What Happens When You Refuse To Persuade

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

Freedom. We all love it. It’s what our country was founded upon. However, I doubt the Founding Fathers ever believed freedom would be a spectator sport and something that politicians would use for their political gain.

Part of the problem is that in this day and age, there’s a tendency toward political correctness. And political correctness really bothers me a lot. Everyone’s so worried about offending and so we are programmed not to have opinions and no one knows how to argue their point. This has left people unempowered and uninformed. My belief is the only way we can truly know an issue is when we have to defend what we believe in. Through engaging and arguing, we can really understand what our differences are.

Instead of engaging and possibly offending, we have become a nation of mutes. We go along to get along instead of making our voices heard. It’s strange submissiveness. Those in power take advantage of our silence and frame the issues, they foist rules upon us, and we’re supposed to sit back and acquiesce.

In my opinion, one of the biggest offenders of this requirement of our submission is the police. It seems to me the police have forgotten or are choosing to absolutely ignore that their duty is to protect and serve. Instead, they believe their job is to see how much compliance they can wrestle out of everyone.

This story will illustrate what I’m talking about.

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 claims that the police came after him and yelled at him to put the camera down. As he was running away, he was saying, ‘Don’t come after me.’ 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 in his report, “He had refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon.”

Okay. .. so let me get this straight. He was running away but somehow was seen as a threat? It’s absurd.

When good people keep quiet 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.