As we see viral videos of people ranting about mask mandates being tyrannical government overreach, the Daily Show with Trevor Noah reminds us that people said the same thing about seatbelt mandates back in the day.
In 1986, a video showing news footage shows several people complaining that they were being forced to wear seatbelts. It’s quite amazing to witness. Watch:
This clip from the Daily Show of people fighting against seat belt mandates in the 80s is absolutely surreal from s… https://t.co/4P0szXEXdV
— Josh Jordan (@Josh Jordan)1631752747.0
There was intense resistance to seatbelt laws in the 1980s, which in hindsight seems quite silly. When used properly, seatbelts reduce motor vehicle fatalities by half, according to the CDC. The CDC states that people who don’t buckle up are 30 times more likely than others to be thrown out of a car after a crash. While most people buckle up immediately, this saves lives and helps to conserve healthcare resources. But it took a mandate.
Now we see the same kinds of complaints with COVID-related mandates, despite COVID killing more than ten times as many people in one year as an average year of car accidents do. It is possible for the government to mandate the use of seatbelts to save lives and health resources. But surely, it could also mandate masks during a pandemic that has been spread almost entirely through mouth emissions.
The purpose of our system of governance, according to the preamble to the Constitution, is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Sounds awesome, but sometimes those things can seemingly conflict with one another. What happens if the defense or welfare of our liberties is compromised?
It’s a difficult question. Sometimes it’s not as difficult as people think.
It’s obvious that the general welfare of the nation is suffering in the face of a pandemic that has claimed the lives of 675k+ Americans and sickened many more. While we know that there are ways to reduce the viral spread and save lives and it is possible to ask for help, asking people to do the right things doesn’t seem like a good idea. To promote the general welfare, people are required to wear masks in public areas in order to be able to function properly.
Although it’s understandable why people don’t want to be told what to do by the government, it’s also understandable how a government of people, by people, for people would attempt to protect the people. This means protecting the public from the spread of a deadly disease and slowing down healthcare by refusing to be vaccinated.
Freedom that directly leads to the death of our fellow Americans does not constitute true freedom. Many people don’t understand the fact that there is a virus pandemic that kills thousands of Americans every day. We are asking the government for help to protect the public welfare if we refuse to do the right thing.
We could go back forty years and see the absurdity of anti-maskers’ views on future generations. As seatbelt mandates did not lead to tyranny in the past, so will a viral pandemic.