It’s over. The nanny state is through the looking glass in St. Louis County. To take a cue from Neil Young:
Politicians and policemen coming. The nanny state has its official new dawn. This August I saw the traffic stops. Seat-belt checkpoints in Pine Lawn.
Gotta just face and accept it. Red-light tickets being sent in the mail. Should have used cameras long ago.
Speed cameras placed on the Inner Belt. Seat-belt traffic stops in the towns. You’re under surveillance, didn’t you know?
In most of Missouri, the police are not authorized to use a seat-belt violation as the primary reason for pulling you over. The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), should stick to doing what they do well — and it does a number of things well. That doesn’t include using tax dollars as part of an argument to limit our freedom. However, St. Louis County has had the audacity wisdom to enact its own primary seat-belt law, along with bike helmet laws and any other excuse they can find to protect us from ourselves.
So, that is the state of liberty in St. Louis County. We can get stuck in a seat-belt checkpoint any time the police in some tiny municipality feel the need.
(Just to be clear, attempting to run over a policeman is not an appropriate form of civil disobedience, and the shooting itself appears to be entirely justified.)
