Western Standard - Cory says the war on personal autos is a war on individual rights

Henry Ford's Model T was one of the most important developments in American history. It revolutionized the way people lived and worked, and allowed them to travel far and wide without any government interference. It was a game changer in the 19th century, and it's no wonder the World Economic Forum and other authoritarianists want to bring personal auto use to an end.

00:00:00.000 You know, with the advent of the personal affordable automobile, it was one of the greatest

00:00:03.320 developments for individual freedoms in modern history. It's little wonder that the World Economic

00:00:08.600 Forum and other authoritarians want to bring personal auto use to an end. Going back, Henry

00:00:13.760 Ford might not have been a friend of labor unions, but when he released the Model T, he empowered

00:00:17.680 individuals and workers more in a year than unions had managed to do in decades. Ford gave citizens

00:00:23.660 the gift of unfettered affordable transportation free of any state controls. It can't be

00:00:29.720 understated how important this development was. Families with personal automobiles now

00:00:34.080 had the mobility range to comparison shop for everything, from jobs to consumer products

00:00:39.520 to health care. I mean, prior to the ability to own individual cars, citizens were dependent

00:00:43.600 upon public transit, such as trains or streetcars, if they were locally available, or horse and

00:00:48.180 buggy. Only the rich could afford the novelty of a personal vehicle. That all changed. People

00:00:52.600 were essentially captives of their local jurisdictions before the Model T came out. Many company towns

00:00:57.640 had just a single employer owned everything from the local grocery store to housing. Once

00:01:01.600 a family owned a car, they had the ability to travel elsewhere. Local business owners

00:01:05.780 and politicians were forced to recognize the reality that people could vote with their feet

00:01:09.160 or their wheels in this case, and leave if they weren't being treated right. New and creative

00:01:14.540 enterprises came about. The most early form of Amazon is the traveling salesman could travel

00:01:19.500 town to town and sell innovative new consumer products to spawn more competition and help

00:01:24.240 the cost of goods come down for people in general. Families, of course, could then take road trips

00:01:28.700 and vacations that the prior generation never could have dreamed of. Motels and tourist attractions

00:01:33.120 developed and spread across North America to serve the demand. Most importantly of all,

00:01:37.620 it was totally uncontrolled. People could get in the car and drive wherever they pleased. They were

00:01:41.700 only limited by their own fuel budget and time. Our modern authoritarianists recognize that citizens

00:01:48.100 with free mobility are difficult to control. And they're using climate change, of course,

00:01:51.560 as their reason to crack down on that free movement. The WF has been putting out articles

00:01:55.420 critical of car ownership for years. Adherence to the WF ideology have been helping their agenda

00:02:00.380 along at every level of government. Municipalities are removing parking and using traffic calming

00:02:05.420 measures in order to make driving less convenient. Zoning is being used to discourage new developments

00:02:09.860 that allow parking. Bike lanes are being created on top of busy roadways, whether there's a realistic

00:02:14.500 demand for bike lanes or not. Federal and provincial governments are taxing fuel and large vehicles

00:02:19.200 to drive the cost up. They're also bullying auto manufacturers into giving up on building

00:02:24.260 combustion vehicles and making them retool for electrical vehicles. Subsidies are a part of

00:02:28.860 this as well since the electric vehicles aren't commercially viable. Despite all the efforts to

00:02:33.380 push people into electric vehicles for over a decade, people haven't embraced them. They remain

00:02:37.560 an expensive novelty item for urban commuters and virtue signalers. The infrastructure for generating

00:02:42.980 enough power for an all-electric national fleet of vehicles doesn't exist. And new power generation

00:02:47.920 projects aren't even being built to service them. We're not going to transition, guys. What is going

00:02:52.180 to happen is we're going to see a shortage of combustion engine vehicles as manufacturing has been

00:02:56.500 disrupted by government intervention. The cost of gas-powered cars is going to go through the roof,

00:03:01.460 while electric vehicles will still remain impractical and expensive. This is when the

00:03:06.200 government will swoop in to the rescue. Nationalizing transportation, essentially. People will be relying on

00:03:10.920 public transit, whether it's through local or long-distance bus rides and trains, and of course,

00:03:15.580 federally regulated air travel. The freedom and individual ability to travel where everyone wants

00:03:21.400 is going to be gone. Think of how this will work in a cashless society. What if the government wants

00:03:25.420 to quell a future protest? It'd be easy to stop all public transit from reaching the protest sites,

00:03:30.900 won't it? Individuals could have travel rights removed for a myriad of reasons, and they might be

00:03:35.620 limited to staying within certain zones. How easy would it be for the state to control the transfer of

00:03:39.840 goods to certain areas? Would they do so? Does this sound impossible? Well, look at what the state did

00:03:45.580 during the pandemic in this last couple of years. We couldn't even sit down for a meal without being

00:03:48.680 forced to wear a mask on the way to the table and providing proof of being medicated.

00:03:52.220 So for them to tell us where we can go at times, yeah, that's not beyond belief at all.

00:03:55.800 Our individual freedoms are being stripped one by one. Speech, expression, protest, press, and the

00:04:00.600 sanctity of the body have all been eroded this last couple of years. Our right to unfettered mobility

00:04:05.920 is being threatened too. The personal automobile is more than just a convenience. It's an integral part of

00:04:10.500 our democratic society and our rights as individuals. As with so many initiatives by the state, the

00:04:15.460 motivation isn't to protect the climate or public health. It's all about control. We need to stand

00:04:19.680 up for the personal auto now while we still can, because it's a lot more important than a lot of

00:04:23.540 people realize.

Western Standard - August 03, 2022

Cory says the war on personal autos is a war on individual rights

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