{"id":16666,"date":"2017-03-16T22:40:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-17T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=16666"},"modified":"2017-03-17T07:34:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-17T13:34:00","slug":"all-hail-the-28th-amendment-at-last-freedom-for-drivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/03\/all-hail-the-28th-amendment-at-last-freedom-for-drivers\/","title":{"rendered":"All hail the 28th Amendment: At last, freedom for drivers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Car\"<\/a>

Why should someone who drives a car this beautiful have to obey a so-called speed limit? Why should anybody?<\/p><\/div>\n

(Caution. Contains satire. Best if taken with food for thought.)<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1908, the first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line. More than a century later the motor car has been granted the same constitutional guarantees that other technological innovations (cf. handguns) have always enjoyed.<\/p>\n

\"BL\"<\/a>

Bruce Lohof<\/p><\/div>\n

The 28th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States\u2014popularly known as the \u201cEasyRider\u201d Amendment\u2014was ratified earlier this week by Montana, which had waited for pride of place by being the final state required. The amendment says, simply but stridently:<\/p>\n

\u201cMobility being necessary to the wellbeing of a free state, the right of the people to keep and operate motor vehicles shall not be infringed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking via smart phone from his car in Whitefish, Paul Trigger, president of the National Road Association (NRA), effused that the 28th Amendment was a \u201cgreen light\u201d for motorists throughout the nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith EasyRider finally in place,\u201d Trigger said, \u201ca caravan of regulations and statutes\u201d that have long frustrated the American motoring public will \u201cbe driven into permanent detour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for details, the NRA president said that seatbelt laws and other onerous, so-called \u201csafety\u201d regulations would be the first to go. The checklist of nuisances is endless, Trigger noted. \u201cNot only seatbelts, of course, but high-spec baby seats for infants and airbags for everyone and roll bars for convertibles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Citing the latter (although he lives in the northwestern part of Montana he often drives a convertible), Trigger repeated a mantra beloved by \u201cEasyRider\u201d proponents:<\/p>\n

Cars don\u2019t roll over people; people roll over cars.<\/p>\n

With the 28th Amendment in place, he said, vehicles free of these nanny-state nuisances will soon be rolling off the assembly lines. Meanwhile, Montana\u2019s freedom-loving motorists could simply ignore them.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>\u201cThe next thing to go\u201d\u2014no pun intended, Trigger said with a chuckle\u2014\u201cis speed limits.\u201d Trigger remembers his father\u2014also a car-rights proponent\u2014telling him how in the 1970s President Jimmy Carter had imposed a nationwide speed limit of 55 mph. Even today, he noted, speed limits can drop from 80 to 35 mph in the blink of an eye. And this in Montana, a state whose motorists have always understood that a reasonable and prudent speed is, well, \u201creasonable and prudent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre gun owners limited to the purchase of small-bore weapons?\u201d Trigger asked. \u201cOf course not,\u201d he answered, referring to an earlier constitutional amendment. \u201cEasyRider\u201d simply acknowledges that motorists, too, have rights. The right to \u201creasonable and prudent\u201d driving, he repeated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next thing to stop,\u201d\u2014again, no pun intended\u2014”is government-issued driver licenses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trigger ridiculed the \u201cmonopoly that has allowed state governments to distinguish between responsible motorists and unsafe drivers. Far better to leave these distinctions in citizens\u2019 hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

He noted that his organization was already at the forefront of coordinating citizen-centered driver training.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook at our website,\u201d he suggested. We did. It read: \u201cThe NRA is recognized nationally as the gold standard for safe driver training, developing millions of safe, ethical, responsible motorists and instructors. Whether you\u2019re a new automobile owner in search of training, or an experienced motorist looking to support others, the NRA has a course for you.”<\/p>\n

Who is a safe driver? Trigger\u2019s response was immediate: \u201cThe EasyRider Amendment allows Americans\u2014not state governments\u2014to decide for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then Trigger aimed at another of EasyRider\u2019s principal targets, the vehicle identification number, or VIN. A VIN is indelibly stamped into the engine of your vehicle. It is also registered in a database of owned vehicles. Which is to say a database of vehicle owners. Which is to say a database of American citizens.<\/p>\n

This database is huge. It\u2019s bigger than the one that Russian hackers have stolen from Yahoo. It\u2019s bigger than the files that Google keeps on Americans. (Well, maybe not THAT big.) Trigger wanted us to \u201cimagine this database falling into the wrong hands,\u201d namely, Russia. Pop-up ads targeted at consumers on the basis of car ownership patterns would be only the beginning.<\/p>\n

VIN proponents, Trigger noted, often argue that the database is a crime fighter, making grand theft auto more difficult, making bad guys easier to find. He ridiculed the idea, though. Better to simply \u201clock your car and take your keys,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He also pointed out that the automobile has been alone among commonplace technological innovations subject to registration.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we compelled to register our radios and TVs,\u201d he asked. \u201cIn socialist Europe, maybe. In the U.S. of A., never. Kitchen appliances? Don\u2019t be silly. Handguns? Unconstitutional. And now, with the 28th Amendment in place, the VIN database is history.”<\/p>\n

When Trigger reached his garage in Whitefish he said that he had enjoyed the chance to \u201cwhoop it up for the 28th Amendment\u201d but that it was time to park. We posed one final question. In 1919 the 18th Amendment introduced Prohibition in the United States; in 1933 the 21st Amendment repealed the 19th. Would Trigger relinquish his EasyRider rights if a future Amendment were to reverse the 28th?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll give you my steering wheel when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

Interesting food for thought.<\/p>\n

Bruce A. Lohof is a native of Montana. A former professor and a retired diplomat, he lives in Vienna and in Red Lodge.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Caution. Contains satire. Best if taken with food for thought.) In 1908, the first Model T Ford rolled off the assembly line. More than a century later the motor car has been granted the same constitutional guarantees that other technological innovations (cf. handguns) have always enjoyed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":16667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,3864],"tags":[5636,123,5637],"class_list":["post-16666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diversions","category-opinion","tag-28th-amendment","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-vin","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16672,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16666\/revisions\/16672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}