I find emacknight to be one of the most annoying posters on these boards. Many of his posts sound like a right-wing moron trying to parody the writings of a left-wing imbecile. Other posts sound like a left-wing moron trying to parody the writings of a right-wing imbecile. One can’t be sure which, if either, posture is sincere.
I doubt if emacknight is actually a moron, clinically, but that just takes away a possible excuse, and makes his attempts at ideation all the more contemptible.
With many examples to choose one, I’ll just mention one that left several of us flabbergasted. First I need to discuss traffic conditions in less-developed countries, e.g. India.
According to Wikipedia, India had 15 vehicles per capita in 2006 compared with 828 in the U.S. in 2009. India had 16.8 traffic-related deaths per 100,000 persons versus 12.3 for U.S.
again according to Wikipedia. Using these numbers, we see that traffic fatalities per vehicle in India are 75 times greater than in the U.S.
(Now I am aware that this calculation is questionable for a variety of reasons. For starters, I didn’t even use the same year for “vehicles for capita.” Better Googlers are free to improve the numbers, but I made an honest effort with my own searching skills.)
Wikipedia does summarize with “90% (of the world’s road traffic deaths) occurred in low and middle income countries, with South-East Asia and Africa having the highest rates.” One thing seems clear to me: Developed countries have more developed traffic law enforcement, and fewer accidents.
Despite that SDMB right-wingers may have developed a left-wing caricature of myself, I’m actually relatively libertarian, and find some traffic laws annoying and stifling. But I’ve also driven several 100,000 miles in a country where traffic rules are ignored and, while it may seem “romantic and adventurous” to wonder if you’re coming back alive from a dangerous mountain road, I would prefer the security of driving with “stifling” U.S.-style traffic regulations. When asked to compare Thailand and the U.S.A., one of the first differences that comes to mind is the annoyance and danger I feel when driving on the roads here.
Now … what does this have to do with emacknight? Consider this quote:
“Oddly enough it works”?? :smack: 
The country with 75 times as many fatalities per vehicle is the Libertarian traffic-law utopia that U.S. needs to emulate? 
In the thread, someone mentioned India’s higher fatalities; emacknight pretended that he already knew that, and posted a misleading statistic (deaths per capita in a country where most don’t own a car or commute :smack: ).
AFAICT, the memes that every government regulation is evil and that every government employee is incompetent are so ingrained with emacknight, that the idea that government-enforced traffic laws could be good just never occurred to him.
I suppose in his Utopia, where streets are privately owned, each street owner would choose from amongst private traffic-light purveyors, trading off cost versus injuries according to a market-driven model.
Libertarianism for Idiots. Just Say No.