Canadian collectivist lemmings (Part II)

This post was about the widespread approval of Ontario Superior Court Judge James Blacklock’s decision to reject a Sikh’s attempt to seek an exemption from the Ontario mandatory motorcylce helmet law. Many if not most felt that cost savings to the healthcare system justified the law. Very few argued against it based on the right of adult citizens’ to make their own decisions. The National Post takes up the issue in today’s editorial Liberty - hostage to medicare:

Few stepped forward to defend the idea that an adult in a free society should be able to wear what he wants and take the risks he wants where only his own body is concerned.

Taken to its logical limits, the Blacklock Principle is a licence for totalitarianism of a novel form: where unlimited governments of the past controlled behaviour on the grounds of class warfare or racial hygiene, the one being constructed here takes health, as measured by cost-avoidance, as the measure of all conduct.

And if you are a so-called liberal, and you consider yourself satisfied that Mr. Badesha has lost nothing that society is obliged to regard as important, you had better be sure you can win the same argument when it comes to the goring of your own prized oxen..... Do you want a full risk accounting made of your next weekend ski trip to Whistler?

The problem is, almost no one is willing to stand up for his neighbour's. And that suggests that something has gone badly awry in our society.

Couldn’t agree more.