cop steals repeal safe act sign

[RichardR]

I must had missed the part where our Founders wrote into the various amendments "unless trumped by a local ordinance" but I'm not surprised by your (or anyone elses) defense of this sort of tyranny, the majority of Americans have been conditioned their entire lives to believe that if there is a law, they must obey it.

Even if blindly obeying any & every law that is passed means that they subjugate themselves, their children & their fellow Americans, how many times have you heard someone say "well I don't agree with it, but the law is the law" ...

The Constitution was once considered our nations highest set of laws, our law-makers & law-enforcers at every level of government have chosen to ignore it because it limits their power/authority to boss the rest of us peasents around, however I still adhere to the notion that it remains the supreme law of the land.

I don't want or need a ruling from the Supreme Court to make a determination on whether or not something is unConstitutional or tyrannical & the only type of people who do are already subjects & not citizens.

Where to start... Based on the way I am reading your argument, liberty and individual freedom only exist in an absence of government (aka anarchy). If that is the case, then say so and argue the point from that position. If that is not your point, you are saying that any government regulation that you, as an individual, disagrees with is tyranny. Further, what do most people consider tyranny? I am rather certain that the police yanking a political sign from someone's front yard in the section that is deemed city right-of-way would be tyrannical. I believe you are sharp enough to know this, so you are using the "tyranny" trope for dramatic effect. Next, in regards to your point about an ordinance trumping the 4th and 5th Amendments, I think you have it a little wrong. The 4th Amendment has been ruled to not apply to crimes that are in plain view or open fields. The police observed an ordinance violation, the evidence of the violation was in plain view, and it was on a city right-of-way, not private property (if you want to argue the point about city easements on what you think should be private property, then that's a different argument to have). Next, once the sign was seized, the property owner should have an opportunity to appeal the police action and receive his/her property back if it is found that no law was broken. That is due process.

No, that is no comparison. A whole different realm of constitutional law has been entered into here. The area immediately around the house is considered curtilage and is specifically protected under the 4th Amendment just as the interior of your home would be.

[East_TN_Patriot]

I must had missed the part where our Founders wrote into the various amendments "unless trumped by a local ordinance" but I'm not surprised by your (or anyone elses) defense of this sort of tyranny, the majority of Americans have been conditioned their entire lives to believe that if there is a law, they must obey it.
Even if blindly obeying any & every law that is passed means that they subjugate themselves, their children & their fellow Americans, how many times have you heard someone say "well I don't agree with it, but the law is the law" ...
The Constitution was once considered our nations highest set of laws, our law-makers & law-enforcers at every level of government have chosen to ignore it because it limits their power/authority to boss the rest of us peasents around, however I still adhere to the notion that it remains the supreme law of the land.
I don't want or need a ruling from the Supreme Court to make a determination on whether or not something is unConstitutional or tyrannical & the only type of people who do are already subjects & not citizens.

With all due respect, you're not making sense. In the same argument you are saying that the "Framers" - not the Founders since many of them didn't support the new Constitution and wanted to stick with the Articles of Confederation that very much preferred state and local control over issues in preference to the federal government - the Framers intended for the Constitution to be the supreme law of the land and not to be interpreted in any way by the Supreme Court, even though they included Article III establishing the Court, and even though they added the 10th Amendment that specifically reserves the bulk of law-making power to the states or "the people" being us, yet "the people" have no authority to pass local ordinances. In addition, you are saying that the rule of law and the legal framework that is in place, including the amendment process and the ability to speak freely and protest, are not legitimate mechanisms for determining as a nation what laws should be followed, rather we should all adopt your completely subjective interpretation of what the Constitution means and what the Framers intended because you say so. That, sir, is an argument for anarchy.

Your argument also fails to recognize the Enlightenment era political philosophies that inspired the Constitution, especially social contract theory that relies on the idea that people voluntarily give up a certain amount of liberty for the benefits a civil society provides. A civilian society is grounded in the rule of law, a law written through a specific legal process that is conducted with public input and the ability of voters to impeach and/or vote people out of office.

You don't like the ordinance. Fair enough. I don't necessarily like it either, but just because you don't like a local ordinance, that doesn't constitutive tyranny. So again, what is tyranny? A definition I quickly looked up on the web says this:

tyr·an·ny
ˈtirənē/
noun
1.cruel and oppressive government or rule.
"people who survive war and escape tyranny"
synonyms: despotism, absolute power, autocracy, dictatorship, totalitarianism, Fascism; More
a nation under cruel and oppressive government.
cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control.
"she resented his rages and his tyranny"
(esp. in ancient Greece) rule by one who has absolute power without legal right.

Please educate all of us on how a sign ordinance that was passed by a board of democratically elected officials, in a meeting open to the public, with multiple opportunities for people to voice opposition, that is presumably supported by most members of that community, that has been deemed to be constitutional by the court, that can be challenged again in court, or repealed through though the political process constitutes "cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power" or "rule by one who has absolute power without legal right".

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the law is not determined or interpreted by RichardR. If it were, then we'd have tyranny.

However, I'll help you out and propose that perhaps what you are referring to is a "tyranny of the majority" since that makes a little more sense based on your argument. Is it possible for the majority to pass tyrannical policies through the democratic process? Most certainly, however, even here, I find it very difficult to say that a sign ordinance that people support banning the posting of signs on the city right-of-way is tyrannical. The guy can legally post his sign 3 feet away, but that's tyrannical? Tyranny of the majority is voting to support slavery, to remove the Native Americans from the Eastern US, to withhold the right to vote, to support "separate but equal" facilities, to tell people you must be deported without due process because your not an American citizen (even though constitutional rights to due process are considered natural rights for all human beings), to hold people without due process because we label you a potential terrorist, telling a group of Muslims they can't build a mosque in their community, or telling people they cannot participate in legally sanctioned marriage because we don't like the fact that you want to spend your life with a same-sex partner. Tyranny of the majority is voting for leaders and joining their armies in order to force members of a specific religion to wear yellow stars on their clothes until you arrest them, seize all of their personal belongings, and ship them off to be tortured, worked to death, or gassed. Tyranny of the majority is supporting a regime that will arm the population with machetes and tell them to travel across the Rwandan countryside and hack their fellow countrymen to death. That is tyranny of the majority, not telling someone how close to the road that they can stick a flipping yard sign. Edited October 11, 2013 by East_TN_Patriot

[RichardR]

Sounded like you were having a lot of fun rationalizing all that.

I had fun reading it, let's have some more fun shall we? By playing a game maybe? Everyone can play along at home, the only goal of the game is to try to list all of the statutes, regulations & ordinances (federal,state & local) which government regulates, (prohibits or compulses) certain behaviors from us.

As an enforcer of these you should do better than most folks, but I'm fairly certain it is an impossible task to name off even 1% of them.

http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/

The above link is just refering to our federal statutes, the conclusion was that there are so many federal statutes that they would be impossible to count even in 3 life-times of trying.

Add to those the millions of state & local ones and freedom liberty becomes nothing more than a simple illusion, it is literally a fairly tale that we tell our children in hopes that their chains rest lightly upon them.

Is this tyranny? I cannot think of any other applicable word to describe it ... be it a single incident or literally countless examples, in the absence of freedom & liberty, there is tyranny.

[TMF]

Meh.

[East_TN_Patriot]

Sounded like you were having a lot of fun rationalizing all that.
I had fun reading it, let's have some more fun shall we? By playing a game maybe? Everyone can play along at home, the only goal of the game is to try to list all of the statutes, regulations & ordinances (federal,state & local) which government regulates, (prohibits or compulses) certain behaviors from us.
As an enforcer of these you should do better than most folks, but I'm fairly certain it is an impossible task to name off even 1% of them.
http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-question-how-many-federal-laws-are-there/
The above link is just refering to our federal statutes, the conclusion was that there are so many federal statutes that they would be impossible to count even in 3 life-times of trying.
Add to those the millions of state & local ones and freedom liberty becomes nothing more than a simple illusion, it is literally a fairly tale that we tell our children in hopes that their chains rest lightly upon them.
Is this tyranny? I cannot think of any other applicable word to describe it ... be it a single incident or literally countless examples, in the absence of freedom & liberty, there is tyranny.

Two things and then I am done with this silly "tyranny" rhetoric. 1) I'm a FORMER law enforcement officer. I quit that profession in 2008 because I didn't like the direction the profession was going in and because I could see all of the damage many public policies and laws I was required to enforce we're doing to society. 2) I'm not "rationalizing" anything. I study, teach, and do research on topics related to law, criminal justice policy, theories of crime and criminal justice, crimes of powerful, crimes of atrocity, and the history of law and justice in the United States. I know a thing or two about what I'm talking about. You need to read more since you are making a tautological argument and demanding exactly what you are ranting against.

[JayC]

Ok I'll take the bait...  The reason that this incident could rise the the level of tyranny is the arbitrary nature of the actions taken by the police officer.  Lets say that the law was constitutional (I don't grant you that argument), and that the behavior of the officer in question was legal and constitutional (again I don't concede this point either)...  

 

You still have the problem of unequal enforcement of the law...  If the officer and the city in question were enforcing the law equally then you'd might be correct that the actions weren't tyrannical... but in this case it's clear the sign was targeted because it contained political speech that was against the state.  Other items which also violate the same ordinance on the same street have not been taken, that by it's very nature is arbitrary.

 

I'd also say that the enforcement of this ordinance in this case is unreasonable in nature, as well, since it acts as a priority restraint on political speech.

 

If either are true by your very own definition the acts are tyrannical in nature.

 

Please educate all of us on how a sign ordinance that was passed by a board of democratically elected officials, in a meeting open to the public, with multiple opportunities for people to voice opposition, that is presumably supported by most members of that community, that has been deemed to be constitutional by the court, that can be challenged again in court, or repealed through though the political process constitutes "cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power" or "rule by one who has absolute power without legal right".
 

 

[RichardR]

Its obvious East, that I believe that in the absence of freedom & liberty, there is tyranny, where as you believe that in the absence of tyranny there is anarchy.

I believe that the Constitution is the highest laws of the land, you believe local ordinances have the authority to over-ride it.

It sounds as if we have polar opposite views on the matter, I doubt we'd ever come to an agreement, but it was entertaining to read your thoughts on the matter so thanks for the chat man.

JayC, very well said (as usual)!

[TMF]

[quote name="RichardR" post="1047724" timestamp="1381637106"] Its obvious East, that I believe that in the absence of freedom & liberty, there is tyranny, where as you believe that in the absence of tyranny there is anarchy. [/quote] So it has to be absolutes here? Based on your description of what tyranny is, Americans have been living under tyrannical rule since George Washington was sworn in. Edited October 13, 2013 by TMF

[RobertNashville]

So it has to be absolutes here? Based on your description of what tyranny is, Americans have been living under tyrannical rule since George Washington was sworn in.

Nailed it!

[RichardR]

So it has to be absolutes here? Based on your description of what tyranny is, Americans have been living under tyrannical rule since George Washington was sworn in.

Absolutely, at least for some Americans anyway.

Native peoples, African slaves & all people born a woman most certainly were, add to that the Wiskey Rebellion or more to the point add the reason why it happened & we see a very selective application of our Constitutional protections even during our nation's first administration.

Over the last 222 years it has slowly snow-balled, sure a few advancements were made for this group or that group, but the gradual decline in personal freedoms & liberties has been unabated with every single piece of legislation passed, almost like bits of sand dropping from the freedom/liberty side & slowly but surely filling up the tyranny side of an hour glass.

I cannot fathom how anyone would argue it hasn't, I just need to look back into my own childhood & count the number of things that used to be lawful, which are now unlawful, things that were once permitted, which are now prohibited, things that were once voluntary but are now compulsory, to realize how with every passing generation we've slowly subjugated ourselves, our children & our children's children..

Calm seas of despotism & all that I guess ...