Collectively, Canadians are collectivist lemmings

God save us from all the collectivist, buttinsky, nosy-parker, safety and health Nazis out there. The way things are going only an act of God will reverse the remorseless slide down the slippery slope. The indoctrination of the masses by socialist subversives must be nearly complete. This is borne out by the reaction to the recent decision by an Ontario judge upholding province’s helmet law in a case involving a Sikh. These reader comments were typical:

Helmet laws were put in place not only to protect riders, but perhaps more importantly, to protect the rest of us (society) from incurring the ever growing financial costs of maintaining our health care system. The serious injuries, frequently including head tramau, which invariably results from motorcycle accidents are a burden society should not have to carry...thus the helmet laws. This is an attempt to use religious freedoms to pervert the state's rightful role in assuring our collective safety. We need to balance respect for religion and ethnic differences against the collective good, and Justice Blacklock has done this. Bravo!

You want to ride a bike, you were [sic] a helmet, case closed. It's a privillege not a right, just like a license.

Wow! Nice to see everyone in agreement. I add my voice to others. The law is the law. If he were granted an exemption and had an accident, do you think he'd accept to pay his own medical bills or other related costs?!

It was almost inevitable - a nanny judge brought down a nanny decision to uphold a nanny law; and, though a rare few commenters saw the situation as another illustration of overbearing nanny statism, the vast majority were happy to have the state enforcing ‘what’s good for them’. They’re more than happy to have their personal behaviour dictated. I guess Jonah Goldberg had it right in his book "Liberal Fascism’ when he said "We’re all fascists now".

Medicare, as usual, is invoked to justify the intrusion. After all, society, must pay the medical bills if some thoughtless, risk-taking idiot rides without a helmet and suffers a head injury. Absolutely true. But rather than a good argument for a nanny-statist helmet law this is really one more strike against socialized medicine which is being invoked more and more frequently to justify state intrusion into what should be citizens’ free personal choices. Everything from seat belts to smoking, drinking and eating habits are considered legitimate areas for state control - because it’s for our collective good and society pays the bills. This is all good argument for abolishing medicare.

‘Society’ should butt out, mind its own goddam business and let free, adult citizens freely decide if they want to take risks or to be stupidly foolish and take the consequences. And if we ever needed a new law it would be a law abolishing socialized medicine.