Legislators in Concord seem intent on treating their constituents like children. The New Hampshire House of Representatives last Thursday passed a bill mandating that all adults in a moving vehicle wear seatbelts. The bill stands to go to the Senate, and barring public outcry, soon New Hampshire will lose its place as the last state in the Union that actually thinks its citizens are responsible adults.
I have, in five years of driving in this state, never so much as moved my car from the street into my driveway without fastening my seatbelt. Despite the nonexistence of a law mandating its use, through strenuous use of my fortuitous reasoning abilities and a little help from opposable thumbs, I have repeatedly chosen to buckle up. I never needed the legal paternalism gun to my head to tell me what was in my best interest.
It is true that for the first year I drove, I was required to use a seatbelt by law; but nothing changed on my 18th birthday. Besides, how worried should I be that a police officer, with any number of really important things to think about, like rape, murder or robbery -- or even just running red lights -- will see a dangling seatbelt in my car? Any member of the Dartmouth community is well aware of the fact that while certain activities may be illegal, when they are generally done out of sight of the town sheriff, they become quite commonplace. The underage drinking population on Dartmouth's campus would not explode without the Nanny State.
It is a thoroughly accepted position in quotidian politics, common sense and especially political theory that the state has more leeway in legislating the actions of minors than it does with adults. Rep. Joel Winters, D-Nashua, correctly noted that "legislative common sense is a very slippery slope, and the proper approach is education, not legislation." Seatbelts-for-minors laws are part of that education, and when a child reaches majority at 18, he should be free to choose for himself whether or not he wants to fly through the windshield of his car.
Union Leader Publisher Joe McQuaid said in a page one editorial, "adults who don't bother to use a seatbelt each and every time they enter an automobile are either not thinking clearly or don't have the capacity to think at all." He goes on to point out that because a thing is a good idea does not make it a good law. He calls us to stand against further similar intrusions, like the government controlling the burdens placed on the healthcare system by fatty diets.
Many proponents of the bill incorrectly believe this to be a health issue and not a liberty one. Even if we accept the idea that injuries resulting from not wearing one's seatbelt affect my ability to get care in an emergency does not mandate legislative action to rectify this. Smoking and drinking place burdens on the system. As McQuaid points out, so does obesity. Crossing the street, to which I can personally attest after being hit by a United States Postal Service truck and spending 15 weeks in crutches, places a burden on the system. We have a choice between a minimalist state that respects us and a nanny state where Big Brother knows best.
Our state's widely-known motto is "Live Free or Die." It underscores that we citizens have a right to determine our own destiny. Freedom is not best understood as a right to do something that is not offensive, or not stupid, or not irrational. Freedom in a political sense, by definition, means the ability to do something that someone else might want to use state power to stop you from doing. Where is quoting our state motto more important than with regard to an issue like this one, where our very lives are in fact in the balance?
Our Founders, both national and state, were aware of the possibilities of good from government micromanagement of its citizens' lives. They intelligently, however, chose to limit such abilities because their experience taught them that restriction of government had to be a responsibility that lay in the institutions', and not men's, hands. This is not mere hair-splitting from an ivory tower -- no, it speaks to the very basis of proper government. Good men with good reasons should not set precedent for bad men with bad ones.
