Don't You Hate Regulations? Or Do You? Or Are You Still Trying to Decide?

It's become practically fashionable these days to rail against regulations.  Today, on my homepage and on the radio, I heard about two crusades against them.

The first one, from my homepage, was against the pressure to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.  Are these people even more pervasive "antivaxxers?"  Maybe.  The article didn't say.  It did, however, say that "the opposition is rooted in a mix of religious faith and a longstanding wariness of mainstream science, and it is fueled by a broader cultural distrust of institutions and gravitation to online conspiracy theories."  The article began with pictures of protestors with signs seeming to equate vaccination with tyranny.  Actually, the title of the article, which brought in another element, was "White Evangelical Resistance is Obstacle in Vaccination Effort."  Oy.  "White evangelicals" think the coronavirus vaccine is an affront to their religious (or racist?) prerogatives?  "Somebody," as Matt Damon's character in "Dogma" said, "needs to take a nap."

Among people quoted in this article was Lauri Armstrong, "a bible-believing nutritionist outside of Dallas."  Ms Armstrong claimed to believe that "God designed the body to heal itself, if given the right nutrients [oh, so in addition to believing there's such a thing as 'god,' it would also be a good idea if people hired Ms Armstrong]" and "it would be God's will if [Ms Armstrong] is here, or if [she is] not here."

The article went on, and on and on, but you get the point.

The second treatment of this problem came from a radio report about various municipalities, and Pinecrest happened to be featured.  The issue this time was zoning, and whether local municipal governments should have the power to regulate what kinds of businesses and activities exist in any given neighborhood or section of a municipality.  This theme wasn't religious, but the thrust was the same: no one should tell anyone else what to do, with their bodies (oops) or with their properties.

And you know... The glaring fact of the matter is that it happens to be one sector of society vastly more than any other that articulates these kinds of sentiments.  It just does.  I'll call them what they call themselves: conservatives.  And they have a whole laundry list of crusades in their effort to conserve whatever it is they supposedly want to conserve.

Setting aside the huge oops, in terms of their crusade to prevent other people from telling them what to do with their bodies, they settle in a few other recurring places.  And some of these places contain the same very creepy hypocrisies as do the ones just alluded to.  For example, they claim to love law and order.  They don't like murderous marauding.  But at the same time, they love guns in civilian hands.  I mean, come on...  It doesn't take a rocket scientist, as they say...

And, you know, the whole bit about fiscal responsibility...  There's no one as fiscally irresponsible as American Reps/cons.  They spend what they don't have, they refuse to raise the money they want to spend, and they're notorious in the past 40 years for giving this country increasing and ultimately massive deficits.  (I know what you're thinking: what about Obama?  Obama's problem, and mistake, and, in my opinion, miscalculation, was that he didn't raise taxes as his predecessor should have.  The GWB administration is the first government in the history of civilization that went to war, and lowered taxes.  Nobody does that.  It can't be done.  You'll create a...deficit.  And Obama should have corrected that.)

But I want to come back to this fixation they sometimes have on following rules.  (That's what they call it when they're willing to do it.  Or at least when they're willing to demand other people do it.)  This turns out to be one of their many dilemmas, or hypocrisies.  They insist that rules be followed, but they rail against the setting of rules.

Take those "white evangelical" protestors.  It wouldn't be hard to imagine, or assume, that they're part of the Rep/con movement, whatever it's about.  So, generally, when it doesn't apply to them, they favor following rules.  The question is, when they're out driving, and it's quiet, with very little traffic, and they encounter a STOP sign, or a red light, and they can clearly see no one is coming, do they stop?  And if they're distracted, and don't notice the sign or the light, or don't come to that "complete stop" that's required, and they see the cruiser with the flashing lights, and maybe a quick suggestion of a siren, behind them, do they pull over?  Do they give the person whose "blue life matters" -- the person who demands "license and registration" -- as much lip and resistance as they do to the government that doesn't want them to get sick and die, or make someone else sick and dead, when someone else wants to see their proof of vaccination?  It would be interesting to ask them.