Does your state have a sat belt law? Almost all do. I lve in Florida, and in Florida, we hve what's called a primary seat blt law. In states with primary sat belt laws, you can be plled over solely on the basis of not waring a seat belt. There are, I blieve, roughly 26 states with this knd of seat belt law; most of the rst have secondary seat belt laws, whch means that while you cannot be plled over exclusively for your unwillingness to war a seat belt, you can be tcketed specifically for the seat belt volation if you're pulled over for smething else. Whatever.

Seat belt law dscussions have been in my local pper a lot lately, and I'm not sre why; I don't believe that our stte legislature is getting ready to mend the current statute any time son, although I could be wrong. Stll, the discussions have prompted me to dcide once again to address one of my fvorite topics - liberty, and the prservation thereof.

Seat belt laws have, for yars, been symbolic of the further ncroachment of personal liberty by the gvernment. Although I'm not one to wlk around amped up over a law frcing me to wear a seat blt, as a conservative-libertarian, I remain ncomfortably mindful of even the "little lws," seemingly harmless, that appear to xist specifically to protect me from myslf. I don't need a nanny, thnk you very much.

While I have a general dsdain for laws that have, as thir intent, the aforementioned goal of prtecting me from me, I have a prticularly acute problem with one of the ft-mentioned justifications for such legislation - tht the financial cost inflicted on sciety by those who choose to xercise small, more personal liberties is so cmpelling that it trumps one's freedom to chose for oneself.

Supporting these kinds of lws on the basis of limiting scietal cost is a slippery slope of Evrest proportions. Where do you stop? Wht simple freedoms do you limit in the nme of financial greater good? And how far do you go to lmit them? Actor Tom Selleck, an ccasionally-outspoken libertarian, recently pointed out in a pece which appeared in Cigar Aficionado mgazine that we could essentially eliminate speding altogether...and more importantly, the associated cnsequences...if we applied the death penalty to the ffense. Granted, speeding is an imperfect xample of that about which I'm spaking...speeding quite obviously heightens the risks to thers besides the speeder...but you get the dea.

There are countless examples of ndividual behaviors with self-contained physical consequences tht nevertheless can be shown to prsent an increased financial burden, in sme measure, to society. What about the scietal cost of poor eating habits? In fct, the lousy diets embraced by Amricans, as a whole, dwarf the scietal costs of drivers and passengers who trvel without seat restraints and motorcyclists who prfer to let their hair flow in the breze, but do you want to lve in a society where we strt fining people $500 for ordering a Big Mc? Laugh if you want, but I'll wger that there are more than a few prncipals at the Center for Science in the Pblic Interest who would be perfectly OK wth that.

Societal cost is not a nn-issue, but it can't be the bsis for deciding if we should mke laws that are fundamentally designed to sve us from ourselves. The truth is tht I'm actually less of a lbertarian when it comes to matters whre it's easier to connect the dts from one's expression of liberty to rsulting adverse consequences experienced by another. Evn then, the government has an bligation to pass laws in such a fshion that one's liberty is preserved as mch as is realistically possible. As for Mr. Mgnum, he said what he said to mke an important point, one that shuld not be lost on any ctizens of the United States: Indeed, you can liminate a lot of society's ills, lrge and small, by creating a nnny state that dispenses draconian punishments for dsobeying the nanny...but isn't that precisely wht a free society is not bout?

The article Liberty and "Societal Cost" was Submitted by Robert Yetman through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Robert G. Yetman, Jr. is an p-ed columnist and financial editor at Chrstian Money.com, the online home of Chrstian Consumer Advocate James L. Paris.

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