What better way to start off my online article writing than by blasting people in wheelchairs? Well, they should not be treated any differently than others, so when they do something outrageously stupid, people with disabilities should be criticized as harshly as anyone else.
I saw a report on FOXNews the other evening that should set off warning bells in the heads of all current and future homeowners in the country, as well as those that believe government should stay out of people's personal lives as much as possible. The report originally caught my attention because it was about Naperville, a Chicago suburb near where I used to live. It did not take long for it to get my blood boiling.
It seems the Naperville city council passed building code changes that require all new homes built in the city to be handicapped-accessible. Not public buildings or businesses (one assumes regulations already exist for them), but private homes! In the words of a Chicago Tribune article, "activists for the disabled take the fight for accessibility into a new realm: the right to visit other people's homes."
The new requirements include not only things like lower light switches and wider doors, but other things such as reinforced bathroom walls to facilitate handrails. In addition, the city council is considering requiring at least one entrance to have no steps.
One of the consequences is obvious: cost. A home builder interviewed in the FOXNews report said that the changes could cost anywhere from $300 to thousands. It is feared that increasing cost could discourage people from building new homes, at least in Naperville.
But there are other cons of this action. After all, a couple thousand dollars is nothing to someone who can afford one of the $300,000 homes shown on the report. One of the disabled men interviewed, however, said he hopes this will be a growing trend in this country. What happens when these kinds of rules work their way across the country and down into middle-class and low-income housing, keeping that many more people from being able to afford new homes? The man did not address this, of course, only his own selfish desire to impose these unreasonable regulations on large numbers of people who had done nothing to him.
Of course, people with disabilities have every right to live in a home that accommodates their needs, and they have every right to build such a home.
But the handicapped interviewed in the report did not want to stop there. They want everyone else's home to accommodate them as well. Consider, for a moment, the earlier quote: "the right to visit other people's homes." No one has an inalienable right to visit my home! What is next, should all new cars be required to have hand controls because the disabled want the right to drive my car? Oops, I better not give them any ideas. Who do these people think they are? Another disabled man in the report, in justifying the new regulations, went so far as to suggest that, through injuries and old age, we will all one day be confined to a wheelchair or scooter. That is correct, it happened to him, so it is only logical that it will most definitely happen to all of us. I do not know what is worse, the fact that he had the audacity to say such a thing, or that the nazis on the Naperville city council bought his argument and passed the new building codes.
So I urge you, pay close attention to any new laws or regulations being proposed by you own city council. There could be an Adolph Hitler "wannabe" just waiting to impose these kinds of down-right stupid regulations on unsuspecting citizens. And if I ever come to your door and demand to be let in, remember, according to the Naperville city council, I have a right to visit you.
