I saw a video today that I had to share with you – click here to watch.  It shows a Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) road crew, led by Delaware state police, forcibly removing a basketball pole from the end of a residential, suburban cul-de-sac.  I don’t know about you, but I grew up playing basketball with the kids in my neighborhood at the end of a cul-de-sac just like the one shown in the video.  It was a real public service that one of the families in the neighborhood kindly put this basketball pole up at the edge of their property facing the cul-de-sac.  Many basketball games were played there over the years.  In a way this served as a public park for the kids in my neighborhood.

I remember it so well because I was good at basketball and one day when I was thirteen, I beat a sixteen year old boy in a game there.  When I won, this kid went after me — punching me in the face before I knew what was coming.  I got knocked down, but then I stood back up and fought.  My parents were away on a brief trip so my grandparents happened to be taking care of us.  When I got home, I had some marks on my face.  My grandmother, Helen, looked hard at me and asked what had happened.  When I finally told her, SHE wanted to go after the kid, but I told her everything was already settled and she let it drop.  (Sorry to go on about this, but I like to remember my grandmother.)

So why do I care about this video and why am I telling you this story?  It’s simple.  There must be literally millions of cases of good Samaritans putting up “end of cul-de-sac” or “quiet-street” basketball polls in America – millions.  This is what free-thinking, logical, responsible, community minded and generous American adults do in middle class neighborhoods where there are no driveways or where driveways are too small or too sloped to accommodate driveway basketball courts.  These “in the street” games are a late 20^th and early 21^st century version of the stickball played in the streets of Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and other American cities in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Tens of millions of kids in general and particularly tens of millions of American boys of all backgrounds have benefited from playing this way.  And yes, sometimes there are hard fouls, and sometimes there are falls and scrapes, and sometimes there are even fights, but it is a good thing that American kids for generations have been able to play, compete, and work things out for themselves in these public spaces, often with neighborhood adults observing in the background.

And this highlights why the kind of coercive state government force used against the couple in the video is so outrageous.  First, the female police officer demands that the man and his wife move their cars which are blocking the pole.  As the armed, uniformed state trooper struts back and forth, the female cop in the police sweat suit (have you ever heard of “good cop, bad cop?) tells the man that he and his wife will be physically prevented from blocking the removal of the pole from in front of their house, and will be arrested if they do anything or even say anything to the DelDOT people doing the removal.  Then she lies to the man, saying that he can keep the pole — she and the DelDOT people are only required to take it down.  But, a few minutes later, she — backed by the armed uniformed trooper — changes the story and tells the couple forcefully that they – the government — are taking the pole away.  The only sad thing about this video is that neither the man nor his wife have the presence of mind or the courage to physically stand in the way and be arrested.

If anything, this was a local neighborhood dispute that should have been worked out among neighbors.  Perhaps someone was justifiably concerned about the safety of kids playing in the street at multiple basketball poles.  Perhaps adults in the community could have agreed upon limiting basketball poles to quieter cul-de-sacs (like the one in the video) where the kids could play most safely.  Apparently, there was some overly controlling, intolerant, meddling neighbor who would rather see kids inside playing video games than outside playing basketball.  And when this gadfly called, the state government on high listened.  Whatever the case, in a free society, there is no scenario where armed state troopers should arrive in a quiet residential neighborhood to enforce some picayune statute that says basketball poles cannot be erected on the edge of the public road and kids can’t play on a quiet street.  This was an abuse of power and when the American government starts using this sort of coercion on its own people (or even thinks it can), then it is time for regular Americans to stand up and Just Say NO.