I am generally a freedom loving kind of guy. I like smoking marijuana and riding a bicycle without a helmet. Note that I said bicycle. Intellectually, I can accept the anti-motorcycle helmet law argument that the government shouldn’t be telling people what chances they can or can’t take as far as splitting their idiot head open is concerned. In practice, however, motorcycles scare me, even as a passenger. I prefer safety and comfort to thrills and spills. I like trains.
Yeeehaw! Fuck archaeology!
But, while I feel that anybody should be able to do pretty much anything they want to, as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else, that doesn’t mean they should be able to do anything they want to whenever and wherever they want to, because that’s going to run up against that “not hurting anyone else” proviso.
Yesterday the gun toting, neo-Confederate morons who’ve been hanging around the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, pointing guns at law enforcement officers and providing comic material for John Stewart and others since early April, decided they’d protest against a certain trail on a park in Utah being closed to ATVs (all terrain vehicles). Now, let’s leave aside for the moment the reason that trail is closed is because it runs by an archaeological site, with lots of easily damaged Navajo stuff. Parks are generally places where people like to go to get away from the noise and pollution of the cities for a nice, quiet afternoon in a natural environment. Even city parks fulfill that function.
So, it is entirely reasonable that that road should be closed to vehicles whose main purpose is making a fuckton of noise and causing maximum disruption to a calm and peaceful environment. I also think such vehicles should be banned from art galleries, children’s playgrounds, churches and mosques, cemeteries, airport runways, hospital parking lots, and flower shows. Golf courses can be up to the management’s discretion.
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