MADD About You

One group whose influence has always frightened me is Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their absolutist views combined with their incredibly coercive philosophy on engineering society through their emotional - but often fact-challenged - approach to policy makes them both a dangerous and intractable opponent.

Instapundit links to some excellent articles on MADD's rather selective indignation, as well as some of their fuzzy statistics:

It cited increases in "alcohol-related traffic deaths" as its explanation for the low grade. The language that MADD used is important. "Alcohol-related" statistics include every accident in which someone involved had something to drink. That includes, for example, accidents in which a sober driver runs a red light and strikes a driver who had two beers and those in which a drunk stumbles out of a bar and into the path of a bus.

And this article on TalkLeft steered me toward this fascinating, angry, info-stuffed site that pokes at some of the myths MADD is spreading.

Moore Problems - Andrew Sullivan's column in yesterday's Sunday Times of London sums up the current body of work devoted to fact-checking Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine - and the database of misleading and hyperbolic claims that's come from it.

(Via Talkleft and Instapundit)

Posted by Mitch at December 9, 2002 10:31 AM