Ever wonder why most speed limits in this country correlate with the average travel speed of most of the traffic on the road? Isn't that odd? Shouldn't a speed limit be the highest speed that it's reasonably safe to drive - not merely the highest legally permissible speed?
How about the typical American Interstate highway? Isn't the idea that 65 or 70 mph is the fastest "reasonably safe" speed an absurdity on its face?
Here is a fact: Our Interstates were designed for safe, average speeds in the 70-75 mph range almost 60 years ago by engineers who assumed 1950s-era car technology: bias-belted whitewalls, drum brakes all around, no modern electronics (ABS, traction/stability control) and suspensions/general handling ability not even close to the level of the meanest modern econo-box.
Given the advances of the past 60 years, surely a reasonable limit would be closer to 90 mph - a mere 20 mph faster than what was "designed in" when the Interstates were first conceived in the Eisenhower era... ?
And yet, the limit, today, is roughly what it was 50 years ago. It's as if we still judged the time it takes to boil a cup of water by the time it took to do it on the stovetop five decades ago rather than in a microwave oven, today.
100 years of dumbed-down public education have crippled the average person's ability to apply concepts to particulars (and the reverse). Ask the average American if he thinks it made sense to criminalize the consumption of alcohol - which virtually everyone partakes of to some degree and which everyone knows is neither unsafe nor otherwise pernicious in reasonable doses - and he will probably say, of course not. He knows that Prohibition was ridiculous - that the law was routinely flouted because almost everyone except a few rabid Baptist types understood it was ridiculous and so felt no moral obligation to obey.
Well, current "speeding" laws are fundamentally no different. Are they? On nearly every road, at virtually any given moment, the majority of drivers are wildly ignoring the law - because the law is ridiculous and in our hearts and guts we feel no moral obligation to obey. And yet, we all dutifully pretend to believe otherwise when a cop pulls us over. I wasn't paying attention, officer. I didn't realize I was going so fast.
* Denial of publicly funded (read: funded by us - American citizens - through higher insurance co-pays, costs, taxes, etc.) health care to illegal aliens. No person who comes here in violation of our laws - and who therefore has no right to be here - has any "right" to health care funded and financed by force against American taxpayers.
* Forcible restitution of health care costs imposed by criminals - for example, the typical six-figure surgical and post-operative care costs incurred as a result of a scumbag violent criminal shooting another scumbag violent criminal. If they cannot pay, they must be required to work off their debt by doing useful public works, such as manual labor. No criminal should be entitled to "free" (that is, paid for by us) medical treatment needed as a result of having committed a crime.
* Mandatory sterilization (vasectomy/tubal ligation) for anyone who produces a second child they cannot afford to provide health care for. There may be a right to breed - but no one has a right to breed irresponsibly, repeatedly - and impose massive societal costs on people who do behave responsibly.
These three steps would probably "solve" the "health care crisis" at a stroke - and without socialized medicine, which will put us all - responsible and irresponsible alike - at the mercy and under the thumb of DMV-like bureaucrats whose sole concern will be going by whatever idiotic "rules" the eggheads in the bureaucracy come u ...
