I love freedom. I love liberty.
I do not love MADD.
MADD, how do I not love thee, let me count the ways.
1. MADD supports an 8-10 year sentence (later reduced to 27 months) for parents allowing underage drinking at their house. Not one of the teenagers was legally drunk. All keys were confiscated. The local MADD chapter liked “the message the judge was trying to send.”
MADD advocates a zero tolerance policy abstinence only alcohol policy. If you disagree they are happy to watch you spend a decade in jail.
2. MADD views defense lawyers as a nuisance in their neo prohibtionist quest. MADD calls the DWI bar a “Hurdle to Reform.” What’s wrong with defense attorneys? We are more interested in “winning the case” than in helping convict defendants. Shame on us.
3. MADD hates the Constitution and liberty. Like all tyrants MADD believes that their ends justifies their means. To them, no freedom is more important than stopping every DWI.
Their most recent triumph; reducing the legal BAC to .08, is a complete failure. “Alcohol related” traffic falalities are up since that law passed. What to do when one law does not work? Repeal it? No. Get tougher.
MADD advocates “getting serious” about the “War on Drunk Driving” by putting breath machine technology in all cars.
MADD also loves police roadblocks (sobriety checkpoints). Authoritarian dictatorships stop and question their citizens for no reason. Traffic stops used to require a reasonable suspicion of criminal activity. MADD helped rid our country of that bothersome 4th Amendment.
4. MADD was founded as an organization against drunk driving. However, MADD has transformed into a neo prohibitionist movement (which caused their founder to quit).
5. MADD uses phony “alcohol related fatality” statistics to scare the public and silence opposition. Only 1/4 of alcohol related fatalities involve a drunk driver killing a sober driver. The rest of the “alcohol related fatalities” include situations where a pedestrian had been drinking (not drunk) and was killed by a vehicle. Or sober drivers who accidently get in a wreck and kill a passenger who was drinking.
It is time to stand up for freedom and against MADD. DWI enforcement is not more important than the Constitution.