Take My Rights, Please
Henny Youngman found
fame as a comedian with that quick one liner,
"Take my wife – Please!" And in
today's climate of diminishing rights and
political power-grabs, it seems all we ever hear
about anymore is the loss of more and more of our
freedoms. I lie awake at night (yes, with my
helmet on) and wonder to myself, "Why?"
All it takes is a ride around the block to see why
I predict that California's motorcyclists will be
the FIRST riders in the country to be banned from
the roadways. Look how foolish and arrogant the
majority of our riders act on the streets. I can't
tell you how many times I've wanted to chase down
a rider and rip 'em a new sphincter for acting the
fool and placing MY "right" to ride, in
jeopardy.
"He that is good for making excuses is
seldom good for anything else." ~Benjamin
Franklin
Technically speaking, we don't have any real
"right" to ride a motorcycle.
Motorcycles aren't mentioned in the Constitution
or any of the Amendments. Riding on a public
highway is a "privilege", regulated by
the state through your driver's license. If you
don't think so, just go riding without one. Yeah,
you'll get away with it for a while, but
eventually you're gonna get caught, if you don't
succumb to severe paranoia, first.
"It is easy to dodge our responsibilities,
but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging
our responsibilities." ~Josiah
Charles Stamp
You don't really own your bike the way you think
you do, either. The benevolent state merely allows
you to ride if you agree to abide by their terms
and conditions. You pay $200 bucks for a yearly
registration sticker that actually costs the
state, maybe 25 cents. But try riding around
without that sticker and see how long it takes to
get your bike impounded. My county has gone
high-tech, installing a $25,000 camera on squad
cars that scans license plates in traffic. It
works for Amber Alerts, stolen vehicles, expired
tags and can even nail drivers with conditional
licenses. The good old days are gone. Break the
rules, and the fun is done. Problem is, they keep
making more and more laws. So many, in fact, that
I often joke about the day they paint the last
dotted lines solid, and we'll only be allowed to
make right turns around our own neighborhood.
Right turn, right turn, and right back home again,
where it's safe.
"When government accepts responsibility
for people, then people no longer take
responsibility for themselves." ~George
Pataki
I've long said that we wouldn't need anymore new
laws if we'd only enforce the laws that are
already on the books. And maybe strike down a few
others. To minimize the damage that
lawmakers wreak upon society, I'd like to formally
propose that congress and state legislatures
become non-paid volunteers, meeting for only two
weeks each year, in the middle of summer, with no
air conditioning. That's how they did it at
Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1776 and that
experiment worked out just fine. Apparently,
lawmakers think better and work faster without air
conditioning - suffering negates the need for
extemporaneous nonsense. Unlike California 's
Senator Carole Migden, do you honestly think Ben
Franklin was playin' grab-ass with Adams and
Jefferson in that sweltering heat? No, they just
wanted to finish up with their business of
creating a new nation and get back to farming
hemp. (There's relatively no THC in hemp, so don't
even go there)
"First we make our habits, then our
habits make us."
~Charles C. Noble
Maybe you remember the first time your Mom trusted
you to walk down to the corner store to pick up
some Prince Albert® in a can and glycerin
suppositories for your Dad. This is my shining
example of a new found liberty, tempered with
responsibility. Mom gave you some money, and
trusted you to go straight to the store and come
right back home. If you flubbed it up, you didn't
get another chance til you were ten. If you went
over to little Eunice Eichel's house and popped
the heads off all her Barbie® dolls, the phone
was already ringing at your house before your
black and white Chuckie Taylors hit the front
porch. You tasted the freedom for one sweet
moment, and then you had to go and screw the pooch
on the way home. Literally. That's my analogy of
what's happening within the motorcycle community
of California.
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own
door, and the whole world will be clean."
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Irresponsible behavior from California 's
motorcycle riders will one day, ruin the privilege
to ride for all of us. For all the fine upstanding
motorcycle riders that are popping wheelies all
over the freeway, take note; horsepower bans are
in your immediate future and quite possibly -
tiered licensing, as well. For all you M1 license
holders that have violated proper lanesplitting
etiquette - riding dangerously - or even worse,
squeezing between cars just to get a car-length
ahead at a red light, take note; a ban on
lanesplitting was seriously discussed at the
Capitol, just last year, and it's gonna continue
to be an issue for us as long as our foolish
behavior continues to attract public scrutiny.
For all you really cool, Chrome-O-Sexual™
bad-asses that incessantly rev your pipes to
compensate for not being able to afford that
bottle of Viagra® after foolishly financing your
fabulous new lifestyle, please take note; the
noise ordinance they just passed in that other
western state is easily transferable to the Golden
State. Just ask the riders in Orange County . I
HAVE loud pipes, and I'd like to KEEP 'em. Don't
be a schmuck and ruin it for the rest of us,
sphincter-boy.
"You cannot escape the responsibility of
tomorrow by evading it today." ~Abraham
Lincoln
Can someone please tell me why our Motorcycle
Rights Organizations should waste the time, money
and effort fighting the gub-ment on behalf of a
bunch of morons who are the ones messin' things up
for the rest of us, and at the same time, totally
unwilling to help US fight? It's the very idiots
that are making all the noise, popping all the
wheelies and abusing the lanesplitting privilege
that will NEVER show up at the state capitol to
help fight to keep motorcycles legal. So
maybe it's time we start leaning on 'em? You and
me start drawing attention to their childish
antics, which threaten OUR rights. Shame and
humiliation used to work in the old days, but in
the participant ribbon society we live in
today…..the egotistical "it's all about
me" generation rarely responds to logic.
Thus, the legislature kills what it fears.
"The man who complains about the way the
ball bounces is likely to be the one who dropped
it." ~Lou Holtz
Without the nourishment of personal
responsibility, liberty has no other option but to
wither and die. Especially, if a NannyCrat™ has
those brazen motorcycle riders in the cross hairs
- looking to score brownie points with the general
public by making society a "safer"
place. As it was when you took that first
walk to the corner store, accepting personal
responsibility for your own actions is a positive
step towards becoming a grown up. It's time for
motorcyclists in CA to grow up. Tear this article
out, make copies, carry it with you, and have the
huevos to tape it to the mirror of the next idiot
you see riding his/her bike like a moron, RUINING
the "right" to ride - for the rest of
us. The self imposed, "police-ourselves"
revolution must begin NOW….before the police and
the legislators step up and do it for us. I
believe the NannyCrats™ are hearing those
desperate cries from the irresponsible riders of
California; "Take my rights, PLEASE."
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels
responsible." ~Voltaire
