt it didn’t seem like a big deal, back in the ’60s to have to pay for seat belts you may not have wanted in that new car you just bought. The cost was slight and you could just sit on them rather than wear them. It didn’t seem worth going to war over.
How does it seem now?
Having accepted that seemingly minor thing, all those years ago, we are now afflicted by many more things, including the six air bags (at the least) all new cars now come “standard” with, as well as the car itself – which has become less a car and more a kind of mobile parenting and data-collection device that monitors and controls you at least as much as it conveys you. Cars have become oppressive rather than freeing and it can all be traced back to our accepting that it’s legitimate under the Constitution as well as moral for the federal government – i.e., for ugsome, sneering federal apparatchiks such as Xavier Becerra – to apply the coercive power of the government to force us to buy and then wear seatbelts.
And that is why Becerra is right about the federal government having established it has the power to force us to submit to being injected with “vaccines,” as the drugs pushed on the population by the government were despicably characterized.
From Eric Peters Autos, here.