By John R. Taylor

john@ucan.us

On the German autobahn there is no legal speed limit for most of its course. Drivers routinely drive 120 miles per hour and occasionally a high powered sports car will fly by at more than 250. This is not news to most of us. What might be news to you is that you are much more likely to be killed on U.S. interstates while traveling at 70 or 80 mph than is a German driver on the autobahn. The death rate on the autobahn is .71 deaths per million drivers. On U.S. interstates the rate is .83 deaths per million.

Why is it that the Germans can drive so much faster than us, yet be safer? I have heard numerous explanations for this. There are those who point to the finely engineered German cars. They say that the cars are so well built that in an accident, even at very high speeds, the occupants are less likely to die. I’ll not argue the point of whose cars are safer, the cars on German roads or the cars on our roads. There is no need, for it is not that the Germans are having more wrecks than us, but are surviving them. They have far fewer accidents. When they do have an accident, their chances of dieing are greater than ours. They just don’t have as many wrecks. If their cars can stop better, corner better and do everything else better so be it. But I don’t believe they stop better, or corner better, or anything else better at 120 mph than our cars can at 80 mph. Besides, we live in a world market, and there are a lot of the same makes of cars on each road system.  It has also been argued that the autobahn is better built for high speed driving, and it is true that it is thicker and that the surface is better maintained than our interstates. However, our interstates are designed for high-speed driving, and the slight difference in quality should be more than offset by the much, much greater speeds.

What then is the difference? You may not want to know. When I tell you, you are going to be mad at me. Your feelings will be hurt. Not only am I going to step on some folk’s toes; I’m going to crush their whole foot. - You can’t drive. - Well maybe you can- but most Americans can’t. At least not well enough to be safe on high-speed highways.

It’s not their fault. No one has ever taught them how. They don’t even know they don’t know.

There are three major areas where we Americas are deficient. It probably has to do with the individualistic and somewhat egotistic and arrogant attitudes we have.

Let me use three true stories to illustrate the problem. About twenty years ago I had a lady storm into my office and ask to use the phone. This was before everyone had cell phones and the lady was someone I knew well. She was a salesperson for one of the transportation companies we use and she stopped by about every week. On this visit she was visible shaken.

As she talked on the phone it was not difficult to discern that she was reporting a truck driver that had ran her off the road. When she got off the phone she was still very mad and nervous. I did not have to ask her what had happened. She said that while she was driving on I-17 a truck driver drove into her lane and ran her off into the median. I asked if she was sure the driver had seen her because even on the driver’s side a truck has a large blind spot between what he can see in his mirror and out the window. Her answer was more than illuminating to me. “No, he saw me! I had been riding beside him for 15 or 20 miles. He would wave his hand out the window and he turned his turn signal on and off. He was crazy; before he ran me off the road he would weave his trailer toward my lane. He pulled over until he was riding over the center line; he was in my lane a foot or more. He rode like that for three of four miles, just before he ran me off the road.”

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“Did he jerk his rig over into your lane, or slowly pull over?” I asked. “He had been weaving the trailer before but when he ran me off the road he just keep coming over. I sat on my horn, but he just kept coming over until I was off the road and there was nowhere for me to go but in the median,” she said.

After hearing her account of the incident I knew just what had happened.  I said nothing to her about it; she was upset enough, but I know she had unknowingly driven this driver crazy. Now I don’t in any way excuse his actions. He was wrong and probably lost his job for it. However, I know why he was so frustrated. My friend, by her own account, had driven beside this truck for as much as twenty miles. There were probably ten miles of angry motorist backed up behind her. By turning his signals on and off, waving his hand out the window, and finally weaving and then riding across the centerline he was trying to get her to pass him or fall back. He was more wrong than her because he knew what he was doing. The scary thing is that my friend caused the entire crisis and never knew it. Like most American drivers, she was totally oblivious to what was happening around her. She never knew she was blocking the truck in. She never knew there were dozens upon dozens of cars behind her recklessly darting in and out of traffic trying to get around her. She never knew to press either the accelerator or the brake and she would not have to run off the road.

To the best of my knowledge there is no state which has a keep right except to pass law. But they all should, and we all should learn why this is important. On the German autobahn you will not be given a ticket for doing 200 mph, but you will get a ticket for doing 70 or 120 in the left lane if you are not passing someone. Not for speeding, but for failing to keep right. This is the one single most important rule of the road for high-speed roadways. It is by far the main reason that we are dieing on our highways at a higher rate than the Germans are. Some will argue that it is lane changing that causes most accidents. It is true that many accidents occur when one or more cars are changing lanes. But it is not an aware motorist pulling out to pass or moving back into the right lane that results in these accidents. Drivers who observe the keep right rule are aware of the cars in the rear, in front and on each side of them. The very act of keeping right makes a driver notice what is happening around them. The lane changes that cause accidents and death are when an unaware driver, who has been riding in the left lane for a long time, pulls back into the right lane just as a car is being forced to pass on the right, an unsafe and dangerous maneuver – or when a driver, who has been blocked in by another driver that is riding beside another vehicle and there is no place to pass, tries to dart in or force a pass to get around.

It is nice to just get over in the left lane and cruise. There are no cars to pass and the traffic is light. But what we don’t think about is that we are causing the traffic behind us to be anything but light. There are many who will disagree with me and more who just don’t care ­­– but failing to keep right is the single most significant reason we have more deaths on our interstates that the Germans do on the autobahn.

My next tale happened just last week. As I was driving down the interstate in the right lane, a drive was entering the road just ahead of me. The traffic was heavy in the left lane, and a truck was just to my right. Had I needed to I could have accelerated or applied the brake to get into the left lane. However, the car that was entering the road in front of me was already traveling faster than I was and was at least one hundred feet in front of me. Rather than continuing on and entering the interstate in front of me the driver gets on his brakes and slowed greatly. When I passed, he then pulled onto the roadway, after slowing to about thirty mph. I could see in my mirror that the car he pulled in front of was not more than one hundred and fifty feet behind him. He would not enter the road in front of me, even though he was going faster than I was and I could not have hit him if I floored my accelerator. Yet, he saw nothing wrong with pulling in front of a car doing forty mph faster than he was, and no doubt the car had to get on his brakes to keep from hitting him.

The problem is that many drivers in this country have not learned that there are two variables that are of equal importance in judging the flow of traffic around you. Distance is one, and most folks realize this, but the other variable, velocity, which is every bit as important, is often completely overlooked.

I have seen a driver pull out in front of a car one hundred feet away, traveling at sixty or seventy miles per hour and then later that same driver express fear that I had endangered their life when I pulled out in front of a car thirty feet away that was at rest.

The lanes upon which you enter an interstate highway are called “acceleration lands”. They are called that because the proper and safe way to enter a high-speed, limited access highway is to accelerate down the acceleration lane before you enter the highway and get up to the same speed as the traffic on the highway and merge into the traffic.  It is far better to enter the highway at a higher rate of speed than the other traffic than to enter it at a lower speed.

The beginning of the exit ramps is called deceleration lane because you should use it for such.

The third reason we die at a higher rate is that we just don’t take driving as serious as we should. When Germans first started importing cars to this country, dealers complained because the cars did not have drink holders. To the Germans this was silly. If you are driving you should be driving not drinking.

We spend too much time drinking, eating, talking on the phone and to other occupants, adjusting the radio and all manner of other activities that have nothing to do with driving and being aware of what is happening around us.

We could save lives, and be much more courteous drivers if we keep right, be aware of distance and speed, and take driving as serious as an activity which kills thousands of us each year should be.To top of the page

  Grit

by John R. Taylor

john@ucan.us

This past week I spoke to some of my cousins who happen to have the same names as some of the ones in Names column from the last issue of Views & News and they said that they thought the story was very funny and they genuinely enjoyed it, but they had no recollection of any of those things happening. I then just explained that I have a much superior power of memory. I can remember many things that others cannot. Heck, I can even remember the day I was born; it was so cold and wet and bright… no, wait a minute; that was the day I floated down the Ichetucknee river, not the day I was born. But anyway, I have a really good memory. They said it might have something to do with that other thing, but I don’t see how that is possible.

It is true, that as a twelve year old I spent several days in never-never-land after butting out the windshield of a Chevy pick-up, as said pick-up scored a 9.2 for a 2 ½ cartwheel with a ½ twist in the freestyle of auto wrecking event. I never lost consciousness, that night anyway, that was reserved for the next day and a few days there after. As I walked to the ambulance/hurst, (they were the same in those days, which was efficient, no matter where you were going, you could ride in the same vehicle,) I leaned down and something gross fell from the wound in my head to the ground. The ambulance driver/undertaker guy, we didn’t have paramedics then either, kicked some dirt over the gross part of me that had fallen on the ground and said, “Ah, you don’t need that.” Some folks have asserted since that time that I did indeed need it. But I don’t think they have a point. The doctors did tell Daddy that I would probably die before I woke up, or that if I did wake up, I would have severe brain damage. … What? I didn’t die.

Well from those cavernous recesses of my mind, I have these new stories for you. This is how I remember it. 

There is a thing that folks I grew up around called grit. Now I have sense heard Yankees call it sand. What ever rough silica you want to call it, I had a cousin that had more than his share. Now cousin James, uncle Ellie’s youngest boy, was not too big; matter of fact he was kinda skinny and wiry. But compared to him a badger was just a little dossal kitten. He was tough as nails and loved to fight more than he liked to eat, and he was none too choosey as to whom or even what he fought. He figured that if he couldn’t get into at least three fights at school, it was a waste of time to get on the bus. Of course it was a long bus ride; they lived so far back in the sticks they had to get on the bus Saturday night to make it to school Monday morning. Na, I’m just pulling your leg, the bus ride was only about an hour and a half.

For those of you who still are not quite sure what this grit I speak of is, I have a little story; actually I have two or three stories to clue you in. One day when we were more than seven or eight but less than twelve, James, his brother Buie and myself had made a great trek to the trash pile. While plundering for treasure we came upon a mountain of old shingles. We had no use for the shingles, but the large pile made a magnificent site for a king of the mountain challenge. We each in turn would ascend to the summit only to be knocked or drug to the bottom by one or both of our fellow combatants. For ten or so minutes we had great fun, then Buie and I together shoved James hard off the mountain, and as he lost his balance he made a grand leap backwards, landing on his feet at the bottom of the pile of shingles. We knew in an instant that something was amiss. When he landed, James’ face made a ghastly cringe and his color went pale yellow. He made no sound, but stood very still with his legs apart and his knees bent a slightly. His arms were out from his sides a little with elbows bent and fists clinched. He looked like a linebacker readying for the snap of the ball. I looked down at him and as my gaze went to his bare feet I saw the problem. The skin on the top of his right foot was poking up two or three inches like a gruesome Indian tepee. Buie and I scampered down to James. Seeing his foot close up made me kind of sick. The skin was stretched so tight it looked like rubber; at the point it pushed up the highest it was no bigger than a pencil.

Where he had landed it looked like just a nearly level layer of shingles. Whatever was in his foot must have been just under the shingles, and his weight had pushed it through the shingles and his foot, all but the skin on the top. When we got to him he put his arms around us, one on each side, and strained to pull his foot up and free. I could see the muscles in his leg flex and strain and his foot bent up at an awkward angle, but he could not get free. “Grab my leg and help me pull”, he said. Buie and I each got hold of his leg and pulled with our might. When we did, we picked up James and the layer of shingles all around him. “There must be a board or somethin’ under there”, I said. Buie and I tried to stand on the board that was under the shingles. Buie was also barefooted, so I didn’t think it a good idea him stomping around on the shingles trying to locate the board. But I didn’t say anything. After a bit, we got our weight on the board and again yanked on James’ leg. It didn’t come free quickly, but this time we slowly pulled his foot up. As the thing was tearing free of his foot, James made a hissing sound as he sucked air through his clenched teeth. He also made bruises on my upper arm as he squeezed it.

When his foot finally popped free, we all three fell back flat on our backs. Setting up, I saw this ugly red thing projecting up from the shingles where James had stood. It was as big as a new pencil and was covered with bright red blood and meat. When we inspected it closer, we could see that it was a giant rusty, nail. Parts of it had rusted away so that it was not a uniformed diameter and the larger parts had acted as nasty, sharp barbs digging into the meat and bones when we had tried to pull it out.

We asked if he was alright and he said he was, but when he tried to put his weight on the foot his knee would buckle.

Buie and I had a conference and decided that James would have to wait till we brought back help. James wasn’t included in the conference and he had a conference with himself and decided that we would have to carry him back. Now back in those days the two or three mile walk back to their house was nothing, but I didn’t think I wanted to tote my cousin that distance.

After a good bit of discussion and several words that Aunt Angie Mae would not approve of, Buie and I decided that we would walk back for help, and James decided we would carry him. Looking back, I am a little ashamed that we pushed our wounded comrade off our shoulders. I’m not real ashamed; I’ve done some things that make me real ashamed, but that made me a little ashamed.

I was a little ashamed, and Buie was not a bit ashamed and we both started walking back home. We did walk a little slow, so James could hobble along behind us. With every step James made a small round blood spot on the dirt road.

The further we went the less bad I felt about making James walk. This might have had something to do with the vehement assertions James kept making that I had a canine pedigree. That’s not exactly what he said, but I think the meaning is the same. He also said the same thing about Buie, which was strange since they were brothers. I never knew he was even interested in genealogy.

In due time, we made it back home. James didn’t die, but he did get blood poison and almost lost his leg.

If you still are unsure of just what this thing they call grit is, have no fear; I have a couple more stories about Cousin James, Uncle Ellie’s boy, which will sure enlighten you. But that is for another time.   To top of the page

Homosexuality is Wrong

by John R.. Taylor

john@ucan.us

What is right and wrong? We all have the right to believe anything we want. Does that make right and wrong just a matter of personal preference? If it does, then we can remove those words from our dictionaries for they are meaningless. Man has throughout history set different standards as to what he thought was right and wrong. But that we changed our minds does not change truth. Right and wrong – truth – is not afloat in the sea of public opinion, rising, falling and drifting with the whelms of mere mortals. Neither is it affixed on castors to be pushed about by this group and that. Truth is firmly seated in an immovable foundation laid by the Creator of the universe. It is constant and unchanging.

For believing Christians this is an easy concept. While the Savior of the world was and is kind, loving, merciful and tolerant of our human weakness, He has never tolerated sin. The Bible says plainly that “if a man lay with another man. He will surly be dammed.” Female homosexuality is not directly mentioned in the scriptures and may not be as serious as male homosexuality, but we can understand that it is equally wrong. Churches that ordain man who openly live in a homosexual lifestyle are the epitome of hypocrisy.

These are arguments that have all been made before, and been rejected by those who either don’t believe in God or wish to make God in their own image. But there is an equally compelling line of reason that tells us that homosexuality is wrong, that has nothing to do with God or religion. For atheist and agnostics who reject the idea that we were created by God, they must, in their minds, rely on the theory of evolution to explain their existence. While this theory, though accepted for fact in a very large segment of our intellectual society, has some major problems for anyone with an open and logical mind, let us see it from the perspective of one who believe it completely. In their view instead of “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” it would be, in the beginning there was a ball of matter that made a big band. This is where, try as I might, I have a problem, because that was not the beginning. And the hydrogen atoms floating around in a void before they came together to make the ball of matter was not the beginning either. You see that if you keep asking the third grade question, “…and what happened before that?” you are left to two possibilities. On the one hand, at some point in the far distant past, something just spontaneously came into being out of nothing - or on the other hand, energy and matter has existed perpetually in a steady state. Anyway I am not here to argue for or against cosmic or biological evolution; my aim was only to explain my difficulty in empathizing with this point of view.

Now, with great effort on my part, let us assume for a moment that the atheists are correct. Let us image that there is no God and man is just a happenchance of circumstance. We will assume that all life is subject to Darwin’s survival of the fittest rule. The short necked giraffes can’t reach the tasty leaves at the top of the trees so all the giraffes with short necks eventually die out because they starve before they can bread in large numbers, and only the long necked giraffes are left. Likewise the slow cheetahs can’t run fast enough to catch the fast gazelles so they die out and only the fast cheetahs are left. We all know how they say this natural selection of species works. Well, in this Godless world, what would be right and what would be wrong? If biological evolution is the process of a life form evolving from a lower state to a higher more advanced state, would not actions that promote your species’ survival be right, and actions which doom it to extinction be wrong? If evolution is correct then homosexually should have or will die out. If all of humankind began to practice homosexuality exclusively, we would be extinct very soon. In light of this fact, doth not nature itself teach us that homosexuality is wrong? While it is true that there are heterosexual couples that cannot begat children, this does not change the fact that it is heterosexual couples having children which keeps the human family alive. And it does not change the fact that homosexual acts can never create life.

God says it’s wrong, and nature says it’s wrong. Everyone is not going to agree with this, but to portray faithful, logical and intelligent people as crazed, fanatical lunatics for believing and stating that homosexuality is wrong is grossly hypocritical and damaging to our civilization. Those who love to preach tolerance are not so tolerant with those with whom they disagree.

They have even created a name to call us – homophobic – as if we are emotionally or mentally unstable. I don’t believe anyone has an unreasonable fear of homosexuals. And I don’t believe that our fear of homosexuality becoming normalized and accepted is a phobia. They poke fun at we who disagree with their point of view, and joke that we are afraid that we or someone we love will “catch” homosexuality. But it is no joke the damage the idea that homosexuality is an equally valid lifestyle is doing to our society and our children.

Although homosexuality is not nearly so prevalent as they make out, there is no denying that the number of people who practice it have increased greatly over the last thirty years- and this is no accident. By sanctioning it or society has normalized it to many of our youth. In truth, we have gone far beyond sanctioning homosexuality as a viable lifestyle, our current culture has demonized any who would question the rightness of it. Because of this, a greater number of stressed out, confused and, impressionable youth have been lured into experimenting and practicing this unhealthy and promiscuous lifestyle.

God says it is wrong; nature says it is wrong. We as a society must love our children enough to teach them that it is wrong.

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Group Rights

 

by John R.. Taylor

john@ucan.us

Civil rights and group rights are not the same thing. While proponents of homosexual life styles lament that we, the majority who overwhelmingly defeated all the referendums across the nation which attempted to sanction and legally normalize that behavior, have some how denied them their due civil rights. Well for them, let us review American history and American government. The great Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the political ideas which formed them tell us our “unalienable rights.” We have the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (The political thought of the time actually stated the three as life, liberty and property, however, the masses of property-less common folks would be needed to cast off the yoke of tyranny, so the pursuit of happiness was inserted.) We have these rights. They cannot legally or morally be denied without due process of law. To truly think that two individuals of the same gender have some civil or constitutional right to marry is totally preposterous and ignorant of constitutional law and common sense. Men and women even, have no such civil or constitutional right. While God instituted marriage when He married Adam and Eve, from a legal and constitutional matter, marriage is a legal institution of man. No one has a civil or constitutional right to marry. We the people have the right to regulate marriage as we see fit, and it is from “we the people” where the true and rightful power and authority to govern flows. We the people have outlawed polygamy and bigamy, set the standards and requirements for marriage and the requirements for divorce. The Constitution gives us that right. To try and assert that because one group can legally do a thing that any other group has a similar right to do the thing is ridiculous. Do drunks have a constitutional right to drive because sober people can drive? Do men have a constitutional right to use a women’s restroom because women us them? Do youth have a constitutional right to collect social security benefits because retirees do? Do the lazy and slothful have a constitutional right to promotions because the hardworking and energetic receive promotions? Do rapist and murders have a constitutional right to remain free because law abiding citizens are not imprisoned? Do plumbers have a constitutional right to perform brain surgery because doctors do?

Our true constitutional and civil rights are actually very limited. Why - Because if they were not, they would over ride the rights of others. For example, do we have a constitutional right to eat? At first this seems like an easy yes. We have the right of life, and we have to eat to stay alive. But if we didn’t work or contribute where will our food come from? Someone else would have to provide it. Now here is the rub; does my constitutional right require that you provide me food? Of course it does not. We have no constitutional right to eat. We are free to eat or starve. Now, compassion and charity are of the noblest virtues, and no good society can exist without them, but charity by its very definition can not be compulsory.

Those who wished to pervert marriage in our most recent elections now say that we, (that is we the people,) are too stupid for democracy. I suppose they would have us let one of their more enlighten cohorts simply be our dictator.

America has spoken. Humble, moral, God believing, family protecting, patriotic Americas are “in step.” Egotistical, humanistic, atheistic, family perverting, America haters are out of step and out of touch. God bless America!

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Our Enemies Have WMD NOW!

By Adam Armstrong

armstronga@ucan.us

To those who feel it was a mistake to invade Iraq: you have failed to learn a very important lessen in logic. As a teaching tool, let me tell you how my daughter learned this lesson.

As a new sixteen year old driver, she was parking in a shopping center parking lot. The space she decided to park in was an angle type and it was angled in the other direction. As she started entering the space, my niece, who was setting in the front passenger side, said she didn’t think they could make it. Well, my daughter thought she could. She kept going. When she felt the car stop and saw the white Toyota in front of her rock, she knew she had been wrong.

The lesson in logic she learned that day, and the one I hope my disgruntle countryman will soon learn, is that the consequences of being wrong is a factor of paramount importance in any decision. What was my daughter’s down side. If she was wrong but continued on her course, she would cause an accident, damage property and possible cause injury, a relatively catastrophic loss. If she was right and could have made it, but stopped anyway, she would have to stop and back up, a relatively small loss.

In the Iraqi question we must also consider the possible downside. Opponents of President Bush and our decision to go into Iraq now vehemently announce that we were wrong. They say that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that his regime had no ties with al-Qaida. Many are not totally convinced of either of these assertions at this moment, however let us suppose that this is indeed the truth. What is the down-side to being wrong? A ruthless, murdering tyrant and his oppressive regime who have already invaded their neighbors have been deposed. A people have the opportunity of political freedom for the first time in their history. Those who hate America and wish as many of us dead as possible have one less sanctuary from which to finance and train terrorist. Now we cannot forget that this came at a high price. Many brave Americans gave their last full measure of devotion for this cause. Freedom has always exacted a high price. In the famous words of Thomas Payne, “tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us; that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives a thing its value, and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

Much of this has been said and augured before, but what has escaped note is what would have been the down side had we been wrong the other way. What if we had left Saddam in power and he had and used WMD? How many tens of thousands or even millions of Americas could now be dead or suffering from a nuclear terrorist attack? If we had been wrong the other way it might very well have been the most cataclysmic disaster this nation has ever faced.

If September 11 taught us anything, it should have taught us that we are vulnerable. We are the one superpower in the world, but our people are in jeopardy. The primary duty of any American president is to ensure the safety and security of the American people. As the great nation that we are, we should do all that we can to make the world a safer and better place to live, but it is the interest of America and Americans which must come first.

Our enemies now have weapons of mass destruction. They may not have nuclear warheads atop ICBMs, but they have access to dangerous nuclear material and deadly chemical and biological substances. Many of the same people who express fear of America’s nuclear energy program and would in a minute line up to protest the construction of a new nuclear power plant in this country, seem to have no problem whatsoever with Iran, Pakistan or any other Islamic country building such plants. Do they so how think that Americas would be less dead from an intentional terrorist attack using radioactive materials than if they were to die from an accidental exposure to such material?

It is my hope that our leaders will soon understand that the safety of the United States demands that nations whose populations have shown that they wish us dead should not be allowed to possess any radio active material. Most of these countries have abundant supplies of oil and they can us it to generate electric power. America should use all its means, including all out military force to remove nuclear weapons form Pakistan and India. While India is not a majority Moslem state, it too must disarm in order to maintain a balance of power between it and its potential enemy Pakistan. Our safety requires that nuclear weapons be removed from Pakistan. While it is true that we bought their government’s very unsteady alliance, the people of that country have great hate for America. They are harboring Osama Bin-Laden and many of what is left of his al-Qaida captains.

Rogue nations such as North Korea must also be forced to disarm, and give up all radioactive materials. This is a matter of national security. Our leaders must act now, before we are again the victims a sneak attack – before we are left wondering how our government let millions of Americans die.

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