I want to make this a rather quick post. There is something that has been on my mind over the last week or so. I recently had a conversation with an old acquaintance of mine. This old friend had some objections to my voicing my political opinions online as much as I do. I feel that is the reason I even use online sites, to network with friends, and to give my voice a forum. For me, it is fun. My hope is that it is not too overwhelmingly annoying. Then again, part of me does not care. Maybe just a little. I sincerely wanted to understand his objections which led us to a pretty interesting political conversation. In which he questions my intelligence, and education, which I found to be humorous to say the least. In the end, however, I left him with one final question as we discussed the issue of freedom. You see my opinion is that we have over time lost so much of our personal freedom due to our desires to be taken care of by our government. We have as a nation allowed those freedoms to be taken away, in the name of comfort and laziness. There are rules and laws, that we think are needed and necessary to "Protect us" from everything. We have lost the ability to govern ourselves in any way, and expect others to govern every aspect of our lives. To me this came down to one, simple, silly question. I ask that of you here in this forum at this time. Really just think about this one for just a minute. I would even ask that if you have the ability look it up, and let me know the answer.
SO here goes, my question is......
In you city, or you town, or your county, how many permits, and how hard is it to build or have built a shed in your back yard? Really, I know this sounds silly, but how many permits do you have to acquire to build anything on your own property? Is it one, two, with inspections? Can anyone tell me why? If it is my property, why would I have to have "governments permission to build"? Go ahead and let me know what you think, pass it on if you have to. I really want to know. Do you think this is freedom, or the lack of freedom?
7 comments:
I definitely think there's a connection between wanting comfort and losing some smaller freedoms (and some bigger ones, too)--accountability is a huge problem (I'm not one to talk...I'm lazy to my core), and I think that it's so easy to just leave it all up to "someone else"....and then that's when we start to lose some of that leeway.
Did that even make sense?
Keep blogging with an opinion. I love it.
I absolutely, completely and unequivocally agree with you...I guess that puts a question to my intelligence then too?
I'm glad that you use your FB account and blog to voice your opinions and I think it's a shame that so many think that it should only be used for mindless "fun" and nothing serious. I often voice my opinions, political or otherwise, on my FB page.
Help me understand what has been taken away? What cant I do today that I could do 10 or 20 years ago?
I am not sure I completely understand the point you are trying to make with your permit question. Permits are not in place to limit what you can do on your property, they are in place to protect you, those around you and those who come after you.... I can offer you a great example. Do you remember putting sprinklers in at the blue house? Do you recall the white PVC pipe that was used as electrical conduit? Do you remember how close I was to losing my life because someone failed to take the proper precautions when installing that electrical line? Had they pulled a permit it would have been a lot less likely to happen because they would have been required to use a proper conduit, marked as electrical....
I understand the point you are trying to make however not unlike all the talking heads out there (my father included) You say we are losing freedoms, we should be outraged, however I hear very few people giving good examples of these disappearing freedoms. Help me better understand.
Things you could do 10 or 20 years ago that you can't do today:
-Fly in an airplane without being treated like a possible criminal first
-buy a 3 wheeled ATV (the ATV's weren't dangerous, people just ignored all of the warning labels on how to properly use them).
-Buy a gun without being put into a national database
-Criticize the president without being called a terrorist
-be a military combat veteran and able to buy a gun as a civilian (a right taken away about two years ago)
-buy large amounts of sudafed for storage and without an ID
(now you can't because they automatically assume if you want lots of sudafed you must be making meth with it)
I could go on and on but the list is starting to get long...
Fly in an airplane without being treated like a possible criminal first
- I cant say I have personally been affected by this. I still have to walk through the same metal detectors I did pre 9/11, the shampoo and toothpaste thing is a little irritating so I will concede the point
buy a 3 wheeled ATV (the ATV's weren't dangerous, people just ignored all of the warning labels on how to properly use them).
---Not so much a loss of rights as a consumer protection policy, I would argue it falls under the same umbrella as car seats, seat belts, air bags, and recalls on peanut butter, some things simply need to be done not because it takes away our right to eat contaminated peanut butter but because its dangerous and could/has killed people with consistency. And I would take the argument that they were not dangerous anytime. Rode 3 wheelers and loved them, I have had 3x more 3 wheelers not be dangerous and try to kill me than I ever had 4 wheelers do the same in very similar situations.
Buy a gun without being put into a national database
-- I have purchased 2 in the last year and uncle Sam is none the wiser
Criticize the president without being called a terrorist
- Terrorist is the Nazi, Communist, un-American and of as of late racist, buzz word of our generation. Without exception in times of both peace and war in this country people who have had differing views than the ruling majority have been labeled, happens in politics and religion, if your going to be involved in them your going to get called names, this is nothing new.
be a military combat veteran and able to buy a gun as a civilian (a right taken away about two years ago)
-- You can also die for your country before you can buy a beer but this is not an infringement of rights, It used to be you could not have much of a criminal record without being disqualified from serving our country, this has changed. Just because Uncle Sam says you can go to war and shoot at the bad guys does not mean you have sense enough to tie your own shoes much less purchase a gun, I spent time in the infantry, trust be your better off. Also see point on purchasing firearms
buy large amounts of sudafed for storage and without an ID
(now you can't because they automatically assume if you want lots of sudafed you must be making meth with it)
-- The trade off is you can buy Pot in California without fear of prosecution, hell half the places dont even care if you have a doctors note. I suppose if I were going in to Smiths to buy mass quantities of sudafed and they would only sell me the 2 or 3 grams allowed by law, I would sign the log book, walk across the street to Walgreen's, buy another 2 or 3 grams, rinse, lather, repeat, until I had enough to cook up a nice 50 or 60 gal batch of meth. Irritating? Absolutely! Infringement of rights? Probably no more than having to go get a prescription for loratab or vicaden. Although it sure would be nice to be able to buy gun powder by the 50 gal. drum again without raising a few red flags...
I dont want anyone to get the wrong idea here, I would agree that government has gotten WAY to big, those involved are self serving, and there needs to be changes however I also believe that many of those (especially those on the right) have a tendency to simply repeat what they heard on Hannity or Limbaugh that day without critically thinking about what is being said.
I dont want to come off as trying to personally attack anyone, simply trying to help foster the debate, I find it very interesting to hear both sides of the argument and I enjoy the interaction...... And Sam, I love you man, No Homo
"I have purchased 2 in the last year and uncle Sam is none the wiser"
Only if you bought them from a private individual. If you bought them from a dealer, Uncle Sam knows you own them. If you ever sell a weapon purchased from a dealer, and then that weapon gets resold and resold again, then is used in a crime, the police will be knocking on your door to see if you still own the weapon. I have relatives that have FFL's. There is a list.
"a tendency to simply repeat what they heard on Hannity or Limbaugh that day without critically thinking about what is being said."
If only Hannity or Limbaugh would point out many of these things. They don't.
Now to my point in countering your comment. It is not government's job to protect us from every danger. It is not even government's job to warn us of dangers or even tell us how to do things so as to not hurt others negligently. The proper role of government is to punish true crime and to provide neutral courts to arbitrate private disputes.
On true crime, their are two levels, when one purposefully harms another or encroaches another's property (felony except for petty theft) and when one negligently harms another or another's property (misdemeanor, includes petty theft because it can be easily corrected by the offender).
Now back to the original post. When government intervenes by issuing permits, it is doing nothing more than saying the permitees and contractors have paid fees to the government. For the "blue house" example you gave, the ironic part is that the conduit may have been placed by a licensed contractor with a proper building permit. See:
http://www.berding-weil.net/articles/public-agency-protection-in-building-permit-process-myth.php
That article was written by attorneys. That specialize in suing cities. In fact, any house built during the recent housing boom is suspect. We watched a neighboring house go up in under 3 weeks from digging the foundation to finishing the interior. The cement was poured one morning and there was framing going up on it the next (violation of building codes--foundational cement should have MINIMUM 3 days cure and its better if it has 5 days). The permit process did not stop the building code violations, even-though we saw the city inspector at the site almost daily. Permitting does absolutely nothing except charge fees and open the local city (taxpayers) up to lawsuit if the permit is issued in a bad way.
For another example, about 18 years ago, Santa Clara, Utah, issued a bunch of building permits to a developer. The developer followed the building codes imposed on him to a 'T'. It turns out that the houses were all built on a soil type called "blue clay." When foundations started sliding, home buyers started suing. Guess who got off scot-free and guess who got stuck with the bill. The developer had all lawsuits against him dropped. The city finally settled out of court, but it cost them a fortune. Guess where the city got its money to settle. The taxpayers in the city. The permit process shifted the burden of liability from a private one (the developer) to a public one (the taxpayers). This in its very essence is the nature of socialism/communism. It has only been in the last 25-35 years that building codes have been stringently required in most cities. Now, instead of just fixing problems of shoddy workmanship or suing the private party that knowingly did something wrong, home-owners now sue the city that issued the permit to do it wrong. Now exactly how does that not equate to a violation of freedom? Pay the city money to shift the liability to the public? That's what the permit process does.
P.S. If there are "sovereign immunity" statutes in place, then all lawsuits will fail, unless you hire an independent construction manager. Then the only entity that can be sued is the independent construction manager.
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