Man Arrested For Reciting The First Amendment

Does anyone else think that NYC police arresting a man for taking part in a peaceable assembly and reciting the First Amendment of the United States Constitution is harassment? This is one more example of how we as a nation are losing our rights and just goes to show what is wrong with our government.

The article also points out one good example of the “tyranny of the masses” that has brought our society to the sorry state that it is in. Police term bicycle rides by large groups as a threat to public safety and complain that they hamper traffic. A threat to public safety?

How did we get to the point where getting from point A to point B constitutes a threat to public safety? How did we get to the point where people cannot live with having to get somewhere slower than they would like so much so that we make it a crime to travel by foot or bicycle or on horseback on the overwhelming majority of interstates and freeways?

Why as a society would you make it a crime to ride a bicycle or horse on a highway or turnpike? Mainly because you would have a hard time justifying taxing them the same and charging the same fees for those whose mode of transportation does little to damage a road. Secondly, there is likely concern that people would not easily stomach the thought of registering bicycles and horses with the DMV nor of requiring licenses to operate them on a road. Then again, let us not forget that such a person would not be putting money in the pockets of oil magnates and their Arab friends on a regular basis, so the government does not want that.

And really, we have to look at the sheer number of accidents every year and the number of vehicular deaths and wonder at what good licensing really is doing for automobiles? Every day, we must trust our lives to other drivers operating deadly machinery on the roadways of America, yet it is a criminal offense for others who would travel more slowly and safely to even take to the roads?

What are the moral implications of making it a crime for a person to simply travel from point A to B because it inconveniences the flow of traffic? Take a long hard look at the nation we live in and what having a modern society has done to us as a people. Economics, capitalism, and a throw-away society full of governmental interference in people’s lives has created a society where it is criminal to be poor, and where you must buy into the concept that you need to acquire wealth and spend it on an automobile and pay for licensing and pay wheel taxes and tolls just to live.

Right or wrong, good or bad, for better or worse—that is the society we live in.

Let us say, for example, that a person wanted to live a different lifestyle. Let us suppose they wanted to travel the country either on foot or on horseback. They are not allowed to use the roads and highways that allow them to take the shortest route between two points, forced to take lengthy detours on back-roads, while those using the speedier mode of transport (autos) are reserved the privilege of traveling on turnpikes and interstates when it makes more sense that they could more easily take the longer route.

Then, if such a person wanted to simply camp on the roadside, they would be arrested. There are far too few public places where one could camp. We have created a society where you can travel about freely, but only with great difficulty can you do it in a manner which isn’t based on the latest technology or in a way that you are not spending money on hotels or campground fees. Of course I understand there are reasons why things are the way they are. It still does not make it ethically or morally right that being poor—or choosing to live a life differently from what the masses think is the technological level you should be living at—should be a crime.

In America, you are expected to conform. You are expected to go to school, get an education, work an 8 hour day, not do business on Sunday, drive a car and not ride a horse to and from work or to visit your relatives out of state, and you expected to wear a shirt if you want to be able to purchase goods. All with good intention, no doubt. But the fact is that if you choose not to conform to life as one of the sheep, if you believe life is about something different and choose to simply go about your life in a way that is not the most technologically efficient, or in a way that you are not paying a wide variety of taxes and license costs and buying gas and goods, then you will find yourself hard pressed to live in America. More, you will likely be arrested for choosing to live outside the mainstream.

Ours is a nation that seeks to get everything possible out of a person while providing little or no accommodation for living a lifestyle that is different and does not have as its focus helping a nation maximize effectively the use of limited resources.

Where America once prided itself on being a nation of independent trailblazers and self-sufficient people, we have become a nation that prefers everyone act like all the other sheepish masses.

We live in a society where the “no shirt, no shoes, no service” sort of expectations and expedience take precedence over common sense and compassion and a concern for ethics, morals, values and decency. Of course, that is why we have such a large homeless population. It is why we have a privately run for-profit prison system which we must feed by creating the world’s largest incarcerated population. It is why we have a government that refuses to secure our borders and why business owners get away with hiring illegal aliens. It is why we have a president pardoning a man who endangered the life of someone serving in the CIA and that agency member’s family.

It is why we have police arresting people for reciting the First Amendment.

Independence Day. What exactly does it mean anymore?

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Note: Just the other day on Fox News, they had a story about a woman born with a genetic defect that left her with tiny arms. She has learned to drive and do many other things using her feet, and even raised a young son. She was recently insulted at two McDonalds restaurants by being refused service at the drive through window. They were happy to take her money, but some ignorant employee refused to hand her the order.

The fact that companies have to give employees “sensitivity training” when they are raised in what is supposedly such an enlightened society makes all Americans look ignorant and foolish. We don’t need corporate sensitivity training, we need basic values and ethics instilled in our citizens from their parents.

But then, the goal of a capitalist bureaucracy is no different than that of communism—the destruction of the family.