Posted on 10/09/2013 2:28:42 PM PDT by smoothsailing
By Marshall Connolly, Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM) 10/8/2013
LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Until very recently, the National Park Service was one of the least-loathed government agencies in the country. Now, with orders from on high to keep the public from visiting beloved parks and monuments the agency is developing a poor reputation.
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It what looks like a spiteful move, the NPS even removed handles from water spigots along the Chesapeake and Ohio canal where bikers and joggers exercise as well as along the Great Allegheny Passage, just to ensure people don't get any water from them...
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
Is there any possibility that this is part of the water shut down for upcoming freezing weather?
It’s beyond time to bring out the guns. Start tarring and feathering in mobs, and to strike the fear of a FREE REPUBLIC into our government. If anyone thinks it’s just the NPS then you are naive, it’s every single department, they are all rotten at the core.
“I hope you didn’t mean to compare park rangers blocking access to parks to the crimes prosecuted at Nuremburg.”
Of course not. My point is that reflexively running to the excuse of Just Following Orders is not defensible.
Though I applaud, in the spirit "innocent to proven guilty", your willingness to entertain another explanation, the truly sad thing about reports like these is this: it is no longer a stretch of the imagination to conclude that the childish spite driving these actions is, in fact, emanating from the highest office of the land. With the Obama White Spite House, anything is possible.
The only silver lining to the horribly dark cloud that has descended upon America is that when I speak with my lefty family members (every family has a few), I can now ask them a question: "Do you honestly believe that if a Republican President presided over such blatantly spiteful National Park Service actions that the major news outlets would remain as quiet as they are doing today with Obama's NPS? Do you honestly think that erecting barricades around the open-air World War II memorial while allowing National Mall access to supporters of some favored interest group to erect a stage would not be resoundingly condemned by ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and the AP every moment of every day?"
In short, my lefty family members finally have to concede that the major news outlets are, in fact, far from impartial. To claim otherwise is just plain delusional. Yes, there's always a delusional hold-out or two. There always will be. But I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the members of my family who grew up Democrat, and just never had--or took--the time to look into why.
All of the petulance, arrogance, and childishness that is Barack Obama and his fellow travelers is now exposed for all to see. All the talk about George W. Bush being an imperial president is now coming home to roost when it is abundantly clear that Bush didn't even attempt one-tenth of one percent of what Obama has already done.
Whether this will translate into fewer people voting Democrat in the future is anyone's guess. Life-long habits and delusions are hard to give up. So I, for one, am not holding my breath. Still, the disgust at Obama I now see in the eyes of my loved ones who up till recently had a favorable opinion of Barry baby is a welcome change. Up till now some of my family members thought I was the wacky one. Now they're finally wondering if I hadn't been right all along.
Planting the seeds for a future revolt.
NPS are BROWN SHIRT THUGS!!! Even the LIV are going to see what this admin. has done.
Thank you for being a great FReeper!!
I wish more would do this. Seeing thousands (hopefully millions) of Gadsden flags flying all over would be a daily message that’s hard to ignore.
IIRC, you can get a 3’x 5’ flag through Amazon for $5. I’m thinking of buying them in bulk and giving as Christmas gifts. (or birthdays, or ....)
This sounds like Tim Kaine who trashed Virginia’s rest stops because there was no money-literally ripping out plumbing fixtures. Bob MaDonnell was elected and found the money to repair the structures and open them.
Unfortunately, Tim Kaine is now a Senator, Obama was elected with the help of Virginia, and Terry McAulliffe (former head of the DNC) is ahead in the polls to become the next governor. Virginia is going to the dogs.
Living in Minnesota I had viewed NPS rangers kind of like Scout leaders but these past few days have proved me wrong.
Studies show that two of three people will go along to get along, even with the most extreme abuse and even torture.
The die is cast, Obama Care is the new "Final Solution" and seniors citizens and white baby-boomers are soon to be executed by the Brown Orifice (BO) in the White Hut.
Are they sure about the Great Allegheny Passage? That is a private facility.
This will not end well, hopefully.
shutting off the water does not involve removing the handles from the fountains. This is just spiteful.
At many parks around here, they shut off the water this time of year, just in case of freezing pipes, etc. Just sayin’ it might have nothing to do with the shutdown...
I was wondering the same thing.
You shut down water lines by closing their supply valves, not by removing faucet handles. (Nice excuse-making though. Very creative of you.)
So why didn’t they just close the supply valves?
Park Police have been around for a long time as you say, but they were always a separate entity from your basic “park ranger”. Now, they are all vested with police power and I don’t believe that was the case until the patriot act.
That wouldn't send the same message, would it?
For many parks and campgrounds, private companies DO run them. The Park service shut them down. Coyoteblog belongs to a guy who previously ran about a hundred of them...now he just pays for their utilities and insurance as they sit closed.
That is a very important distinction.
There is a reason why we have civilian control of the military, as well as the non-military uniformed forces such as the police and fire departments.
Illegal orders are not what's going on — at least not yet.
I'm not defending some of the obnoxious things that have been reported being done by National Park Service personnel over the last few days. I don't know details but I'm quite willing to believe that some really bad things have happened.
However, when push comes to shove — as it did at the World War II Memorial — reports posted here on Free Republic seem to indicate that the Park Service personnel started going out of their way to find “creative” ways to obey the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law to close the World War II memorial.
That is de facto but not de jure disobedience by those in uniform — doing exactly what the order says but effectively contradicting what the order was meant to accomplish.
I think SJackson might know quite a bit about the real crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg in which people claimed to be “just following orders,” and they aren't anywhere in the same ball park as what the National Park Service are doing here.
Before people say small things turn into big things, that's true — but not the way it may be meant.
If local German police had de facto resisted Hitler's early orders in ways comparable to what the National Park Service is doing at the World War II Memorial, it would have sent a clear but quiet signal that the German bureaucracy would not follow the leadership of jackbooted thugs and wannabees who, in the early days of the Nazis, often put on Nazi Party uniforms in part because they couldn't meet the strict standards of the Prussian-dominated German civil service and its post-WW1 severely reduced military.
It's no secret that the professional German military and much of the educated civil service hated Hitler and regarded him as a fool. They did nothing in the early days, and often actively cooperated once he gained power.
We are seeing something very different from the National Park Service, at least so far.
And when it comes to the military, this scandal of dead servicemembers’ families not getting their death benefits is not going down well among anyone on active duty who I know. People who usually avoid politics are blazing mad — and you can tell it by the wives and retirees who get on Facebook and blast the President with the obvious quiet support of their active-duty husbands and active-duty sons and daughters.
I do not think President Obama is smart enough to pull off an armed takeover of our government, even if he wanted to do so — and one example of that is this abuse of our dead soldiers’ families. That is not something that will be forgotten quickly by those wearing the uniform. When people's lives are on the line, they need to know their families will be taken care of if they die. If they aren't sure of those things, they start pulling back, holding fire, and avoiding risks and dangers. Hesitation and fear about what will happen back home are “rust” which degrade military morale, and Obama is not exactly giving soldiers the confidence they need to follow his orders if things get really bad.
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