risk has always been the travelling companion of progress – and its our best friend, not our enemy. its the sanity check for every move we make and the framework upon which we build. remove the framework and everything falls down – or never gets built. since when was doing nothing a viable option?
there are two ways to avoid making mistakes. the first is to manage them to be as small as possible, the other is to not do anything at all. everything worthwhile in life is built on the risk of failure and the stumbles part and parcel of following the road less travelled. the end result being far nearer to perfection than trying to avoid failure at all costs. the truest statement of this came from John F Kennedy justifying the US space programme.
We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too.
John F Kennedy, 35th President of the United States
OK, so what has a speed limit got to do with the journey across space?
well, the question is partially answered within itself. the US space programme stands as a metaphor for where we want to go and what we want to achieve. the real question we should be asking is “who would want to prevent us going anywhere and consequently, achieve less?”
the answer of course in this case is the monkey on our back, the Big State. the bigger the state, the more it interferes in our personal decisions (and therefore our freedoms). the less power we, the people, gain and the less resistance we have to reject that insidious intellectual encroachment and ultimate imprisonment.
20MPH limits and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are co-conspirators and the enabling weapons of choice for Big State’s relentlessly tightening grip on us and the cage they want to build around us all.
20MPH – the real sign of the times
the 20 is Plenty campaign nobly argue that they want to save lives. and yes, the less you do, the less you risk is true. think about the lives that would have been saved if we never travelled anywhere. no car, bus or truck accidents, no sinking ships, no plane crashes. but the price we pay for our progress and the benefits that define us has been and always will be accompanied by the risks we take along that journey.
a life not lived to the full is no life at all. and that, my fellow companions through space and time, is what we must fight to avoid – and is the true, wicked agenda of the Big State.
freedom was never given to us, it was fought for. it cannot be taken away unless we offer it up by accepting restrictions like 20mph limits placed upon us under the pretext that the state knows best.