If there is one thing liberals hate more than guns, it’s automobiles, and not because of the climate; our vehicles are scorned by the Left because they free the individual to go anywhere he or she chooses.
In a word, privately owned cars and trucks equal F-R-E-E-D-O-M.
That’s why, in the same spirit as Charlton Heston once warned the gun grabbers, I now notify today’s successors to what Car & Driver‘s Brock Yates famously called the Anti-Destination League that they will have to pry my cold, dead hands off the steering wheel before they get me out of my pickup.
If you imagine that I am exaggerating things, it’s not like they haven’t been trying to kill cars for a long time. Consider, for example, whether all those environmental regulations with which liberals have saddled private autos in recent decades were merely to protect the air and water.
Better think again because, one way or the other, the ultimate aim of liberal regulation is always to bring some realm of private action under state control, especially when doing so enhances bureaucratic status, wealth and power.
And what better way to control a population than to force them all out of their private cars and trucks that take them where and when they choose, and into government-owned transportation modules — trains, buses, cabs, bicycles, etc. — that run on schedules created by bureaucrats.
Related: Build Back Bummer: Biden’s Spending Spree Includes a Kill Switch for Your Car
As in so many other ways, the Brits are further down the long road to serfdom than we are here in the states. The Conservative Party may rule Britain these days, but Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s parliamentary under secretary of transportation, Trudy Harrison, reportedly declared recently that it is time to abandon “20th-century thinking centered around private vehicle ownership and [move] towards greater flexibility, with personal choice and low carbon shared transport.”
Motorious’ Steven Symes notes that:
“Harrison went on to praise not only public transportation but also bike share services, e-scooters, and ride sharing platforms. All of these are supposed to tune down how much carbon the UK is emitting into the atmosphere. As with all choices, this comes at a cost, particularly for those living in rural areas.
“What’s more, 300 residents in Coventry recently expressed interest in giving up their personal cars. The tradeoff from the government reportedly would be a mobility credit worth up to £3,000. This mobility credit program has been going since March of this year, with 73 cars turned in and crushed. No, this isn’t a joke, but I wish it were.”
Symes points us to worrisome developments here in America that herald more on the way:
“If you think this plan is limited to just the UK, you haven’t been paying attention. There have been other efforts to make private vehicle ownership a thing of the past, including a new measure in Southern California. The 2021 Regional Transportation Plan passed recently by the San Diego Association of Government’s board of directors is a $160 billion initiative just for the metropolitan area to boost public transportation.”
But wait, there’s more you should know here:
“That’s a hefty price tag [$160 billion] for such a small area, so one of the ways officials have been planning to fund it is by levying a per-mile driving tax against citizens. That was such an unpopular move it was shelved, for now.
“But I have a funny feeling that driving tax is going to be revisited. Critics say that and other fines, fees, etc. are designed to nuke personal vehicle ownership for all but the wealthy. Expect to see similar measures in other cities and maybe entire states/territories in North America and beyond in the near future.”
Now, guess what? As I reported for The Epoch Times in August, President Joe Biden has tasked his secretary of transportation, the former of Mayor South Bend, Ind., to start the wheels rolling on a national tax-by-the-mile-driven system, run by — who else? — the federal government:
“Buried in the ‘Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’ in the U.S. Senate is approval for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to test a new federal tax on every mile driven by individual Americans. The bill directs Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to establish a pilot program to demonstrate a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee designed ‘to restore and maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund.'”
Biden and Buttigieg can defend this obscure initiative as a way of coming up with new money to maintain roads and bridges, but let’s not kid ourselves by thinking that’s all that’s involved here.
Statist liberals don’t want you able to defend yourself, your loved ones or your property with firearms; they can’t stand America’s open roads that let us go when and where we please; you better not let them catch you praying in public; keep your mouth shut, you “domestic terrorist parent,” about what they’re teaching your kids in “school”; and forget about telling them where they can put that COVID jab they insist you and your kids submit to, over and over.
Can you imagine, there was actually a time not that long ago when “liberal” could logically and justifiably be used in the same sentence with “individual liberty”?
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