Law enforcers aren’t “heroes” . . . but what about firemen?
Are they Hose Heroes?
People are pressured to regard them as such. Much as they are pressured to genuflect, North Korean funeral-style, before the Presence of a law enforcer.
You are probably forced to pay for fire “services” in your community. Just as you are forced to “help” pay for law enforcement – even if you yourself feel no need for either service and would rather opt-out, if that choice were available to you.
But of course, you have no such choice.
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And because you are forced to pay, there is no check on what is spent. The formerly small-scale local all-volunteer FD becomes professional – with salaried full-time firefighters who have contracts guaranteeing them large salaries and, of course, benefits.
Multiple ladder trucks and other such vehicles usually appear – the costs shuffled onto the backs of the taxpayers in the area, who no longer have much, if any, say as regards the need for all this elaborate equipment. Since appearances must be maintained, all this elaborate, over-the-top equipment is often sent out en masse to cat-in-a-tree calls, with much show of emergency lights, special costumes, cones being set up and traffic stopped in its tracks.
Thus, the FD becomes another services-at-gunpoint bureaucracy. And the primary mission of any bureaucracy is to preserve and perpetuate itself.
Expanding itself if possible.
Always, via the use of force.
The fighting of fires becomes of secondary importance, very much as protecting the persons and property of citizens has become secondary to the enforcement of laws.
Firemen write and enforce fire codes – bureaucratic edicts dictating to a private business owner how many customers he may serve in “his” (in quotes to emphasize the irony) establishment. If the owner balks, the Hose Hero will summon other heroes – heroes with guns – to enforce compliance.
Whether a building is a “fire hazard” – as defined by a Hose Hero – is not the issue. The issue is whether the building is someone else’s private property – and whether the Hose Hero or any other costumed hero – has the right to interfere in any way with the owner of the private property.
By insisting otherwise, the Hose Hero is asserting an ownership claim over someone else’s property. By what right does he do this?
No one ever asks – much fewer answers.
Hose Heroes have also been known to prevent actual heroics. For instance, there was an incident a few years back where a man was forcibly restrained by Hose Heroes and prevented from attempting to save his child, who was trapped inside a burning house. Ryan Miller was Tasered for “disobeying the orders of fire officials” who decided on his behalf that the life of his three-year-old stepson was not worth attempting to save. When Ryan Miller ignored them, ” the fire chief then made the call to have Miller handcuffed and taken to the police station” … (see here).
Who was the Hero here?
Whether Miller’s actions put him at risk of being hurt or even killed is not relevant – unless you take the view that Miller is your child or your property and you have the right to exert parental/ownership rights over him.
Hose Heroes – like the other form of Hero – believe in exactly such a right.
