If You Weren't Disabled Before the ADA, You Are Now
10 Ways the ADA Harms Normal People
by
Greg Perry
by Greg Perry
When
an alarm system is disabled, it doesn't work. I resent being called
disabled. I work.
I
am a handicapped man. I was born with one leg and a total of 3 deformed
fingers. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) advocates don't
like it when I say "handicapped" and "normal." That's one reason
I say them. Of course, they also don't like the fact that I type
4550 words per minute, rollerblade, and tell the truth about
the ADA.
Political
correctness was designed for two reasons:
- To use
it against people for financial gain, such as the ADA-related
psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, and bureaucrats who make
their fortunes off backs that they cripple.
- To create
victims out of folks who were not victims before the ADA. As
Walter K. Olson so accurately says, we didn't want to be seen
as victims!
Political
correctness is not something cute that we can shrug off as some
lefty's pet. Political correctness is deadly. Nowhere is political
correctness more deadly than the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Consider the deaf person who recently sued for not being hired as
a lifeguard. The managers of the beach were concerned that the deaf
person may not hear drowning screams for help. The ADA lawyers didn't
care. To the ADA, life and death issues take a back seat when it
comes to justifying their jobs.
The
ADA increases discrimination against the handicapped. I can prove
it but that's not my purpose here. My purpose here is to show the
ADA's cost to normal people.
If
you're normal, here are ten ways the ADA harms you (it was difficult
narrowing down the huge list to only ten items):
- The next
time your kids go swimming, how comfortable will you be knowing
that the ADA wants the managers of that pool or beach to hire
a deaf lifeguard if one applies?
- You pay
higher prices in stores for everything you buy to purchase new
ramps, faucets, doors, parking signs, revamped parking lots,
converted counter heights, light switches, phones, toilets,
sinks, stalls, and even the wider aisle widths required which
cut down on the amount of merchandise store owners can sell.
- You pay
higher prices for the business owners who must defend themselves
or settle out of court when they are sued under the ADA for
their formerly-legal hiring practices and who faithfully followed
legal building codes that were afterwards tossed out by the
ADA.
- You pay
higher prices as a taxpayer when the Department of Justice and
the EEOC brings many of these suits to court. See, the public
pays both sides of an ADA lawsuit: the side of the defendant
and the side of the plaintiff who is often the United States
Government. You lose. (No matter which side wins, the lawyers
always seem to be paid...)
- You pay
higher ticket prices at the movies. Not only are theatres being
sued to put wheelchair seating in higher and more central locations
in the large auditoriums, they are having to install elevators
as well. Not only are multiple seats being removed to make way
for wheelchair spaces that may or may never be used, some seats
are being widened to make way for the disabled fat people suing
under the ADA because they cannot fit in normal seats. Fewer
seats available mean fewer tickets sold mean higher prices for
you mean more lawsuits for other businesses mean more ADA activist
profits.
- You pay
the moral and ethical degradation when retroactive laws like
the Americans with Disabilities Act pass. Retroactive laws are
harmful; they ensure that you cannot count on today's building
codes being legal tomorrow and you cannot count on the justice
system to protect you ever in the future.
- You pay
the court costs associated with the government buildings that
are still being sued today in 2004 because they don't conform
to the ADA's accessibility building codes. That's right, the
government started requiring - then suing - private businesses
to conform to the draconian ADA building standards they themselves
designed without first changing all their own front doors. "Leading
by example" is not a term familiar to most government leaders.
Actually, saying "government leaders" gives the term "leader"
a bad name.
- You pay
cost in lost time as you walk by row after row of empty wheelchair
parking spaces to get to the front door of any American business.
The government knows best how many spaces a business owner needs
to allocate for disabled parking. The business owner doesn't
get a say in the matter. It presupposes that the government
knows every business owner's clientele far better than the business
owner himself… that's why you so often see row after row of
empty wheelchair spaces and every normal space overflowing.
- Round
doorknobs are illegal in the United States of America. (You
didn't know that, did you?) Commercial establishments will be
shut down if they refuse to change from round door knobs to
levered ones.
- Do you
have a wheelchair symbol painted on your driveway? If not, you
might soon. The ADA is coming to your neighborhood! Already
some neighborhoods are being required to build houses that meet
accessibility standards. You might as well buy the blue paint
now before the rush.
May
15, 2004
Greg
Perry [send him mail]
may have been born with one leg and a total of three fingers, but
don’t call him disabled! He prefers the term "handicapped" because
the ADA advocates hate that term. You might wonder how that applies
to him because Perry is the most prolific computer book author in
the world and just finished his 75th computer book published internationally.
He recently fulfilled his long-standing promise to expose the Americans
with Disabilities Act by writing the book Disabling
America: The Unintended Consequences of the Government’s Protection
of the Handicapped.
Copyright
© 2004 LewRockwell.com
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