If Only We Could Disable the ADA
by Greg Perry by Greg Perry
It is with sad regret that America celebrated the 16th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) yesterday, July 26, 2006. 16 years ago, in 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law. Assuming you have masochistic tendencies you can watch a video of the signing here. At the signing they rolled out a bunch of handicapped people to make the signing look more justified than it would have appeared if just normal people had been there.
The law was strongly encouraged by fellow Republican Sen. Bob Dole, who took a prompt interest in the ADA from its inception perhaps due to the injury he sustained in World War II. In his final speech to the Senate in 1995, Dole proudly announced that the ADA was one of his three proudest accomplishments while serving in the Senate. The only accomplishment he listed as being more important to his career than the ADA was strengthening the United States Food Stamp Program. TurnLeft.com listed the ADA as a "rare nod in favor of liberalism by Mr. Dole." In retrospect, true conservatives have brought into question the site’s use of the term rare.
The video confirms this: the Americans with Disabilities Act has been called "Civil Rights for the Disabled." This implies that handicapped American citizens have been widely discriminated against. But you have to look long and hard to find where these citizens had crutches kicked out from under their arms before the ADA was implemented. People didn’t push wheelchair-bound crippled people into traffic. It took the ADA to create discrimination against the handicapped in America.
They’re More Equal Than You Are
The proponents of the ADA fought hard so that those with parking permits had equal access in parking lots. In other words, the handicaps have extra-wide parking spaces right next to building entrances which are available no matter how full the non-handicapped spaces get. The handicapped spaces must measure at least eight-feet wide, designated with the international wheelchair symbol, and be van-accessible. Vertical clearance of more than eight feet on the vehicular route into the space must be at least 98 inches also on the route to the space and along the route to an exit. (One must give the authors of ADA law credit for being extra verbose.) So where is the "equal" in "equal access"?
In a brochure written for business owners, the ADA states, "It is illegal to segregate people with disabilities in one area by designating it as an accessible area to be used only by people with disabilities." By their very own words, no accessible area can be segregated solely for use by the handicapped.
Why don’t you test how little the ADA’s authors meant this; park in a handicapped parking space some time without a permit.
So no area can be designated as a handicapped area because doing so would segregate (and separate) the disabled. Yet virtually every aspect of the Americans with Disabilities Act does just that. The ADA’s entire massive collection of rules and regulations states how areas must be changed, marked, and separated for those with disabilities. The very specifications of the ADA violate its own statement against segregation. Nobody cares.
Liberals used to love it when they created separate entrances for African-Americans. They loved putting up signs that designated restrooms and drinking fountains to be used by one race of people. The NAZIs, all liberals (obviously liberal in the modern sense, not the classic, libertarian sense), loved to separate Jewish people from the masses because it was so much simpler to murder them.
The murder of Jews isn’t a stretch for me to make. Our ADA lawmakers and ADA fans love to euthanize handicapped people. They love it.
Terri Schiavo’s only crime that brought to her capital punishment was that she was disabled. Where were the ADA attorneys and advocates when she needed them? I’ll tell you where they were. They were suing businesses they hunted down who violated the ADA’s obscure and conflicting and ambiguous building code requirements.
Where are the ADA attorneys and advocates when babies are aborted for the sole reason that they don’t have designer genes? I’ll tell you where they are. They are looking for their next meal ticket.
ADA advocates and ADA lawyers don’t care about the handicapped. They despise the handicapped. No matter which side of the Schiavo debate you found yourself on, and no matter which side of the abortion debate you are on, you will be hard-pressed to contradict the following: If the handicapped parking spaces of Schiavo’s hospice were 3 inches too narrow they would have shut that place down! If an abortionist’s entrance has no wheelchair ramp the ADA advocates will scream at the top of their lungs and threaten lawsuits! (They’ll probably only threaten; I personally doubt any ADA advocate would want to harm an abortionist’s business because it’s too easy to make money killing babies who would otherwise be born with, say, only 3 stubby fingers and one leg. As I was.)
The Unintended Consequences
I’ve written several times here on LewRockwell.com to show clearly how the ADA increases discrimination against the handicapped. But we shouldn’t be surprised at that. And we shouldn’t be surprised that government agencies and ADA advocates across the country threw anniversary parties yesterday to celebrate the ADA’s signing. They love it! The ADA is big bucks. It’s a lot of money, a lot of power, and a lot of press for them.
They celebrate even though handicapped folk are discriminated against far more now than before the ADA. You see this phenomenon in all aspects of governmental control and redistribution of wealth. For example, when the government takes over education and childcare, parents relinquish their own responsibility.
Consider also that when the government takes money to build museums from people who don’t want to see inside museums so that people who want to go to museums get in free. Those who want the museums should be the ones paying the bills, but the very opposite takes place. Certainly some private money pays for museums, but the public "endowments" come right out of the pocketbooks of many who care nothing for them. When the government punishes criminals with community service work such as cleaning alongside roads and highways, the public is less likely to pick up its own litter. (Only government would think it is good to train the public that a nice idea such as community service should be turned into a punishment.)
When the government takes over a free society’s traditional responsibilities, that now less-free society instantly begins to abandon its natural instinct to help those who need and want help. So when a small business owner sees a one-legged cripple hobble up to his door on crutches, he is far more likely today to think when he sees me, "Grab that $300 handbar and let yourself in. You’re now equal!" Before the ADA cost him a small fortune to remodel, he was far more likely to go help his customers who needed help.
The ADA Is a Complete and Utter Failure
In a stunning acknowledgement, the Center for an Accessible Society says this on their Web site: "In 1990, 70% of people with disabilities were unemployed, and the figure remains the same today [post-2000]." (www.accesiblesociety.org)
As I write in Disabling America: The Unintended Consequences of the Government’s Protection of the Handicapped, the "70 percent" figure does seem to exaggerate the number of unemployed disabled people in 1990, especially given the ADA’s fallacious origins. But even if it is accurate, the amazing admission that 70 percent are still unemployed is telling.
