[Part A] TRUTH IN PAVING
Truths with hard, empirical evidence are best, since all concerned see, or know, the same information, the same fact(s). Laws may be enforced based on empirical evidence. Consider directions, or geometric dimensions. They are often expressed as related to right or left hands. Roads are an example: they have length and width, width described as the left side and right side of the road. As soon as more than one person desired to travel on a road, some sort of custom, and later, law, was needed to prevent collisions.
TWO SIDES TO EVERY TRUTH
Since it was – and is – absolutely true that the road had a left and right half – or sides – then a law that directed travelers or drivers to “keep to the right,” as they were facing, prevented collisions to every traveler’s benefit. Truth is a good basis for laws.
Nowhere are people who have lost their right hands excused from obeying the “right-hand” law. The loss of a hand doesn’t change the truth.
DIRECTIONAL OPPRESSION
Now, let’s imagine some travelers, or drivers, feeling oppressed by the right-hand restriction. These are they who feel compelled to drive in a different lane than the right-hand one. This leads them to drive on the left side, which poses serious risks to themselves and others. Mature, elected leaders, never at loss for a pander, rather than tell those differently-compelled drivers that they must drive on the right, instead tell cities, towns and states to hurry up and create a third lane down the middle so that the differently-compelled can drive in a lane that’s not the right-hand lane.
THREE DIRECTIONS… FOUR
No sooner is the third lane completed, striped and the road landscaped, but a problem crops up with other differently-compelled drivers going the other way, who also want to drive in the center lane. No problem to political types: everyone will simply cough up the taxes to build a fourth lane to accommodate both directions of differently-compelled drivers. Problem solved… maybe.
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE TRUTH BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Unfortunately, many differently-compelled drivers can’t set aside the urge to drive on the left side, and actually feel discriminated against to be forced to use the middle lane(s). Politicians feel their pain right away. A new law is created that requires all right-hand-adhering drivers to make way whenever some differently-compelled driver feels compelled to use the left lane. Old-law-abiding drivers are given the option to drive in the middle lanes or, if they think it’s safer, to pull off the road and wait until a differently-compelled driver goes by. It interferes with all the non-differently-compelled drivers’ travel, but, none of the differently-compelled drivers feel oppressed any longer. That is legally important above all other concerns – even truth.
A TRUTH TO FIT EVERYONE
Eventually, though, non-differently-compelled drivers find that when traffic builds up, it saves a lot of time to take the center lanes or even the left lane. Police pull them over because they look like Non- Differently-Compelled drivers, and not like differently-compelled ones. Amazingly, every driver pulled over for driving on the wrong side of the street turns out to feel compelled to drive in other than the right lanes!
Oppression is either more widespread than originally known, or it’s contagious. Traffic cops would now be in a tough spot since the oppressed, non-oppressed and temporarily-oppressed all look alike. Perhaps the oppressed could wear different hats… or something.