Flagrant Acts of Civil Obedience
In most areas of the country, the highway speed limit is 55 miles per hour. In most areas of the country few people actually follow that speed limit. What would happen if a small group of people decided to obey the law? I present for your viewing pleasure: A Meditation on the Speed Limit. Several Atlanta area college students decided to drive -- four abreast -- down a busy highway, at exactly 55 miles per hour. The results are somewhat frightening.
Law and order Republicans like to hammer home the importance of obeying the law. I think this video hammers home the importance of having good laws. After all, what's the point of having a speed limit if no one obeys it? What's the point of obeying the law if that obedience puts you at risk?
It's no good saying "That's the law! You have to obey it!". The simple fact of the matter is that the speed limit is not a physical law (like gravity) or a moral law (like "Thou shalt not muder"). It is a man-made civil law. It can be changed at any time and the actual content of the law doesn't matter. What does matter is that the law is one that people can respect and obey. Few people either respect or obey current speed limit laws.
Why leave a law on the books that only serves to make us contemptuous of that law and, by extension, contemptuous of all laws?
This entry was not tagged.