Oahu, Hawaii - New Years Eve 2018
The above posted YouTube video of someone driving down the freeway while filming the skies gives a good snapshot of just how widespread the people of Hawaii defy the law on an annual basis. In every town and every district on the island of Oahu, from about 8pm on December 31 til 1:00am January 1st, the skies light up like a virtual war zone, as the majority of residents celebrate in solidarity to practice a cultural tradition that authorities have sought to end by decree for the past three decades and counting. It's a perfect demonstration of just how much THE LAW is respected, revered and obeyed by the general populace here!
As a young boy growing up in Hawaii, I distinctly remember the day it was announced that the mayor of Honolulu had signed off on the law that made the sale, possession and use of aerial fireworks illegal. That was in 1984, and if memory serves me correctly, that mayor's decision ended her first term and she lost re-election the following year to the former mayor she defeated in the previous election, in a landslide.
There are no official sources I can cite with regards to this, but I remember all of the adults in my life discussing the first (and only) female mayor in Honolulu's history who had previously won election by a 70% landslide, getting basically thrown out of office by the electorate for daring to outlaw one of Hawaii's most popular New Years Eve traditions. She was fortunate that the custom of tar and feathers for unpopular politicians was no longer practiced.
Despite such an overwhelming display of displeasure by the electorate, the ban on aerial fireworks in the City and County of Honolulu has never been overturned. The establishment that runs this town has seen fit to keep that aerial fireworks ban in place and our media and politicians see fit to issue dire warnings and proclamations every year about the illegality of selling, owning and using aerial fireworks. The occasional house fire or mishap that results in injuries and lost fingers are highlighted by the
What is the State to do to get we the sheeple to comply?
As it stands, only licensed, accredited and regulated firework companies are allowed to acquire permits to legally set off aerial fireworks in the City and County of Honolulu. And every year, a handful of Waikiki hotels and other resorts around the island hire these legal companies to put on their licit firework shows. But these legal shows are dwarfed in comparison by the number of illegal fireworks that light up the sky all over the island on New Years Eve.
Year after year for as far as I can remember, the majority of the people of Hawaii have participated vigorously and enthusiastically in flouting the ban on aerial fireworks by spending millions of dollars on the black market annually to acquire the contraband and set them all off every New Years Eve. Cops, firemen, politicians, lawyers, union workers, government employees....nearly all would have to admit to being a scofflaw at least once in the past if they were born and raised here.
Most people from all walks of life in this State will fondly discuss our prohibited New Years tradition of recreational aerial bombardments, while State officials and our controlled media continually push the narrative that most people of Hawaii are opposed to this annual tradition, and only a minority of criminals and scofflaws are ruining the peace, quiet and air quality for the rest of us.
It is to laugh.
Despite the overwhelming statement made every year in the skies of the Pacific as to what the obvious will of the people is in our State, our rulers persist in declaring it prohibited activity so as to continually push the agenda to over-regulate and criminalizes all sorts of behavior to create a society in which any citizen anywhere can be arrested and charged with a crime at any time. As Stalin's head of the NKVD secret police Beria infamously quipped, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
In the article for Reason magazine, We're All Felons, Now, Radley Balko cites what I think is a relevant quote by Ayn Rand:
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws."Riffing off of Rand's quote, Balko concludes:
"Whatever one may think of Ayn Rand's political philosophy or ethics, her criminal justice prophecy has proven unsettlingly accurate: In our continuing eagerness to purge American society of crime, we've allowed the government to make us all into criminals."
I'm sure this no doubt plays a part in the continued prohibition of one of Hawaii's favorite cultural traditions. Every New Years Eve, we the people of Hawaii come together in solidarity and express our criminalized consensus in the sky for all to see, regarding the sanctity of the rule of Law in this, the 50th franchise of USA Inc. If we truly were a "Democracy," ruled by the consent of the masses, the prohibition would have never happened. I'd love to see Hawaii get the chance to vote on a ballot referendum regarding the legality of aerial fireworks. I'd bet everything I had on the particular outcome of that one.
Happy New Year!
7 comments:
Happy New Year, Keoni!
There's a lot of killjoys out there.
Happy New Year Keoni!
Same to you BPS!
I'm sure it's an unpopular opinion, but I see a real problem with the widespread civil disobedience encapsulated in your post because it demonstrates the public's contempt for the rule of law. Deeper than that, it likewise points to the fact that the public (at least subconsciously) understands we no longer have any rule of law.
There is an easy way to demonstrate we no longer live under the rule of law, the reason being that the Constitution does not have a severance clause. A constitution, be it state or federal, is a take-it-or-leave-it document. Unfortunately, I don't think very many have thought through the ramifications of ignoring portions of the constitution.
For example, the Alabama Constitution states in Article 1, section 20;
"That no person shall be imprisoned for debt."
Observably in every judicial district of the State the various judges routinely flout this section of the law through the use of a legal fiction, ordering men to pay an arbitrarily set amount of child support or alimony and then jailing them for contempt if the debt is not paid. The legal fiction is that the man isn't being jailed for non-payment, he's being jailed for violating the courts order.
Other state constitutions have similar provisions and if that weren't enough 13th Amendment to the US constitution prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. The peonage statutes specifically prohibit what the US child-support and alimony system has become. Not only is jailing men who can't pay their child support or alimony unconstitutional, but the court's use of a legal fiction in doing so is the proof the judges understand exactly what they are doing. Even if the men can pay the arbitrary amounts awarded by the courts, the entire system is an unconstitutional system of involuntary servitude.
When judges routinely refuse to enforce the clear protections of the constitution, favoring one group against another, they violate the constitution. Yet there is a mechanism for removing judges who refuse to uphold and obey the constitution and the process devolves to the electorate. But, when (as is now the case) the population refuses to replace the judges who violate the constitution, the constitution is abrogated and we have no rule of law.
Observably, the feminist electorate has abrogated the rule of law at this point.
And while some might say this is an academic point, it isn't. A Constitution, whether it be state or federal, is the agreed-upon rule of law between sovereigns that underpins the entire government and without that agreed-upon treaty between sovereigns, we have only a collection of sovereigns without law. Without the constitutions, we have no legitimate government and likewise no legitimate way to redress grievances.
And while many would point to the (semi) functioning courts, public safety services and other current aspects of government as evidence that I'm wrong, they now have only the illusion of legitimacy. In the end there must be justice and one way or another there will be justice. Very few in the population can comprehend the issues involved nowadays, but the one salient point that must be made is this.
In the absence of a rule of law, the only recourse for the redress of grievances or injury between sovereigns is war.
Now... read Isaiah 3 and reflect on how closely it describes the current situation in the US, reflect on the weakness of the US infrastructure and understand that all it takes to cut off the entire supply of food and water is to take down the power grid.
What AT said about being really worried about the blow-off of the rule of law. If the law is bad (there's a lot of bad law) we repeal/replace. Ignoring it (hey, my entire state is in rebellion to more than a few federal laws) is bad for the pursuit of justice in the meta-sense.
As for fireworks in HI? Um. Y'all get that water falling from the sky thing pretty frequently, right? So... why not?
PS Happy New Year!
Happy new year AT and Hearth! Thanks or dropping by!
They should purchase the fireworks on their way to the election booth and stop electing radical leftist politicians and judges (Tulsi Gabbard excepted).
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