Tragedy No Excuse to Ignore Law

After the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, Scott Maitland put up a banner that read "God Bless America; Woe to Our Enemies" at his place of business. Maitland, who owns Top of the Hill on 100 E. Franklin St. and served in the Gulf War, thought he was only expressing his patriotic view and supporting the country.

However, Maitland also was violating a Chapel Hill ordinance that regulates the size of temporary noncommercial signs on private property. His 20 square foot banner was larger than the six square feet allowed. So town officials made restaurant workers take it down.

The ordinance itself is innocuous. Its only purpose is to maintain the aesthetic quality of downtown Chapel Hill. Under normal circumstances, huge banners with slogans placed anywhere on Franklin Street would be considered an eyesore.

But as everyone knows, the last two weeks have been anything but normal. And this story has taken on a larger symbolic quality.

When residents heard about it, many supported Maitland and believed that the sign ordinance should be ignored in this time of tragedy.

Conservative talking heads Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy set their sights on Chapel Hill, criticizing the notoriously liberal town for forcing Maitland to remove the sign and leaping to a broader discussion of freedom of speech.

So last Wednesday, Chapel Hill Mayor Rosemary Waldorf got the unanimous support of the Chapel Hill Town Council in her request to ignore the ordinance for an "indefinite amount of time."

The right thing to do?

Absolutely not.

When local governments enact ordinances, they aren't meant to be applied arbitrarily, when the time is convenient.

I'm not going to pine away about the moral and ethical greatness of democracy to the tune of "God Bless America." I've heard enough of that on every media outlet in the last two weeks.

But in a democracy, we do have to live with and abide by rules. Sometimes they are of critical importance, like making murder a crime. Other times, they may seem more trivial, like limiting the size of signs.

Both laws were enacted by an elected body -- and both laws should be equally enforced.

It's symptomatic of a national trend. After the attacks, Congress and the president of the United States have suddenly turned from adversaries to best friends. You no longer hear distinctions between Republicans and Democrats (for now). Congress has passed resolutions and thrown money around like mad.

Racial profiling, once abhorred by many law enforcement agencies and civil rights activists, has been shrugged off as a necessity of "America's New War."

Pilots may soon be armed in airplanes. The Central Intelligence Agency may get an even larger chunk of the budget.

Civil liberties are under the greatest threat this country has seen in many years, if ever.

Why? Because we are bending the rules in order to fit in the new framework of terrorism. Some of the changes may be positives needed long ago. Many, I believe, will be knee-jerk reactions to a tragedy that will undermine us in the long run.

The Town Council decision is such a knee-jerk reaction.

There is no viable reason to suspend the ordinance. It sets a bad precedent and undermines the legitimacy and power of local government to enforce the rules it makes.

Maitland has the right as an American citizen to express his views, as long as they are contained in a sign that is six square feet.

It's true that some Town Council members had a problem with the "Woe to Our Enemies" line. Their personal opinion on the content of the sign should be irrelevant.

In the end, this isn't about freedom of speech. It's about living up to the obligations of democracy. Terrorists thrive in countries where the rule of law means nothing. We cannot begin to ignore laws -- even at a local level.

Once we start tossing aside and rewriting the rule book, what's left of our American ideals to make signs about?

Columnist Jonathan Chaney can be reached at jhchaney@email.unc.edu.