It’s been nearly 13 months since Alex KP, Dave Varney, Alexis Grant, Rio Samsie, and I went to this “Town Hall” meeting at Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School. The subject was a favorite of those with political power: teen driving. Although, I suppose anything related to teens is a favorite of politicians: just take more rights away from them in the name of protection, and they’ll sweep in the votes of mindless, worried parents. But, that’s a bit beside the point… or is it? Come to think of it, isn’t that the very problem? That we allow ridiculous fallacious arguments from those who are supposed to be in charge to sway the opinions of the general public? While I could go just about any direction with this, let’s stick to this town hall meeting itself.

One “argument” they used quite a bit was the hurt feelings of the parents whose children had recently died in car accidents. Apparently, if so many more driving restrictions were in place, their children would still be alive and they wouldn’t be grieving so much. Also, these restrictions would keep more “children” from dying behind the wheel.

A few things are wrong with that. While I genuinely feel sorry for these parents for losing their sons/daughters, I hardly see how that applies to the matter at hand. Wouldn’t it be just as painful if their daughter was killed in a car accident when she was 30 rather than 16? Wouldn’t it be just as awful if she had died riding in a car with an adult, probably one of the parents themselves? “What if” arguments are fun but they make no sense. I mean, what if these age restrictions were in place? Would she still have died? Well, you can’t know that, because it’s contrary to what actually happened. You can’t invent a false hypothetical past scenario, whip up some favorable conclusion from it, and seriously expect to pass it off as a sound case. If these age restrictions were in place, I’d bet their daughter would still be alive and that frogs would begin raining from the sky and all trees would magically turn into candy canes. Frogs and candy canes sound weird? Of course they do. So does saying their daughter would still be alive under some false hypothetical condition when, in reality, she’s dead and never coming back.
(more…)

Comments(1)