The Consequences of Refusing to Persuade

“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.” –Joseph Addison

We all love freedom. However, the concept of freedom is something that politicians and pundits use and abuse for their benefit. The Founding Fathers never intended freedom to be a spectator sport or something that professional politicians would usurp for political gain.

One problem we have is a tendency toward excessive political correctness. We’re all so worried about not offending anyone and we shrink away from having any opinions. This means we don’t learn how to argue our points and don’t have to defend our beliefs. And therefore, we aren’t empowered or informed to the extent that we could be. When you truly know an issue, only then can you defend what you believe to be true. And only by engaging others can we learn and understand our differences.

This fear of offending is a problem. It leads to us being a nation of mutes. We keep quiet and “going along to get along” instead of making our voices heard. Those that want power take advantage of our silence and submissiveness and begin to foist all manner of rules that we’re supposed to just go along with.

The biggest offenders of our seemingly required submission to authority is the police. Their duty is to protect and serve, yet they seem to have forgotten this and instead believe they are around to seem how much compliance they can get out of each and every person they come into contact with.

The following story illustrates what I mean.

Recently I came across an article in The Oregonian entitled “Four Sue Police, Alleging ‘Dirty Tactics’”.

One of the four, Frank Waterhouse, who is suing the police department for unlawful seizure with excessive force, alleges that police fired a Taser and bean bag rounds at him because he was videotaping their search of a friend’s property.

He says in the suit that the police immediately came after him when they saw that he was videotaping and they yelled at him to “put it (the camera) down.” When the officers came at him, (as he was running away) he said, “Don’t come after me.” He said seconds later he was shot with a bean bag gun and a Taser and fell to the ground.

Officers wrote in their reports that Waterhouse ran off, they chased him and then bean-bagged and Tasered him. One officer wrote, “He had refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon.”

Hmmm. . . how can it be that he was running away from the officers and still seen as a threat?

Good people keep quiet because they believe it is the ‘politically correct’ thing to do, and in turn then they get whatever the authority figures give them. I’d say it’s high time to begin using your persuasion skills to let others know what you think. Don’t let this happen to you.

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