{"id":914,"date":"2012-10-06T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-06T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/06\/no-freedoms-lost-with-ban"},"modified":"2012-10-06T13:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-10-06T13:59:00","slug":"no-freedoms-lost-with-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=914","title":{"rendered":"No freedoms lost with ban"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The foes of Amarillo\u2019s recently approved cellphone ban ordinance are dredging up all kinds of red herrings to state their case.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite canard suggests that the cellphone ban symbolizes a loss of freedom.<\/p>\n<p>To do what? To operate a motor vehicle while trying to call up someone on a handheld device \u2026 in the middle of traffic, or when children are present? The \u201cfreedom\u201d argument is nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that the City Commission decision to ban cellphone use while driving doesn\u2019t prohibit the activity altogether. Here\u2019s all you have to do: When the phone rings, pull your vehicle over \u2013 if you are able to do so safely, of course \u2013 stop your vehicle and then answer your phone. Then you can blab all you want, freely and without interruption.<\/p>\n<p>The other option is to let the phone keep ringing until the caller hangs up. My little flip-phone tells me when I\u2019ve missed a call; it even tells me who tried to call me. So I can call the person back when I get to a safe location.<\/p>\n<p>The lost-freedom society out there ignores another basic truth, which is that we have all kinds of laws that result in similar losses of freedom. As my wife wondered this morning, \u201cWhy stop when the stop sign tells me to stop when I can just keep driving through the intersection?\u201d She joked that stop signs deprive her of the \u201cfreedom\u201d to keep driving, but she chooses to stop \u2013 \u201cespecially when cars are coming from the other direction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The cellphone ban is a public safety issue. Being a good-government kind of guy, I think one of government\u2019s primary duties is to protect the public.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The foes of Amarillo\u2019s recently approved cellphone ban ordinance are dredging up all kinds of red herrings to state their case. My favorite canard suggests that the cellphone ban symbolizes a loss of freedom. To do what? To operate a motor vehicle while trying to call up someone on a handheld device \u2026 in the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=914\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No freedoms lost with ban<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}