The officials that these people elected have put in place certain ordinances in their names that prohibit certain types of assembly in certain places at certain times.
This point-of-view is just another example of legitimizing the government's totalitarian status. What is the definition of *public* property? It's supposed to be the other way around. We own the government, thus we own anything the government owns. Hence, it does indeed "belong to them (us)".It does not belong to them so they have no right to occupy it.
Let's say you were part of the Occupy, Tea Party or other movement you care about in large city. You've been camped out in this part for several weeks. The mayor of the city decides that enough is enough and you cannot occupy the park for as long as you want to. The mayor orders the police to evict you and your group from the park.
Do you leave or do you stand your ground?
Those officials are limited in the way they can act, and may not initiate government force against the People for mere exercise of right. Law must fall within the realm of protecting rights.
Keep in mind the Tea Party events were one-day corporate sponsored events with air-conditioned buses, nice Koch Bros. port-a-potties, and big Fox News Tents. The Tea Party impotent anger and misinformed masses are not the same thing as other true grass roots movements.
I disagree. Then again I largely disagree with the idea that most of these things are Rights rather than Privileges to begin with. The purpose of Law is to maintain ORDER in society and to contain the population within the boundaries that society has set up.
What changes would you like to see? Specifics not generalities.
But by this logic, we could also have no assembly and protest since the government gets to decide who stays and who goes at their whim.
Yes, if by that you mean by my logic the government could also have no speech allowed or ban all guns.
Constitutional rights can have reasonable limits placed upon them. Taking that and then attempting to cache it in an all and nothing extreme situation to attempt to disprove it doens't do that, it just creates a strawman of you beating upon fantasy rather than reality.
Stating that a large group can not camp out for weeks on end in a park as a form of "protest" when it is inhibiting other park goes from partaking in the public property and keeping the government from properly maintaining the property to an acceptable level based on the publics expectations and safety regulations is no more a justification for the government to be able to just say "no protesting ever on this part at any point" than it is to say that being unable to yell fire in a crowded theater is justification for the government to be able to say "no more speaking in public, ever".
No one had more effective peaceful protest than Martin Luther King. He had a clear rallying message, people swarmed to him, and they marched. He never occupied jack ****. If they had set up tent cities, the coppers woulda' sic'd th'dogs on 'em.
The purpose of law is to protect and proliferate the rights and liberties of the individual.
I could not disagree more, Ikari. The purpose of Law is to ensure that society continues to exist within its appropriate limits and to SEVERELY PUNISH those who cannot or will not live within those limits.
You can disagree all you want; but OUR Republic was initially built on the philosophy I have espoused. Your philosophy is more like Stalin or Mao. Between the two, I'll go my route thank you very much. History has shown time and time again the atrocities committed through government; even against their own people.
It looked to me like someone did sic the dogs on Martin, even though he played by their rules.
Yes, my philosophy is much more Authoritarian in nature. It's what we need right now, and much closer to what our forefathers believed in than you'd like to admit. Go and take a look into the history books at what the legal and justice systems were like in those colonies. Or you could just read "The Scarlet Letter" and save yourself the time. Our current system is a JOKE and a FARCE. It has been for decades and I don't see it changing for the better any time soon.
I've read a lot of the founders and the classical liberal philosophy many followed. There are some founders who may have been a bit more authoritarian, but many were not. Many were SUSPICIOUS of government, not championing it. It is why we made a Republic, it is why our government is divided into 3 parts and set up to fight each other.
If I have to choose between Jefferson and Mao, I'm going Jefferson. I'd rather our end come from too much freedom than a lack of it.
You're missing one major difference between then and now.... When's the last time you saw a family in the 20th-21st Century DISOWN a member for failing to live a properly moral and decent life? When's the last time you saw a community SHUN an individual who refuses to get in line? In the past moral issues were dealt with by SOCIETY. Society no longer does that job, so it falls to the only other group capable of keeping people in line... the Government.
As you know, I'm not a big believer in unbridled freedom. I never have been and never will be.
Society should make no moral decisions and itself has no rights. What "job" is it supposed to have been doing? It doesn't matter if it's the 21st century or the 31st century or the 11th century; rights are rights and they must be upheld. Time does not change rights, nor should it change our commitment to uphold them. Free is the only way to live. It may be tough, it may have consequences we do not like; but it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
And I've never seen any wisdom is unbridled government control over the People. In the end, the difference in philosophy is a difference in desire. I want the human, which means the free thinker, the individual complete with emotion and desire. You want the machine, the ordered cog which fits nicely into its spot and spins around, spinning other cogs; all cogs functioning efficiently together. But between machine and man, I'll take man.
The job it WAS doing in the 11th Century and that I hope it will be doing again in the 31st Century, and that is has stopped doing in the 21st Century.... placing proper limitations and restraints on individuals. Remember, I'm not a very big believer in the idea of "Rights" at all, Ikari. I never have been and very likely never will be.
I'll take the machine. The machine is reliable, dependable, and does what it is supposed to, when it is supposed to. You don't end up waiting 2 hours for the machine to pick you up because it decided to stay in bed that morning. The machine doesn't decide it h as better things to do than what it is supposed to do. It doesn't decide "I don't want to....". It simply does what it is intended to do, unerringly and without variance.
Good luck with that! Greed and gluttony are hallmarks of capitalistic Americanism.Isn't it weird how people scream about how conservatives want to "legislate morality", and then they find a reason to want to do it themselves?
Of course your not, rights empower the individual over the government. And a cog seeker would not want that. Nothing can challenge the power of government, yes? It's very much within the functional practice of communist regimes. They all do the same thing. Nothing above the State. But you're asking me to accept a system which apparently costs about half your population to install, and then subjugates the rest for all time. Beholden to the whims of government in some form of disguised "efficiency" argument.
We were meant to become freer with time, and that is the direction I wish to go. Being a slave isn't a good path and will not lead to good things. The real problem isn't that you choose to become a slave, but more that you wish to force slavery onto ME as well.
Of course you'll take the machine, and in the process destroy our humanity. You don't see humans for human, you see pieces to fit in to other places, pieces to dominate and control and make obey your whim. In short, I'm the USA and you're the USSR.
Sorry. No. Greed and gluttony are the hallmarks of human nature.Good luck with that! Greed and gluttony are hallmarks of capitalistic Americanism.
Is it just me, or is it ironic that you have a screen name and persona that prides itself on being a individual and doing things his own way regardless what the 'rules' of society around him may be? :lol:If the Individuals had not given up any pretense of attempting to maintain some form of decency, morality, and values in society I wouldn't be sitting here advocating for the Government over the Individual, but when the Individuals cannot even maintain the slightest amount of common decency or values in their own society and become nothing more than animals, someone needs to step in and set things straight, Ikari. It's your "Freedom Without Limitations" ideal that has brought us to this point of having to go back all the way to the other end. The Founding Fathers set in motion a train without any brakes and now we're seeing the results of that as we approach the washed out bridge over the 1,000 foot deep gorge.
Freedom without limits is like a sports car with no brakes, Ikari. It can only go in one direction, and eventually you lose the ability to steer the vehicle without causing a catastrophic accident. My Morality doesn't get in the way of your Freedom, but when your Freedom gets in the way of my Morality, I'm damn sure going to do everything in my power to get it the hell out of my way.
Humanity is of no value when it is allowed to exist in an immoral state, Ikari. Assuming that you are correct in your ideal of what Freedom should be, then as abhorant as I find many of the ideals of the USSR, we would have been better off with them, or at least the Nazi's, being the main power in the world rather than the USA.
Anyway, there are some aspects of the past that would be beneficial to bring back, such as the concept of 'shame', for example. But pining for return to the 11th century is laughably not one of them.
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