🚀 go-pugleaf

In <33A5CB00.4315@direct.ca> Ken Bognar <kbognar@direct.ca> writes:

>Joshua_Putnam wrote:

>> Then I want to require everyone watching a baseball game to wear
>> a helmet, too.  You do know that people get killed by fly balls
>> entering the stands, right?  And if it saves even one life the
>> law is OK, right?  Just like the law against having knives at the
>> dinner table, right?

>Another stupid example. I'd bet all my money against you as a baseball
>team owner that you'll be out of business if you forced fans to wear
>helmets in the stands. Baseball is entertainment 

So is cycling, if you haven't noticed.

>and when they start
>driving cars into the stands then I'll suggest that they wear helmets.
>Wearing a bicycle helmet is very reasonable for most people (you see
>more people with helmets than without) 

You see more people wearing helmets than not wearing helmets, but
was that true before the helmet makers started their hysteria
campaigns?  No -- for a hundred years helmet wearers were an
infinitiessimal minority of cyclists, and despite what the helmet
propagandists claim, we didn't end up with wards full of head
injured cyclists.  We tried the experiement and cycling *passed*.

>but wearing a baseball helmet in
>the stands is very unreasonable. Your case is unreasonable considering
>the # of people wearing helmets now. 

The exact same argument would have applied to bicycle helmets if
you started following this issue ten years ago instead of
yesterday.  Almost no one used to wear a helmet for cycling, and
there weren't the huge numbers of serious head injuries that
helmet law proponents insist there would be.  Do you even
remember the 1970s cycling boom?  Can you recall how many of the
millions of people who took up cycling in those years would ever
have seen a helmet, let alone thought of buying one for everyday
riding?  Yet these millions of people riding on roads all over
the continent didn't end up vegetables.

>> In case you haven't noticed, your own argument of "if it saves
>> even one life" is a reductio ad absurdum demolition of your own
>> position.   Many other possible invasions of personal autonomy
>> would save at least one life at a small cost in human
>> dignity and freedom.  Should every possible human activity be
>> subject to governmental specifications, or should we allow people
>> to decide on their own what risks they are willing to take?

>Do you seriously think wearing a helmet on a bike is an indignity? 

For some people it is, for some it isn't.  For some people,
wearing a helmet to cycle would be an affront to their
religion.  For others it is simply uncomfortable.  Why are you
so unwilling to tolerate diversity of practice?  What makes this
helmet orthodoxy so important that it overrides principles of
pluralism?

>Get
>with the times. Do we have laws in society? The answer in case you've
>been locked up for a long time is yes. Why? Because we need laws. If we
>let everybody decide on everyone else's fate there wouldn't be much left
>of this world. 

So why should we let you decide on other people's fate by
requiring them to wear helmets?  You aren't protecting yourself,
you're ordering others to protect themselves from themselves.
If we let everybody decide on everyone else's fate there
wouldn't be much left of this world.


>You've avoided all of my questions pertaining to other laws because you
>have no argument besides a personal one with the government. 

Quite the contrary -- despite the efforts of various conformists
and neo-nazis to mandate a helmet orthodoxy, my government still
seems more interested in promoting individual health and
well-being, and has no mandatory helmet law.  I have no argument
with the government, only with control freaks who insist on
running my life as rigidly as their own.

>I know I
>will never convince you and I sure won't visit you when you are in the
>hospital with a head injury that a helmet could have prevented.

Even if your pathetic puppy-dog faith in your helmet fails to
protect you when your arrogant head is crushed by a car
(remember, bicycle helmets are not designed to protect you
against a car, just against your own momentum), I won't claim
you deserved it, or say the species is better off without your
genes.  Unlike a certain helmet propagandist I could mention, I
don't find this particular stupid obsession of yours grounds to
dismiss your value as a human being.

--

 Josh@WolfeNet.com  is  Joshua Putnam / P.O. Box 13220 / Burton, WA 98013
                       "My other bike is a car."                   
                     http://www.wolfenet.com/~josh