This little story is for the politically left leaning supporter who believes that government brings fairness to the world by taking from those who have and giving to those who don’t, and that security is provided under an umbrella of policing authority. Every single day of my life I am engaged in a science experiment that has technical and behavior science ramifications which involves the motorcycle seen in the picture above. I seldom ever part from that motorcycle as it goes virtually everywhere I do every single day of a calendar year. I ride that motorcycle in the worst rainstorms, heaviest winds and even in the snow and ice. One time this past year of 2013 it snowed so badly while I was out and about that I couldn’t even turn my front wheel to change direction from one road to the next. I was regulated to only traveling in a straight line and then could not stop because the roads were so slick. Needless to say I did not crash. Part of my experiment is to see how much the human body can take in endurance while still performing at a high level. The nature of riding motorcycles means that there is no room for mistakes, so they cannot be made. By riding my motorcycle all year I get to break all kinds of perceived rules that society believes they must function under, and it gives me fresh perspectives that are useful elsewhere.
Most days riding that motorcycle is uneventful. But over the course of 365 days a year there are always 5 to 6 days where something potentially devastating happens. One such thing that wasn’t dangerous so much as it was technical was that I had a battery that was failing. After so many starts through a hard winter it wasn’t holding a charge, and when temperatures dropped to under 30 degrees, I was having a hard time getting it started. Well, one day toward the end of February I had barely managed to get the bike started at its destination for the return trip home and my fuel was extremely low. I was worried that if I got gas on the way home, that I wouldn’t get the bike started again because it didn’t have enough amps to crank the engine over. So I urged the bike to get as close to my home as possible. With luck I’d get to the gas station that was about a quarter-mile from my home—but I had serious doubts.
The big bike did run out of gas about a half mile from that sought after fueling station so I put it in neutral to coast the rest of the distance. My bike stopped rolling at the entrance to the gas station and I was able to push with my feet the motorcycle into the parking lot and up to the pump without too much extra trouble. I filled up my tank, but as I suspected the bike wouldn’t crank over more than a couple of times, not enough to start in the cold weather. The battery had not charged enough on the way home because I kept my RPMs down to save the gas. So I was a quarter-mile away from home but couldn’t start my bike. I didn’t want to call my wife because she was watching our grandchild for one of my daughters and I didn’t wish to bother her. So I started pushing the motorcycle that weighs about 800 pounds up the busy roadway toward my home.
There is a slight hill that I had to go up and along the way twice two motorists stopped to help me. Both men were summertime bikers and wanted to help a fellow motorcyclist. They offered me a ride or gas without any pretension of inconvenience. I asked them if they had jumper cables as my bike has a computer and cannot be kick started, or push-started in the usual way. It has to be started off the battery. Neither man had jumper cables with them so they wouldn’t be able to help. The second guy who stopped was a die-hard Harley Rider with a long beard that hung down over his stomach. He had a very nice warm truck that I could feel the heat coming out of as he spoke to me. It was very tempting to get into his passenger’s seat and have him take me home. Yet I didn’t want to leave my bike on the side of a busy road, even though my home was very nearby. Instead I waved the help along and thanked them for their concern. I decided to push my big bike the rest of the way home, which is what I proceeded to do in small intervals up the hill. It took me an additional 45 minutes, but eventually I was in my driveway and safe in my garage where I could make the necessary repairs and get the bike ready for the next day’s travel.
The guys who stopped to help me were not told by government to assist. They did it out of mutual respect. Being bikers themselves, they wanted to help a fellow motorcyclist. They didn’t know me from anybody else, they only saw that I was pushing my motorcycle up a hill and they wanted to help—because as both men said—“I’ve been there a time or two myself.” But I did not accept their help because I did not want to abandon my motorcycle in favor of comfort. So I struggled to push the bike up the hill in the freezing cold because if I hadn’t I would have wished later that I had toughed it out. Both bikers looked at me a bit odd when I reported to them that I’d push the bike the rest of the way home, but neither found the information alien.
It never even occurred to me to call the police, or Triple AAA or any organization for help with my predicament. I ride the motorcycle every day to solve problems like that from time to time. People under their own volition wished to help me, and I didn’t need government to get home. I picked as I always do, the most “self-reliant” option there was, and because I challenged the bike to get close to my house before running out of gas I gave myself the option of pushing it home if all systems failed—which they did.
In the absence of government Americans naturally want to help each other. Charity comes from respect and occurs because people want to do good things. The bikers who wanted to help me didn’t do it out of fear of being struck down by God if they drove on by, and they didn’t do it because they were paid by the tax payer to help stranded motorists. They did it because they too were bikers and they respected another biker to the level that they wanted to help if they could out of their own free-will, no government involvement at all. The same happens wherever government is not–even to this day. The good is easy to see in people where government has not stepped in to be the un-necessary mediator of disputes—which I get to see a few times a year because of my tendency to ride motorcycles beyond the safety net of normal society. All government systems could fail, as they do during emergencies, and people help each other without being told to out of sheer respect for their fellow human beings. Such behavior is not driven from fearful submission to authority, or altruistic compassion, but out of a sincere desire to help a fellow-man in their plight to do their daily activities. In the case of the bikers they are acting on self-interest ultimately. They hope that I or somebody else will do the same if they get into trouble, so they offer up the help so the network is nonverbally maintained.
In life if all government was shut down, and all tax payer funded activities were removed, my journey home that day would have been the same. The gas station would have still had gas when I needed it because it’s to their financial incentive to have what I need when I need it. And those two guys would have still stopped. But because of my tendency toward self-reliance I didn’t need their help, although it was appreciated. As for the roads and my use of them, I paid an enormous amount of state tax at the pump when I bought my gas which more than paid for my use of the pavement that day. I got my bike home and fixed without the intrusion of any government representative even in the form of a police officer. That is a trend that will continue. It is because of such realizations that I have less and less respect for those who vote in large government programs to provide a “safety net” for their lives. I avoid such safety like a man on fire seeks water. I stay as far away from them as possible, which is the primary reason I ride a motorcycle every single day of the year no matter what the weather. It is good to know these kinds of things, and most of the time they can only be seen by doing what nobody else is willing to do. It rests in my mind the argument that government could be greatly reduced and America would actually improve instead of decline, because the will to do good is still in people like the two guys who stopped to help me in a quarter-mile stretch of road. Such good people are still out there, but we just don’t see them because government stands in the way of us discovering such facts about each other. Government wishes to maintain the myth that they are needed, when in fact they are simply in the way.
And by the way, if the goof balls in The United Nations ever think they can get control of the people shown in the videos above, they are on “crack.” Most of those people are just now becoming aware of the problems I write about here everyday. And when they realize they have been scammed……………….they are going to be VERY, pissed off.
Rich Hoffman
“If they attack first………..blast em’!”
The Overmanwarrior 