Ex Post Fatwa’ing

Guest Post by Eric Peters

One way to avoid having Big Brother ride shotgun is to buy a ride built before Big Brother came with the car – or the truck.

(Italics for a reason; bear with.)

It has been legal – since the dawn of the automobile age – to buy a vehicle made before the advent of air bags, back-up cameras, driver “assistance” technology – and all the rest of it – and drive it on public roads.

The roads the public paid for.

Colorado just made it illegal – in principle.

And the precedent this establishes could become the practice whereby we’re forced out of older vehicles that aren’t “compliant” with the latest sssssssssssaaaaaaafety and emissions regs – including the new “emissions” regs that portray carbon dioxide (which has nothing to do with air quality) as an exhaust “emission” . . . in order to anathematize all internal combustion engines.

In order to force us all into “clean” electric cars – which are “clean” to the same degree that the girls at the Bunny Ranch are pristine.

The principle comes in the form of a law recently passed by the Colorado state legislature – SB19-05 – which originally was meant to make it legal for Colorado residents to register, plate and drive older military vehicles (e.g., surplus Humvees, cargo trucks, Jeeps and so on) on public roads, just like any other car. But the bill was amended after it was introduced using a procedure called “strike and replace” – and the version that was passed into law restricts such vehicles to off-road use only.

Effectively rendering them useless to their owners.

The law’s primary sponsor was a Republican – State Senator Larry Crowder. 

It is unclear whether the measure applies only to vehicles purchased after the bill became law – with vehicles tagged and plated prior to the law’s passage “grandfathered” into continued on-road legality.

That has been the general practice for generations, not just in Colorado but nationally. It is why it’s still legal – for now – to drive a 1970  car that doesn’t have all the equipment mandated since 1970 and thereby avoid all that crap.

But that could change – and this legislation is the first confirmed and officialized shot across the bow.

There is a provision that appears to be some kind of exemption; the law states that:

“These changes do not apply to military vehicles that are valued for historical purposes.”

Italics added.

It is unclear – because the law’s text provides no definition – as to what, exactly, constitutes a vehicle that is “valued” for “historic” purposes. Nor who gets to decide what that means.

What’s clear is that it will be the government’s whim that determines which vehicles are “valued.”

This is the equivalent to the practice, in the old Soviet Union, of granting dachas (i.e., private homes rather than communal apartments) and other perks to “valuable” citizens . . . so long as the government considered them “valuable,” of course.

Thus, even the people allowed to continue driving their “historic” vehicles on public roads for now do so with the not-so-thinly-veiled understanding that the privilege is revocable at any time.

This serves the complementary purpose of making anyone considering the purchase of a surplus Humvee or deuce-and-a-half to think twice before they actually do purchase it, since it’s risky to buy a vehicle the government may at any time decree can no longer leave the driveway (legally) after you buy it.

But the most dangerous aspect is the precedent this sets – which could certainly be interpreted to apply to all vehicles not “compliant” with federal ssssaaaaaaaaaaaaafety and emissions fatwas.

Not just surplus military vehicles.

If they can be restricted to off-road-use only because they aren’t “compliant” with the foregoing than so – in principle – can any older vehicle.

This is critically important to understand because this is how the law works. Case law, as the lawyers style it. What that means is the laws on the books, which create the precedents for deciding the legality of future laws.

The legal reason we are required to submit to a groping by a government goon in order to travel by airplane today is that the precedent for treating people as presumptive “terrorists” was established decades earlier when it became legal to treat every driver who happened to be traveling a given road as a presumptive “drunk” driver obliged to prove to the satisfaction of a government goon they were not “drunk” – without any obligation on the part of the government to establish grounds for suspecting them of being “drunk.”

Similarly, we are now required to buy health insurance on the basis of the case law precedent set by the legal obligation to buy car insurance.

One thing inevitably leads to another.

Or rather, one thing the government does inevitably leads to more government.

And the government will have to do something about all those older vehicles which people are still free to buy – and drive – in order to avoid having to buy a new vehicle with all the very latest government-mandated equipment.

And to avoid having to buy electric cars with even more equipment – and far less ability.

The pressure to “do something” is already nascent. Electric car sales are wilting (Tesla deliveries have plummeted) . . .   the tiny “market” for them being saturated and with the subsidies declining, fewer are buying.

People are also buying fewer new cars, too.

The reasons are economic, functional – and personal. Some simply can’t afford a new car anymore. All the fatwa’ing has driven the price of a family sedan to half or more the average family’s annual income – not counting all the peripheral taxes and insurance costs piled on.

Others don’t want one – because they dislike being nagged and pre-empted by the technology being pushed on them. Most new cars come standard with multiple “assists,” such as Lane Keep Assist and Automated Brake Assist, Parking Assist as well as noxious “features” such as Automated Stop/Start (ASS) facial recognition tech and in-car microphones, even (i.e., Google Alexa).

Despite there being little market demand for these things. The object seems to be to get people used to these things – whether they like it or not.

Cohorts – legions – of electric cars are also on their way, too – despite the wilting demand, because their manufacture has been forced by fatwas.

But no fatwas are yet in force requiring their purchase.

Nor the purchase of a new non-electric car with driver “assistance” technology, ASS – or airbags . . .

This is a “problem,” for those determined to nudge us into cars that do have all of that – and EVs that have even more (or rather, less – for more). And that is a “problem” that can best be addressed by fatwa’ing prohibitions on the on-road use of alternatives to them

That’s just what Colorado has just fatwa’d – in principle.

And by doing it, set the precedent for more of the same, outside of Colorado.

Curiously – but not surprisingly – there are no restrictions on government use of surplus military vehicles – including armored MRAPS and such – the better to Hut! Hut! Hut! us with, including those of us who “cling” to our surplus military vehicles.

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