Anyone who’s been at the beach for an incoming tide knows how it goes. The tide doesn’t rush in all at once, it creeps. Every wave just a little higher than the last. Inch by inch, minute by minute, it slowly works its way closer and closer. You think to yourself, “Oh, I’ve got time. The water isn’t that high yet. I’ll move before it gets to the car.”

So you sit, reading a book, drinking a beer, talking to friends, listening to your iPod. And still, the water creeps. “Huh, that water is getting pretty close. But it’s not to me yet, I’ll move before it gets here.”

Next thing you know….

So it is with tyranny. “Yeah, that’s bad, but it’s not the end of the world. Doesn’t even directly affect me.”

The government is the tide, tyranny the sea. Ever creeping, never stopping, slowly pushing closer and closer.

We’ve seen the government encroach more and more on our liberties. We’ve seen the power and reach of government expand in regards to eminent domain, gun rights (although there has been significant pushback here), healthcare, finance and family life. We’ve seen the government involve themselves in the houses we buy, the food we eat, the money we borrow and the most basic choices we make about our bodies.

There are many reasons given….national security, general public health, economic stability, but in the end it means one thing. The water is edging closer.

Now we are at a point where some of our elected officials have said “Stop.” They’ve said that the government is encroaching on our liberty, as well as our wallets. So we have the shutdown.

The response? A temper tantrum that would get my 3 year old spanked.

Memorials closed.

Monuments made inaccessible.

Why, even the ocean has been deemed off limits.

But it doesn’t stop there. Just this week, a group of senior citizens were visiting Yellowstone National Park. Their tour bus was travelling through the park when they saw a herd of bison near the roadside. They did what we all would do, they stopped for pictures.

Almost immediately, an armed ranger came by and ordered them to get back in, saying they couldn’t “recreate.” The tour guide, who had paid a $300 fee the day before to bring the group into the park, argued that the seniors weren’t “recreating,” just taking photos. “She responded and said, ‘Sir, you are recreating,’ and her tone became very aggressive,” Vaillancourt said.

Ah. No recreating due to shutdown. Gotcha. But it’s not over, oh no.

The seniors quickly filed back onboard and the bus went to the Old Faithful Inn, the park’s premier lodge located adjacent to the park’s most famous site, Old Faithful geyser. That was as close as they could get to the famous site — barricades were erected around Old Faithful, and the seniors were locked inside the hotel, where armed rangers stayed at the door. 

–http://www.eagletribune.com/local/x1442580353/Gestapo-tactics-meet-senior-citizens-at-Yellowstone

And the tide is in. Here we have a group of seniors doing what they have every right to do, visiting and enjoying the countryside that they pay for. What do they get? Treated rudely and then detained at gunpoint.

Let me repeat that.

Detained. At. Gunpoint.

For daring to try and visit Old Faithful.

The Park Rangers had no right, legal or otherwise to detain them. This is the very definition of unlawful detainment/false imprisonment.

restraint of a person in a bounded area without justification or consent.

–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_imprisonment

Now, is it possible that the Rangers were acting on their own authority? Well, sure, anything’s possible. But can anyone really believe that their orders weren’t just that, orders? I cannot fathom that a group of Park Rangers would take it upon themselves to detain, at gunpoint, a group of senior citizens and confine them to their hotel.

This is tyranny. Tyranny is easily defined as cruel and oppressive treatment of a government over its people. There is an argument to be made for cruel, but it is most certainly oppressive. The leader of the government has decided where and when the people may visit certain public areas of the country.

The tide is rising my friends. The waves are lapping at the hubcaps. Will you ignore it? Delay and think that there will always be enough time to move?