Keep your government hands in our business

[kinvore.livejournal.com]

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend in the States, where we honor the men and women who died in military service. You'll see all kinds of patriotic fervor during this time, hell even PBS gets involved, but I'm not by any means complaining. Then we get stuff like this:

A property management company is under hot water for telling a tenant that after Memorial Day he has to take down an American Flag that he has on display in his window.

Here's what gets me:

Dawn Price said she now works to amend the federal Freedom to Display the American Flag Act of 2005, which states no "condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association" may stop someone from flying the American flag. The law, however, does not apply to renters.

First I'm amazed we even have such a law to begin with, and I'm even more amazed that they want it even more intrusive. I thought conservatives didn't want government telling business what to do? Did these tenants not read their contract before signing it? Shouldn't we let the market decide if this is a good business practice?

It just seems like an example of glaring hypocrisy. Freedom is a double-edged sword, and sometimes it means having to tolerate things you don't agree with.

Comments

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

If it is not then why should the government impose it?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

because the market isn't the solution for everything

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

And government is the proper entity to decide where you can and where you cannot fly a flag?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

govt is the proper entity to tell landlords that they cannot infringe upon the rights of people in that manner

[magdalene74.livejournal.com]

this

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

But the person has not right to fly a flag and the landlord has no obligation to give his tenants a forum for making political speech by doing so.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I disagree. The person does have the right to fly a flag.

Renting an apt to someone so that they can live in it, does not give you power over their speech. Unconnected and unconstitutional I call it.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

So, it depends on where the flag is flying. Is the landlord renting the use of the outside of the building (if that's where the flag is)? Is the flag just displayed in a window?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Check the article--it seems the flag is *inside* the tenants living space, hanging up *next to* a window.

Landlords can't tell you what kind of curtains to put up, can they? So why is this diff? It's inside the space the individual is paying for--I don't get it.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

As I noted elsewhere, yes they can tell you what kind of curtains to hang

[dwer.livejournal.com]

that would be because curtains aren't political speech.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

OH SNAP!!

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

This isn't prohibited action against speech, because it's not the government doing the prohibiting. Which is why the guy doesn't have a claim under the Constitution. Whether you think it SHOULD be unconstitutional is a different matter, but the law is not what you think it is.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Given that the government already decides when and how you are allowed to fly the flag...

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Because we live in a nation of sovereign citizens who have the power to make these sorts of decisions for themselves.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

That is the best argument as to why the government should stay out of this.

The landlord is just as sovereign as the tenant and neither has any greater power over the other because both need the other. Without tenants the landlord would have his property foreclosed on. Without landlords willing to rent tenants would usually not have anyplace to live.

Both are sovreign and both are equally able to decide what terms they are willing to agree to in a rental contract, the government interfering in that negotiation inevitably removes sovreignty from one, the other, or both.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

No, the sovereignty of the People is expressed in government, not contracts.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

So the government is sovereign and not the people.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

No, all contracts (not people) are subject to the sovereign oversight of the people, expressed in government. Contracts are inferior to the sovereign will of the government.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

The sovereignty of the particular person is secondary to the sovereignty of all persons collectively via government? Kinda suggests that you'd be okay with the ordinance if it wasn't subsequent to a contract, but rather a law. Six one way, half a dozen the other, from this standpoint.

I posit that the sovereignty of the people is enshrined in their exercising their capacity to engage in liberty, including the ability to contract.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

I'd say that you can't legislate your own rules, and that all contracts are subject to supreme law.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the law is not an end unto itself, which brings into question whether or not the ability for the law to tell people when, where, how, and under what circumstances persons may or may not enter into a contract willingly and free of coercion is, in itself, a just exercise of government authority.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Neither is a contract an end unto itself, and contracts do not have special powers to violate the law. You cannot break the law just because you wrote a contract.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Contracts are an extension of the free will of free persons to come to agreement with one another, or to part company. Ostensibly this is the object of good government and of good contract law, to protect this, and to arbitrate disagreements of contracts, not merely whatever sausage legislatures manage to pass legislatures, and not to protect persons from themselves.

It is not all to dissimilar, this notion that we are to be protected from disfavored contracts, from the conservative notion that the purpose of government is to protect our lives over everything else, liberty included.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

And the law is also an extension of the free will of persons. It's just that this extension is superior to the extension of contracts.