Buckle Up? Up Yours!

Anyone who thinks that resisting the anti-smoking movement is a losing battle can get inspiration from the few plucky souls who are fighting mandatory seat belt laws. One such pamphleteer calls my attention to three new Web sites devoted to the topic: www.seatbeltchoice.com, www.clickitstickit.com, and www.sukkahs.com/seatbelt. (The last, intriguingly, is a subdivision of a site that sells prefabricated sukkahs, the huts that observant Jews build during the harvest festival of Sukkot.) This seems to be a genuinely grassroots effort by people who recognize the importance of the principle involved. Scoff if you must, but "If we can make people wear seat belts…" is the opening line of many a paternalistic syllogism.