Law De-Da

I know that there are some people who are law fanatics. They never really met a law, or a rule, they didn't like. Some people would call this type of person a "control freak." They aren't happy, or content, unless they are in control of every little thing other people do. And, they have this uncontrollable urge to find themselves "right" all the time. Really, they just fear being found wrong. To be wrong about something, anything, is a sign of weakness, or imperfection. And since authority figures are the ones usually making the rules they kiss up to authority at every opportunity, so to be on the side of the "right." It seems like a very sad life.

There are two types of people, those who favor the letter of the law, and those who favor the spirit of the law. I am a spirit-of-the-law kind of guy. To me, there has to be a good reason for a law, other than just that it is a law. Speeding in your car is dangerous, and can kill people, including yourself. So laws against speeding have a good purpose. On the other hand, rules like those that prohibit sleeping in the library are suspect. Sleeping in the library offends no one, and threatens no one, and thus there is no real good reason for it. It is known that certain homeless frequent the library. And it is the homeless how suffer the most from issues relating to sleep deprivation. So it is that it is almost always homeless people who fall asleep in the library. And it is to homelessness of a person who has fallen asleep in the library. If it were well dressed people and obviously not homeless, who were falling asleep in the library, then no such rule would exist. And there are other rules of the public library system that are only enforced against homeless people. It used to be that bags over a certain size were not allowed to carried into the library, and when a homeless person broke that law, he was told to take the bag back outside. All the while, business people, and students were bringing bags and other items that exceeded the limits of this rule yet nothing was ever said to these people. From the library's tactics as well as the police - the police were busting homeless people for their bags because supposedly their bags were blocking the right of way of pedestrians - the homeless no longer carry larger bags with them. It's now been some time since I've seen the library enforce the bag size rule.

As a side note, the homeless have been forced to stop carrying all their belongings with them, which means they now have to hide their belongings wherever they can. And it often happens that their things are found by others and either stolen or thrown away. Such loss of property is very damaging to the homeless, making it all that much harder for them to overcome their homelessness.