Port 80

Or, How to Write a Post Which Criticizes Two of the Most Powerful Special Interest Groups in Existence.

We have, without a doubt, all heard about the driver in California who has killed ten (at last count) people at a farmers market. Some of the data becoming available on this driver is extremely interesting, such as the fact that he hit a retaining wall outside a relative’s birthday party ten years ago and has been denting his car regularly ever since. The result of this, after the immediate tragedy is dealt with, is sure to be a cry for easier review and revocation of drivers licenses when there is suspicion that a currently licensed driver cannot safely control a vehicle. Any proposed measure will not mention any group in particular, but those among the elderly who can no longer drive safely will be one of the main, if unspoken, targets of this change.

This will, of course, probably go over like a lead balloon with the AARP. In no particular order, I expect to see cries of ageism, videos of mournful grandmothers who are afraid that they won’t be able to drive to see their grandchildren, videos of grandfathers who are afraid that they won’t be able to drive to buy food or medicine, and at least one accusation that the proponents of the change are trying to kill or starve seniors. What the AARP will not mention is the fact that driving is a privilege, not a right; the fact that any driver takes the lives of all those on the road into his or her hands; and that by taking upon itself the task of licensing drivers, the state has accepted some responsibility to ensure that those drivers licensed by the state are capable of controlling a motor vehicle safely. These are the same basic tactics that have led Congress to enact a prescription drug plan that will have the federal government paying Bill Gates when he reaches retirement age. They work, and we will see them trotted out again.

Why do I suspect that this will happen? This sort of approach fits the pattern of behaviour of the AARP — gross overreaction to any appearance of threat to the AARP’s constituency, even when the good of society at large may suffer as a result of their overreaction. However, it’s not just the AARP that is guilty of this. Here in Dayton, the NAACP is up in arms over a Dayton Daily News article that noted that the chairwoman of the RTA had spent upwards of 250 days on taxpayer-funded travel over the last several years. The Dayton Daily News article was remarkably generous considering the nature of the evidence — one of the chairwoman’s trips was to Brazil, ostensibly for the purpose of examining local public transportation systems. Combine that with news of a planned $500,000 RTA boardroom, and I smell the sweet scent of waste, fraud, and abuse. The NAACP, however, ignored all this, noted that the chairwoman was black, and declared that the article was the result of racial bias. To their credit, they did suggest a way to avoid bias - simply audit nearly every major public organization in the city, rather than narrowly focusing on those organizations which happen to appear massively corrupt. How efficient.

Why do some organizations exhibit this virulent zeal? My initial suspicion is based on the nature of these organizations - both the AARP and the NAACP (not to mention the NEA) are designed to “defend” groups of people, rather than promoting particular issues. Declaring the welfare of a particular group of people as one’s paramount interest is always a dangerous thing, as the natural consequence of that action is an indifference to the welfare of other groups of people. To some degree, this philosophy can be extended beyond groups of people — some of the more extreme environmentalist groups have taken a distinct “Earth First (Humanity Second)” approach to the issues they address.

However, this explanation appears to be missing some details. All human beings have a paramount interest of some sort. Are there certain paramount interests – the welfare of humanity, for example – that are acceptable? Alternately, is it possible that not all human beings have a single overriding interest that will trump all others? Could the difference simply be one of degree of devotion to an issue rather than the nature of an issue? In other words, is it possible to retain all the principles and values of an organization such as the AARP while introducing a degree of reasonability into the pursuit of the goals dictated by those values? I’m still working this one over myself – I may post more on this topic later if I come up with anything interesting. In the meanwhile, I am open to suggestions if anyone has any insights on the matter that they would like to throw out. (Don’t worry about the “polish” of the idea or any other such issues — I will not post or paraphrase anything sent without getting explicit permission.)