A while back I was interviewing Mike Rowe for an article about his podcast and I asked him what he would eliminate from our society to make it a better place. His answer was surprising but, in retrospect, probably shouldn’t have been.
He told me he’d get rid of the rule “safety first” from job sites and began pointing out how safety procedures not only hold us back but actually cause a fair share of accidents themselves. Instead of letting experienced men do what they need to in order to get the job done, they’re handcuffed by dumb rules that make the work more expensive, more time-consuming, and too often, more dangerous. Not to mention the fact that the phrase “safety first” is a crock of nonsense given the priorities of a business aren’t safety but making money.
Last month, he wrote an “Off the Wall” post revolving around the origin of “safety third” where he said something that got my attention:
Over the years – in my circle of friends and co-workers – ‘Safety Third’ became a replacement for ‘Safety First’ – a more honest way for me and my crew to say, “Be Careful.” It was never, as some people assumed, a challenge to take unnecessary risks. I was just a reminder that NOBODY should ever claim to care more about your safety that you. In the end, no amount of compliance could replace the role of personal responsibility, and while employers had an important role to play in eliminating as much risk as possible from the jobsite, our safety was ultimately up to us. And that’s probably where it would have ended, but for the pandemic and the recent lockdowns.
The point he’s making is pretty clear. Your safety is up to you, not others. It’s a principle that should be taught to all of us at a young age, but given the current environment, it would appear that many believe their safety should be left up to others.
Take the current panic from the left that is happening as I write this article. With Elon Musk’s offer to purchase Twitter and free the prisoners gagged and bound by its radical leftist overseers, the left is throwing tantrums that would make four-year-olds think they were a little much.
The primary excuse they’re using for their panic is that should people just be able to say whatever they want, then it would allow for the spread of hatred that will inevitably lead to violence, not to mention the dastardly “misinformation” that could demolish all of society. The only fix for this is to not allow Musk to buy Twitter and continue the suppression of free speech in order to keep America…safe.
This “safety” that we’ve been forced to endure includes not being able to talk about basic biology. We can’t share obvious facts about a virus. We can’t discuss oddities in elections. As a result, people went uninformed. They obeyed life-crippling rules they didn’t have to. They felt fear and panic they didn’t need to feel. They endured ignorance passed off as fact.
Rowe’s point becomes even more poignant.
Safety is holding us back. Safety is making our society more dangerous.
Safety is taking us further away from freedom.
What people need to come to terms with is that freedom and chaos go hand in hand. Freedom comes with an element of danger. When chaos is invited into the equation, bad things can indeed happen, but that’s just part of living with liberty.
And that’s okay. It’s better to suffer the occasional mishaps and tragedies living in a free society than never living at all. It’s better to write your own destiny for better or worse than have someone write it for you.
If we truly want to live in a free nation we have to let go of the idea that safety should come first.
