From the written archive
Free Rubber Dick Man!
It is incorrectly assumes that to be on the side of order means unconditional backing of the police. The fact is, good order should require a light touch, as the laws become a habit of mind and the laws reflect the collective habit of mind. When the laws are odds with the culture, you get disorder, which requires forces to maintain order. That force comes with consequences. Here’s an hilarious example from Pittsburgh.
A young man is facing charges stemming from an unusual incident in Westmoreland County Monday.
Skyler Connor, 18, of New Derry, is facing a disorderly conduct charge for waving a rubber penis at passing motorists.
According to police, the incident happened on Route 30 in Unity Township around 6 p.m.
Connor was a passenger in the back seat of a vehicle at the time.
The people who wrote the disorderly conduct laws never intended to give the cops the power to regulate teenage pranks. The intent of such laws are to prevent people from disrupting the normal functioning of public activities. Someone drunk in public harassing citizens is an example. Tying up traffic with some sort of distraction like a parade float or naked women could be a public nuisance. A kid waving around a rubber dick is not disrupting public order.
This is also a good example of anarcho-tyranny. You can be sure the cop who made the arrest had a few grand worth of battle gear and was driving a squad car kitted out like a starship. The cops are hyper-vigilant about stupid things like this that have no value to society. Yet, these same cops cannot be bothered to look for stolen cars or roust the hobos out of the local library. The cops treat the citizens as a nuisance, rather than the people they serve.
To keep Z Man’s voice available for future readers, this archive preserves the writing while removing ancillary links, advertisements, and donation requests from the original pages.
Comments
If the comment box does not appear, an ad-blocker, DNS filter, or VPN may be blocking Disqus.
Historical comments
Comments originally posted to thezman.com.
5 Comments