{"id":2360,"date":"2013-08-25T10:42:59","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T18:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/?p=2360"},"modified":"2013-08-25T13:55:15","modified_gmt":"2013-08-25T21:55:15","slug":"things-arent-always-what-they-seem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/archives\/2360","title":{"rendered":"Things Aren’t Always What They Seem"},"content":{"rendered":"

An eyebrow was raised by a blogger, on a blog<\/a> where I’m a frequent commenter, on the sensibility of a recently established bike lane in his city. I like bicycles. I like bicycling. I like bike lanes. Striping a bike lane on the shoulder of the road reminds drivers that cyclists are permitted to share the road. I wouldn’t care if the road was striped or not if not for the countless drivers in my fair city who see bicyclists in the roadway as a deserving target of a jettisoned beer bottle.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, however, advocating for bicycles and bike lanes has become associated with being politically liberal. I understand there’s a basis in reality for this. Nevertheless, I am far from politically liberal, and I am not going to stop liking bicycles or quietly advocating for bike lanes in my city simply because it overlaps with a nominally liberal cause. So what?<\/p>\n

Attempting, I suppose, to amplify the sentiment of the blogger, a commenter snarked:<\/p>\n

Liberalism at work. Let’s create traffic jams in the off chance there’s somebody pedaling a bike.<\/em><\/p>\n

This got me started. I replied, not disrespectfully I thought:<\/p>\n

Where I live car lanes have never been suddenly appropriated for bikes only. And offhand I can’t think of a single city I’ve biked in over the past 30 years (many) where that has been the case. Sometimes when a bike lane is established it may make an existing car lane narrower, but so what, what’s wrong with sharing the road? Plus I’ve never understood why people make the association that if you like cycling and\/or support bike lanes you therefore must also be politically liberal.<\/em><\/p>\n

Instead of booyah!, I was booed. Initially anyway.<\/p>\n

Okay, no biggy, I’m a thick-skinned boy, been arguing on and off on the Internet for, oh, going on twenty years now I guess. I cut my teeth on USENET.<\/p>\n

But then what really<\/em> got me going was this:<\/p>\n

It’s the use of government force to bring to fruition a pet cause of the elite minority regardless of it’s impracticality or the views of the overwhelming majority.<\/em><\/p>\n

Good grief. The liberal association smear again. I can’t expect the commenter knew my politics are largely Libertarian, and thus likely to the right<\/em> of even him\/her on many issues, and I should have dropped it, but I didn’t, couldn’t resist the opportunity to point out that both political parties use the force of government to oppress majorities. I replied:<\/p>\n

Yes, like the unending commitment by the majority of Republicans to continue prosecuting the WarOnDrugs.<\/em><\/p>\n

More loud booing. 4 down votes, among my first at the blog!<\/p>\n

True, my overall “score” did improve as the day wore on, as more readers weighed in evidently finding merit in my thinly veiled wisdom, but still, I couldn’t fathom how anybody’s Scopeometer could be so out of whack as to think bike lanes are a worthy example of the tyranny of the minority!<\/p>\n

No, booing my comment more likely indicates that certain people on the Right are rankled by any<\/em> criticism of the Republican party, true or not. Too bad. Because it is a feature of Libertarianism, not a bug, to be able to express contempt for the overreach of both<\/strong> parties, where the policies of either merit it.<\/p>\n

Moral of the story: It is a mistake to assume that people who advocate for a nominally liberal cause are necessarily liberals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An eyebrow was raised by a blogger, on a blog where I’m a frequent commenter, on the sensibility of a recently established bike lane in his city. I like bicycles. I like bicycling. I like bike lanes. Striping a bike lane on the shoulder of the road reminds drivers that cyclists are permitted to share […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2376,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rknibbe.com\/Wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}