"Obedience to the law is liberty"

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azure

azure

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azure
That's the motto seen along one of the walkways at my place of employment. Okay, I think I know the historical context in which that motto was conceived. Awareness of the track record of nation states where freedom was subject to the whims of men, a new nation with the revolutionary idea that true freedom was only possible under the rule of law. I also know my own initial knee-jerk reaction to it, which was: does anyone really think that way today in America? In New England no less, the region that gave us Thoreau and other proponents of the value of civil disobedience. Isn't this just another antiquated slogan that has outlived its relevance?

Today one finds that motto largely in LDS writings, and no, my employer has (to my knowledge) no connection with the LDS church. They are simply a small military college, the oldest in the country I believe, founded in the early 19th century.

Anyway I just got through reading the Doug Hughes thread, found it struck a chord, and wanted to throw this out there for discussion...
 
It would be very easy to Godwin this thread. Let's try to avoid going there folks....
 
azure said:
Today one finds that motto largely in LDS writings, and no, my employer has (to my knowledge) no connection with the LDS church. They are simply a small military college, the oldest in the country I believe, founded in the early 19th century.
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Washington used those words to compare military law to divine law to inspire renewed faith in his troops, if I recall correctly. Considering the age of the facility, that may make a lot of sense.
 
I found this...

The inscription on the northside cornice—“Obedience to the law is liberty”—attributed to the Roman philosopher Boethius, suggests the paradox of civil liberty, that the sacrifice of some measure of individual freedom is essential to the enjoyment of any meaningful, morally regulated freedom.
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http://theahi.org/about-us/our-logo/
 
write-stuff said:
Who's Godwin?
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Jennifer Godwin was absolutely the most adorable girl in my 10 grade class. I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to go there, except that she is in her 60's now.
I don't know who was being referred to above.
 
Obviously a typo. What they meant to carve in the stone was "Ignorance to the law is liberty"
Now get your gyrocopter off my lawn.
 
I think I'd prefer to Waters it:
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.
 
mkosmo said:
Washington used those words to compare military law to divine law to inspire renewed faith in his troops, if I recall correctly. Considering the age of the facility, that may make a lot of sense.
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I was thinking it might have been something like that -- or an idea introduced by one of the philosophers the organizers of the American Revolution read and were inspired by. It just doesn't sound much like Locke, or anyone else I can think of who would have been popular among that crowd.

Mari, thanks for that quote. My google-fu must be weaker than I thought, I hadn't turned up the Boethius connection. Seems I might have been completely wrong about the context of the quote and it really is about the idea that we're freer when we give up our civil liberties.

So then what do we think about that? As pilots, we tend to be very conscientious about obeying laws and following rules. We know that many of the FAA regulations were written in blood. The same is true of many laws in other aspects of society. And even when they're not, when they serve no useful purpose, as pilots we know that, being a relatively small population who love doing something that terrifies a lot of our neighbors, when one of us winds up on the evening news for violating a TFR or the SFRA or pretty much any FAR, the governmental agencies are likely to impose even more restrictions on our freedom to fly. So we come down hard on the Smoketown Bandits, on pilots who lie on their medical applications, who fly without passing a checkride, or file IFR when they're not legally qualified.

But not in every case. Some folks in the other thread not only defended Hughes and his mission, but came close to calling for a revolution against Washington and Congress.

And some folks seemed to think he'll deserve whatever he gets BECAUSE he broke the law -- not sure whether that's accurate or fair in reference to the Hughes thread, but it's certainly true of a lot of people outside the pilot community.

That's the mindset I can't wrap my head around. Is there some inherent virtue to obeying a law that serves no purpose other than to make people feel safer?

I'm not advocating civil disobedience, heck I'm not advocating anything. Just trying to clarify how we all think about this issue.
 
There was a time in America when laws were very scarce, and those that were on the books were carefully adhered to. Then stupid things like oral sex and backing out of a driveway became illegal, and then everything from holding your baby on your lap in the car, to wearing helmets became mandatory on BICYCLES but not motorcycles in the same state, and people turned away from obedience, and began to hold the lawmakers in contempt.

Now the average American commits something like three felonies a day, due to the massive, and idiotic proliferation of laws, and nobody really respects the law, the lawmakers, the governments that enforce the law, or the courts that rule on the law.
 
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azure said:
That's the mindset I can't wrap my head around. Is there some inherent virtue to obeying a law that serves no purpose other than to make people feel safer?

I'm not advocating civil disobedience, heck I'm not advocating anything. Just trying to clarify how we all think about this issue.
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These are "malum prohibitum" laws, versus the "malum in se" laws that people generally obey.

Broadly speaking, the only reason for these laws is to control the behavior of others by naked force and to weaken respect for the Law.

I tend to the Augustine / King / Gandhi view that an unjust law is no law at all, so naturally I loathe these types of laws.

However, some people like these laws quite a bit.
 
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warthog1984 said:
These are "malum prohibitum" laws, versus the "malum in se" laws that people generally obey.

Broadly speaking, the only reason for these laws is to control the behavior of others by naked force and to weaken respect for the Law.
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Well, the regulation against flying a plane out of annual falls under the "malum prohibitum" category, doesn't it? Is its only reason for existence to control others' behavior? I think not.

That one is easy of course. What about income tax laws? Concealed carry laws? The state I live in now doesn't require CCW training or a permit, the state I used to live in is very strict about CCW. If I buy a gun here in Vermont (I've never fired a gun, but let's say I take classes and become safe, knowledgeable and proficient with my firearm) and move back to Michigan without taking a CCW class and get caught carrying it illegally, do I deserve to go to jail?

What about pilots in Alaska who fly without a PPL but have been doing it all their lives and are every bit as proficient as the average legal weekend flyer in the lower 48 - maybe more so. The guy who never got his instrument rating but who files IFR on CAVU days? I know how I feel about those people - as far as I'm concerned it's between them and the FAA if they get caught. As long as they don't create a mess in the air traffic system, I say more power to them.

And I'm in the group that would never go to the FSDO with a complaint against another pilot unless they were doing something that endangered others' lives or property AND even then, only as a last resort.

Lots of other examples of course... drug laws, laws against polygamy and polyandry... the list goes on.

What I'm really trying to understand is where people who take the opposite position on this are coming from. Should we support prosecuting those who violate malum prohibitum laws, and if so, why? (which is a different question from whether or why we should obey them ourselves)
 
There is the full spectrum of opinion here on POA. We have people who parse the regs down to the last comma and those who have no problem telling others what they should be doing even when there is not a reg to support it. Then there are those who think anything goes, although most of them don't post here except when they do a hit and run hiding behind "unregistered". I'm sure most are somewhere in the middle. That's the way things are in the outside world too and you are never going to come up with any kind of consensus about how things should be.
 
Surely, it takes all kinds... and that's how it should be.

I guess maybe I'm coming across as trolling to start a row with people who think differently than I do. I'm not... just trying to understand a different point of view.
 
Sounds like something Hitler would say.


Speaking of which I just misspelled Hitler and my ipad autocorrected it to Hillary.... huh
 
James331 said:
Sounds like something Hitler would say.


Speaking of which I just misspelled Hitler and my ipad autocorrected it to Hillary.... huh
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I CAN'T see any difference between the two, other than a vagina.
 
azure said:
Surely, it takes all kinds... and that's how it should be.

I guess maybe I'm coming across as trolling to start a row with people who think differently than I do. I'm not... just trying to understand a different point of view.
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Unfortunately many here are not able to discuss things like this without immediately sliding into Spin Zone territory as you can see from the posts above this one, which is why Bill gave the warning.
 
Mason said:
As a general rule I am with you here. Live, and let live.
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Unfortunately there's a fairly large group of people who get approximately 1/4 of the gross (not net) of any work you do, while accomplishing nothing useful themselves, who truly believe they were born to mandate you do various things.

They're usually sociopathic and narcissistic to a fault, and yet people think they're worth paying. Even better, they have unlimited loan power so they don't even need the money.

What they collect is just a token payment on the interest, and is mostly a method of control and social engineering than it is actually necessary.
 
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