Don't Forget the 'Petty' Tyrannies

The technocracy is rapidly encroaching, but the authoritarian dystopia has been here all along.

The news cycle seems to escalate daily, dominated by stories of air strikes overseas, trade wars, suspensions of constitutional rights, and other breakneck developments with national and global implications. As important as these stories are, they tend to overshadow others that may seem less dramatic. In reality, these ‘less dramatic’ stories are vital to understanding the current paradigm: the ‘petty’ tyrannies of daily life under government authority.

The following is a sampling of recent incidents that reflect the ever-encroaching nature of government and affect regular people. Many come from the libertarian legal advocacy firm Institute for Justice (I have checked them against other independent sources). They highlight not just individual stories of injustice and overreach but also their broader implications: what much the public has been conditioned to tolerate, rationalize, or justify as a ‘normal’ part of life under statism—and what people in positions of authority feel entitled to do with little to no accountability or consequence.

Wrong-house raids

A North Carolina family is suing for accountability after local police raided their home without sufficient probable cause. According to the Institute for Justice (IJ), which is representing the family, the police in question allegedly misled a judge into issuing a warrant. They lacked evidence that a fugitive was at the family’s home or had ever been there. Nevertheless, a SWAT team threw flash grenades, broke glass in the home, and pointed guns at the children. The family is now struggling to pay to repair the damages to their home, and local authorities have refused to compensate them.

Wrong-house raids occur far more frequently than they should. In another recent IJ case, the FBI raided the wrong home. They failed to realize their error until after they’d broken in, thrown a flash grenade, and terrorized the children. The FBI supervisor for the botched raid reportedly offered the family a business card to remedy the error. That went nowhere, and when they sued, the 11th Circuit Court ruled against their attempt to hold the federal law enforcement agency accountable. IJ successfully petitioned the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear the case.

Regardless of whether the courts in either case side with the victims of law enforcement ineptitude and misconduct, it is a sobering sign of government hegemony that they must fight so hard to have such egregious errors remedied in a meaningful way.

Speech

National conversations are focused on the Trump administration’s crackdown on anti-Israel speech and past years of social media censorship. Meanwhile, governments around the country violate free speech regularly.

In one instance, an East Cleveland, Ohio, resident allegedly faced targeting for criticizing the mayor and supporting a different candidate. The resident obtained a proper permit to use a van with a speaker, which he used to transmit political messages. City officials repeatedly targeted him, citing local ordinance violations. They went out of their way to crack down on his electoral activism. In one case, the authorities appealed to an archaic code that is never enforced. The city eventually towed his truck, damaging it in addition to imposing fines.

A federal judge tossed the case, denying the possibility that the city targeted the resident for his political speech. IJ has appealed that decision. An interesting detail: the mayor in question has since been suspended and is facing corruption charges.

In another recent case, an attorney for Decatur County, Iowa, threatened to sue a retired nurse for defamation for writing op-eds published in a local paper. That prosecutor demanded she retract her criticism of a county official’s lack of in-person attendance at County Board of Supervisors meetings. IJ is handling her case and asserts that her op-ed was factual. Another recent incident saw local authorities in New Hampshire harass a bakery for displaying a mural painted by local high school students over zoning violations.

Preventing Good Samaritans from being Good Samaritans

In another egregious genre of commonplace tyranny, governments around the country write and enforce codes that prevent Good Samaritans from helping others. Keeping with these year-long trends, multiple pastors in different states have been fined and charged for opening their churches to the homeless in the winter.

An Ohio pastor was recently criminally charged and convicted over zoning regulation violations: the city wanted to prevent him from letting those in need of shelter stay in his church in single-digit temperatures. A pastor in Fairfield, California, who has long provided refuge and rehabilitation programs to those in need, has also faced an uphill battle and steep fines from the city over code violations. Stories like these are common.

In a similar instance, a North Carolina city ordered an animal sanctuary that houses abused and neglected rabbits, ducks, donkeys, goats, and other creatures to close. Once again, alleged zoning violations were the authorities’ primary justification for forcing the sanctuary to cease its operations.