The Birthplace of American Liberty Defies Obama's Tyranny
The Birthplace of American Liberty Defies Obama's Tyranny
The Birthplace of American Liberty Defies Obama's Tyranny
By Nick Chase
I
grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, and my elementary and high-school
education was infused with the history that was all around us, so I was
very curious to know just how the shutdown of the nation's parks had
affected my most favorite part of Minute Man National Park -- the Old
North Bridge.
Had
the Park Service wrapped the iconic Minute Man sculpture by Daniel
Chester French in burlap, so the tourists couldn't see it? I took a few
minutes on a perfectly gorgeous Columbus Day to find out.
As I expected, the parking lots had been chained off, the bathrooms
were locked, and the park headquarters (the old Stedman Buttrick
Georgian-style mansion) was closed up. Monument Street (foreground in
the picture) is actually a long residential street with parking allowed
along most of it, and with parking prohibited only in the immediate
vicinity of the Bridge. So some tourists had parked by the side of the
road and walked a few hundred feet to the Bridge.
Fortunately
for visitors, The Old Manse, the Revolutionary-era home of the Rev.
William Emerson, and situated on a nine-acre parcel abutting the Bridge
and the Concord River, is owned by the Trustees of Reservations -- and is not part of the national park system. It was not shut down.
The Trustees thoughtfully provided parking in their big open field for people who dared to defy the shutdown of the park.
It's only a short walk from The Old Manse to the pathway running
from Monument Street to the Old North Bridge. You can see that "Area
Closed" signs were posted, but there was no further effort to barricade
people from walking on the public's property.
On
most Columbus Day holidays, with such beautiful weather, this walkway
to the Bridge would be teeming with tourists. Not this year.
No
barricades were erected to prevent tourists from crossing the Bridge.
(This would have been the easiest and most effective place to erect
barricades to hassle people.)
As you can see, people could freely walk
the park grounds on both sides of the river. They could learn about and
enjoy the history of the place, using their own resources, just as had
been done for the 185 years before the National Park Service took over
the place. No "recreating" prohibited here!
The Minute Man -- enduring symbol of our hard-won freedoms.
Perhaps
the park rangers, who instruct thousands of visitors each year on how
America's freedoms were fought for and won, actually had absorbed the
lessons they were teaching, and would have been so deeply ashamed about
shutting off public access to land the public owns (and which our
forebears fought to set free) that they couldn't bring themselves to do
it.
Or
perhaps, the further away we get from the cesspool that is DC, and the
more removed we are from the vindictive actions of Obama and Valerie
Jarrett, the more likely it is that common sense will prevail.
About
the author: Nick Chase is a retired but still very active technical
writer, technical editor, computer programmer and stock market
newsletter writer. During his career he has produced documentation on
computers, typewriters, typesetters, headline-makers, and other pieces
of equipment most people never heard of, and he has programmed
typesetting equipment. You can read more of his work on the American Thinker website and at contrariansview.org.
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