It would seem to me that America was very much founded on the opposite. A lot of the constitution seems to be focussed on limiting the power of law, not limiting the power of the people (the right to bear arms being the clearest example).
Not to mention that until Loving v. Virginia inter-racial marriage was unlawful. Presumably the enforcement of that would not itself count as "unlawful tyranny"? Despite actually being a serious impairment to social freedom.
(The 2nd amendment setup is in practice very different to the model of Switzerland, and is used to justify private gun ownership for private security reasons and private fears of black crime, not public/state security)
Edit on lawfulness: man fires unregistered handgun into crowd, kills one injures one, is not convicted of anything. Guess why. http://crookedtimber.org/2015/04/28/no-justice-for-rekia-boy...
We're at that point.
From the article:
> It used to be said — correctly — that the patrolman on the beat on any American police force was the last perfect tyranny. Absent a herd of reliable witnesses, there were things he could do to deny you your freedom or kick your ass that were between him, you, and the street. The smartphone with its small, digital camera, is a revolution in civil liberties.
Unlawful government tyranny, in the form of cops doing whatever they want, is exactly what the riots are about.
(Also, rule of law and respect for authority come into direct conflict when the authorities act unlawfully, which is what you're covering for)
Even the Declaration of Independence occurred via a vote of the government. And it was written as an indictment against the King. It made legal arguments. He was violating their rights as English subjects.
Americans have a very strong respect for the rule of law. The Supreme Court is unelected, has no power, no money, no army, no police force or agents to carry out it's will. Yet it the absolute final word and Americans follow it.
The constitution isn't an example of the limitation of the power of law, it's the greatest example of the extreme power the law has in America. The rule of law is so strong that the constitution (a law) can override the will of the President, the congress and the people.
> America was founded on the rule of law and respect for authority.
Are we talking about the same nation that was formed in an armed rebellion against a monarchy?
> These people in Baltimore...
Which people, exactly? As in, how many mistakes are you willing to tolerate as the authorities attempt to positively identify and subdue just the rioters?
> ...should be met with overwhelming (and lethal if necessary) force by the government.
So your solution to a problem that started when authorities allowed a citizen to die in their custody is to double down and wield more violence against those citizens -- and then to raise the stakes by dropping all pretext of justice and simply killing everyone involved in order to bring them back in line?
I honestly hope you're trolling -- the alternative is terrifying.
/s
Our founders responded to taxes they didn't like by seizing the contents of cargo ships and dumping them into Boston Harbor. If we described that in the same terms as many are talking about Baltimore, the headline would read, "rioters loot ships, smash cargo".
Compare the circumstances: "the government is taxing us and we don't like it" vs. "the government is killing us with impunity."
America was founded on a fundamental distrust of government, and certainly not on the idea that law and order is of higher importance than justice and liberty. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," is what America is about. When agents of government are systematically brutalizing and killing people, America is not a "sit back and ask nicely for it to stop" kind of country. America has always been about taking it to the streets
It's white hypocrisy alone that lets us pretend that if the situation were reversed and whites were the victims of this kind of pervasive government brutality, we would be just sitting at home and drinking tea while writing letters to the editor and blanching at the thought of doing anything violent. Bullshit! We used to do this all the time, until we set up minorities to take the abuse for us.
Blacks lined up to protect the Police in Baltimore because they realize, unlike SJWs, that most violence against blacks is done by black criminals, like the rioters.
Those "non-violent means to redress problems" work great in theory. I would even agree that society ought[1] to work that way. Unfortunately, a working political[2] system is not a fundamental law of nature. Far too many people seem to think it is, which leads to the common belief that the law on paper has any reliable mapping to what happen in reality.
[1] somebody call Hume
[2] or economic
I am not advocating violence, but in your mind, what should people do when (many of) those non-violent means of redress are ineffective at solving the problems?
I'm not excusing violence or suggesting that it is productive...but I get it. Human beings have tipping points. It's different for every individual but when pressure builds and crowds start moving, brawls and riots aren't uncommon to see. This happens even when people are happy about something (like a home team winning a championship game).
So you can imagine that when the media starts freaking out and spreading some viral "meme" about planned riots and sends in a couple hundred riot cops (and a tank!) to corral a couple hundred high school kids at their bus stop, preventing them from going home, there might just be some of those people who are a little more pissed off than the rest and have a little less impulse control and decide to start throwing water bottles and rocks.
And once shit starts rolling that way and the situation escalates, you can see why some people who might have been shit on and beaten up by cops all their life might just see this as a chance to hit back.
So you get a few hundred cops fighting with a few hundred pissed off citizens and the broken cars and windows we all saw on TV.
But those few hundred people who went the violent route are still a few hundred out of tens of thousands who live here. The vast majority of us (many of which have had it MUCH better than the people in West Baltimore) haven't been angry or frustrated enough to resort to violence. Thousands of us have marched and petitioned and protested. But it doesn't surprise me in the least that for a few hundred of us, a bat to the cop car seemed like a bit of payback for generations of a boot to the throat.