The Ontario Superior Court on Thursday rejected a Sikh man's claim to a religious-freedom exemption from the province's law on mandatory motorcycle helmets. Supporters of safety as the holiest of political principles upheld the ruling as a triumph of reason; Sikh organizations denounced it as an act of naked discrimination against their faith. Few stepped forward to defend the idea that an adult in a free society should be able to wear what he wants and take the risks he wants where only his own body is concerned.

For 60 years or more, libertarians and conservatives have been arguing that government programs intended to promote the public welfare inevitably end by restricting freedom more and more: as the state does more for you, it finds itself doing ever more to you. Who would dare challenge that premise now, in the face of Judge James Blacklock's decision? The man made no secret of the chief pretext for his ruling. Motorcycle riders who don't wear helmets are more costly to the medicare system; therefore, in the name of reducing those costs, the government is free to require the wearing of helmets, even if that conflicts with a fundamental Charter right and interferes with the most personal and intimate sort of decision-making conceivable.

And if you are a so-called liberal, and you consider yourself satisfied that Mr. Badesha has lost nothing that society is obliged to regard as important, you had better be sure you can win the same argument when it comes to the goring of your own prized oxen. Are there any public health consequences to unrestricted marijuana use? The manufacture and sale of pornography? Cheap no-fault divorce? Your next cup of fair-trade coffee with double cream and sugar? Anyone want to apply the Blacklock Principle to legalized gay sex and see what the bottom line says? Do you want a full risk accounting made of your next weekend ski trip to Whistler?