Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
This is Why We Can’t Have…
This is why we can’t have nice things jobs, small businesses, a functioning economy, and the freedoms we took for granted twelve weeks ago.
This a $6 utility trailer plug kit I bought at Tractor Supply last week. I bought it in way-upstate New York and used it to fix a cousin’s trailer. The State of California wants me to know that I shouldn’t, I don’t know, eat the damn thing, I suppose. Because I don’t know how else two feet of insulated stranded wire and two molded plastic connectors is going to cause me “reproductive harm.”
We’ve allowed ourselves to become a nation of hyper-sensitized, safety-obsessed pansies. No wonder the nation is cowering at home, afraid to go out without a hazmat suit, afraid to shake hands or give a friend a hug.
There are worse things than getting sick, worse things even than dying. Things like patiently waiting for our pathetic, fearful masters to tell us when we’ll be allowed to host a family dinner, go to church, or re-open a hair salon, all so that we might delay for another few weeks the time when some people will get sick, are unworthy of us.
When we get through this, let’s start pushing back against the nanny state and its endless, relentless, ever-increasing obsession with safety.
Published in General
The Prop 65 warning is on every building. It’s impossible to know if it’s because they have bleach in the janitorial closet or they are storing enriched uranium in the pantry.
Plutonium pancakes. Mmm, mmm, good!
Back around 2003 or thereabouts I was planning an excursion over the 4th of July holiday. On the way out of church one of our friends at church wished me a safe trip. That was one too many times to hear that, and I asked, “Why does it have to be a safe trip? Why can’t anyone wish me an exciting trip, or an enjoyable one?”
Then I worried that I might have offended her, because she is a fastidious, meticulous person in the way she runs her own life and in some respects seems timid about taking risks. But she took it in good humor, and now she often will teasingly wish me an exciting trip.
May you live in interesting times.
In 1999, the day before I left on a trip to drive to Alaska, my brother called me and told me to “drive safe, but not too safe”.
Howzabout a UPW (Universal product Warning):
Life is dangerous. Something’s gonna kill you. Maybe it’ll be this.
I mostly solder electronics, and the Lead based stuff works better for that, although there are specific applications that require Silver based for either technical or legal reasons.
We ARE living in interesting times, unfortunately.
Prop 65 signs are everywhere in California and nobody pays any attention to them. They are on the gas pump, the grocery store, the fast food drive through, the crystal department at Macy’s, just all over. They have lost any meaning they may once have had.
It’s very common around here for people to say “Drive safe.” I usually let it pass, but sometimes I respond, “I refuse to drive safe. Because that would be grammatically incorrect. I will drive safely.” Some will smile and nod, others will have a look on their face like I just spoke in a Klingon. I should write a post some day one asking why the “ly” has been dropped from so many words by so many people.
I was a particularly uncool kid in high school (I know, I know, but just take my word for it, because it’s the truth), and there was a phrase bandied about by the other kids that still has a particularly insipid sound to me. They’d say “party hearty,” and I always converted the adjective into an adverb in my head. Even after that silent edit, I objected to the conscription of the noun into service as a verb.
For reasons which are perhaps obvious, I didn’t have my first beer until I was well into my twenties.
But that spoils the rhyme.
Artistic license goes only so far.
Henry, we’ve talked about this. You can filch a crayon to happily munch upon. But, no eating the utility trailer plugs.
What’s scary is that California thinks that it can convince its population that they can be coddled and swaddled beyond all risk.
What’s scarier is that this mindset seems to be bleeding out of California and to and thru the nation writ large.
What’s scariest
is that Henry sounds just like me.
I’ve always thought lawyers should be prohibited from elected office in all legislatures because lawyers making laws is a conflict of interest . . .
“If he’s got a license, get the number.” –Churchy la Femme
I’m not so sure about that, but I do feel strongly that the legal language is so convoluted on so many pieces of legislation as to make them almost unintelligible.
How about nobody–and not just lawyers–gets to invent made-up rules they can impose on others?
That sounds like a made-up rule you are inventing to be imposed on others.
That’s the big weakness of libertarianism. People love forcing other people to do things. Who am I to force them to not do what they love?
“No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.” — William Howard Taft