Comshaw
VAGITARIAN
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2000
- Posts
- 11,676
This is the editorial from my November motorcycle Consumer news. I thought I'd share it with you because the Editor put into word exactly how I feel about what has happened to this counrty since 9/11/01.
LEST WE FORGET
I' M DRIVING MY daughter s red convertible and she is my passenger. The top is down and we are having a good time. We are at the tail end of six vehicles at a stop light. At the green, all six accelerate smartly as a group and proceed around a long, curving left-hander. The speed limit is 45 mph, the road is otherwise clear and empty and we are approaching the limit. Suddenly, behind us a siren sounds and red lights flash. An emergency vehicle, not a police car, is pulling us over. I m amazed. We are herded into an empty church parking lot and the official in the truck passes out tickets for us to fill out and sign. My instinct is to express outrage, but I don t. I try to understand what we are being charged with. The person with the siren and red lights wants us to explain in writing why we drove faster than "normal," and to sign the tickets so we can appear in court. "What kind of system is this?" Task myself. Any judge will assume something illegal has happened and we will be asked to defend ourselves based on, if not a presumption of guilt, at least a perception. As the group of drivers and passengers mill around the parking lot, I notice that our apprehender has vanished—perhaps he s gone inside the church to take a leak, I imagine. I tell my daughter to get into the car and to keep the ticket out of sight. Twill attempt to drive away without turning it in, hoping the others will imagine that I have done it already and that they will not write down my license plate. I fire up the car... and then I awake from my dream.
It was only a nightmare. Yesterday was September 11th, the horrible anniversary. Across America, those who willingly gave their lives so others could live, killed by those who willingly gave their lives so others would die, were eulogized. We saw the grief in the eyes of those who were bereaved, and the pain in the eyes of those inspired by the sacrifice of their loved ones. And, we also saw again the hardness in the eyes of our country s chief executives, who would defend us against further atrocities. We are a country divided between our wish for peace and our wish to rid the planet of those who would tear peace asunder. We have the mightiest military power ever known to man, and at the same time, the greatest document affirming individual human rights ever written—the Constitution of the United States of America.
Why did I dream such a thing? There are no laws prohibiting sheer exuberance. But the concept of exceeding "normal" is already an issue. The last time I was pulled over in a traffic stop was a little over a year ago. The officer had followed me after I had exceeded the speed limit in a 25 zone. Outlining my crimes by the curb, he sternly noted that at the following intersection, I had turned the corner too quickly and had then proceeded to cut through a gap in traffic before he pulled me over. Implicit in his telling of my transgressions was that, although my turn and lane change were below the speed limit and had endangered no one, they were not "normal"—which is precisely the fun of why we choose to ride motorcycles in the first place. I was lucky this time, the officer was a former customer and I knew his name, which broke through our situation; he as symbol of authority and me as perpetrator. He let me go, but said I d used up the one break he d give me.
I was relieved, and duly tempered my driving around town, hoping we wouldn t meet again. But the idea that "normal" was a quasi-legal criteria continued to upset me. Our justice system is tested every day, and occasionally it fails, as when money prevails over the truth in highly-publicized celebrity trials. But I still believe we ve got the best system out there.
A year ago, in the aftermath of September 11th, I urged that we should not be hasty to trade our hard-fought freedoms for security. Unfortunately, it has happened. Thousands are being held without trial and the President now threatens to go to war without the consent of Congress. We have such military might that we are tempted to act without the support of our allies. "Who needs them?" Convincing proof of our suspicions? "Trust us," they say. Security procedures that would have set off storms of protest are put into place without debate.
Hate Osama bin Laden, sure, but admit that he has been successful at polarizing the world—creating Helter Skelter on a global scale. The U.S. has never been so unopposed as a military power or so willing to throw its weight around. And, the idea that we are a global bully has never been so easy to sell to those desperate people who live in misery.
We re told the men who attacked America on September 11th could have been prevented from doing so, if only the CIA had talked to the FBI. They hid in plain sight, listed in the phone books under their own names. Do intelligence failures justify the erosion of our civil rights? And where will it end? History is full of examples of societies that made themselves "safer" until, in the end, everyone lived in fear of speaking out for freedom. Prejudice falls like grains of sand, proceeding from subjects of general agreement to greater and greater intolerance, until its weight is inescapable. Self-righteousness is a sword held by both sides in every blood feud. How safe can our society become without becoming intolerant of what you and I perceive as normal, but others do not? When will our freedoms be returned to us by those who have been empowered by taking them away? We should never forget the human toll of recent events. But even more importantly we must safeguard the precious freedoms we ve won, represented by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, that so many have died, in so many conflicts, to sustain for the past 226 years.
Motorcycling is an expression of freedom in its purest form, and motorcyclists themselves intuitively recognize when their freedoms are under attack. Just as we do when we meet one another along the road, we need to keep true to our country s ideals and offer fellowship without economic, political or religious restrictions. Only by focusing on what makes our country great can we hope to overcome the forces that would make us harder and more aggressive, hoping to diminish us spiritually as a beacon of hope and goodwill in the world.
I hope you haven t found my little sermon inappropriate, but preserving our precious freedoms requires eternal vigilance.
Best wishes,
—Dave Searle Editor
NOVEMBER2002. MOTORCYCLE CONSUMER NEWS
LEST WE FORGET
I' M DRIVING MY daughter s red convertible and she is my passenger. The top is down and we are having a good time. We are at the tail end of six vehicles at a stop light. At the green, all six accelerate smartly as a group and proceed around a long, curving left-hander. The speed limit is 45 mph, the road is otherwise clear and empty and we are approaching the limit. Suddenly, behind us a siren sounds and red lights flash. An emergency vehicle, not a police car, is pulling us over. I m amazed. We are herded into an empty church parking lot and the official in the truck passes out tickets for us to fill out and sign. My instinct is to express outrage, but I don t. I try to understand what we are being charged with. The person with the siren and red lights wants us to explain in writing why we drove faster than "normal," and to sign the tickets so we can appear in court. "What kind of system is this?" Task myself. Any judge will assume something illegal has happened and we will be asked to defend ourselves based on, if not a presumption of guilt, at least a perception. As the group of drivers and passengers mill around the parking lot, I notice that our apprehender has vanished—perhaps he s gone inside the church to take a leak, I imagine. I tell my daughter to get into the car and to keep the ticket out of sight. Twill attempt to drive away without turning it in, hoping the others will imagine that I have done it already and that they will not write down my license plate. I fire up the car... and then I awake from my dream.
It was only a nightmare. Yesterday was September 11th, the horrible anniversary. Across America, those who willingly gave their lives so others could live, killed by those who willingly gave their lives so others would die, were eulogized. We saw the grief in the eyes of those who were bereaved, and the pain in the eyes of those inspired by the sacrifice of their loved ones. And, we also saw again the hardness in the eyes of our country s chief executives, who would defend us against further atrocities. We are a country divided between our wish for peace and our wish to rid the planet of those who would tear peace asunder. We have the mightiest military power ever known to man, and at the same time, the greatest document affirming individual human rights ever written—the Constitution of the United States of America.
Why did I dream such a thing? There are no laws prohibiting sheer exuberance. But the concept of exceeding "normal" is already an issue. The last time I was pulled over in a traffic stop was a little over a year ago. The officer had followed me after I had exceeded the speed limit in a 25 zone. Outlining my crimes by the curb, he sternly noted that at the following intersection, I had turned the corner too quickly and had then proceeded to cut through a gap in traffic before he pulled me over. Implicit in his telling of my transgressions was that, although my turn and lane change were below the speed limit and had endangered no one, they were not "normal"—which is precisely the fun of why we choose to ride motorcycles in the first place. I was lucky this time, the officer was a former customer and I knew his name, which broke through our situation; he as symbol of authority and me as perpetrator. He let me go, but said I d used up the one break he d give me.
I was relieved, and duly tempered my driving around town, hoping we wouldn t meet again. But the idea that "normal" was a quasi-legal criteria continued to upset me. Our justice system is tested every day, and occasionally it fails, as when money prevails over the truth in highly-publicized celebrity trials. But I still believe we ve got the best system out there.
A year ago, in the aftermath of September 11th, I urged that we should not be hasty to trade our hard-fought freedoms for security. Unfortunately, it has happened. Thousands are being held without trial and the President now threatens to go to war without the consent of Congress. We have such military might that we are tempted to act without the support of our allies. "Who needs them?" Convincing proof of our suspicions? "Trust us," they say. Security procedures that would have set off storms of protest are put into place without debate.
Hate Osama bin Laden, sure, but admit that he has been successful at polarizing the world—creating Helter Skelter on a global scale. The U.S. has never been so unopposed as a military power or so willing to throw its weight around. And, the idea that we are a global bully has never been so easy to sell to those desperate people who live in misery.
We re told the men who attacked America on September 11th could have been prevented from doing so, if only the CIA had talked to the FBI. They hid in plain sight, listed in the phone books under their own names. Do intelligence failures justify the erosion of our civil rights? And where will it end? History is full of examples of societies that made themselves "safer" until, in the end, everyone lived in fear of speaking out for freedom. Prejudice falls like grains of sand, proceeding from subjects of general agreement to greater and greater intolerance, until its weight is inescapable. Self-righteousness is a sword held by both sides in every blood feud. How safe can our society become without becoming intolerant of what you and I perceive as normal, but others do not? When will our freedoms be returned to us by those who have been empowered by taking them away? We should never forget the human toll of recent events. But even more importantly we must safeguard the precious freedoms we ve won, represented by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, that so many have died, in so many conflicts, to sustain for the past 226 years.
Motorcycling is an expression of freedom in its purest form, and motorcyclists themselves intuitively recognize when their freedoms are under attack. Just as we do when we meet one another along the road, we need to keep true to our country s ideals and offer fellowship without economic, political or religious restrictions. Only by focusing on what makes our country great can we hope to overcome the forces that would make us harder and more aggressive, hoping to diminish us spiritually as a beacon of hope and goodwill in the world.
I hope you haven t found my little sermon inappropriate, but preserving our precious freedoms requires eternal vigilance.
Best wishes,
—Dave Searle Editor
NOVEMBER2002. MOTORCYCLE CONSUMER NEWS
