Or she assumed, more correctly, that the black city administration of Detroit would help her destroy any vestige of what they consider "white" culture in the city.
I've lived in Detroit for too many years not to know this is the truth.
True. I was born in Detroit, and grew up there back through the '67 riots and many years of Coleman Young.
But that's really my point. Baker made a calculation. The "law" told her "No!", but she calculated that the authorities wouldn't do anything if she broke it, so she did. She could have been wrong, and might have been sanctioned. That's what I mean by having the courage of her convictions. I don't approve of her decision to tear down a landmark, but I do think that there is a lesson in her behavior that it would be well for many more people to learn. Practically everybody simply lets himself be shoved around by the law. Once the law speaks, most people knuckle under and obey. Sometimes the law is horribly, horribly wrong and NEEDS to be defied. The Terri Schiavo case is the most glaring in memory. Sometimes the result of the law is so monstrous, that people have to push back and tell the authorities "No!" Better still if the higher authorities themselves push back (at the courts, in that case) and draw a line and say "Absolutely not!"
Baker did just that, and WON.
Another guy who pushed back and won was Bill Clinton.
Impeached but not removed, the key records sought were NEVER handed over. He brazened it out.
Unfortunately those are bad examples.
Good examples of a pushback should have been the Schiavo case (but there, tragically, everyone followed the law, straight off the cliff into Hell). Another example may be the slow-bleed strategy the Democrats have planned for the US in Iraq. Bush will have a choice: obey the Congress and lose a war, or defy Congress, break the law, maybe win the war, and risk impeachment. He'll BE impeached, but he can continue to do the right thing in office right up to the moment where he is removed from office, and of course he WON'T be removed from office, no matter WHAT he does, so long as 34 Senators refuse to convict.
Hillary Clinton knows that well, and will line up her 34 carefully. Once in power, she will do as she pleases, legal or not, and even if impeached, she will ignore impeachment and continue ruling by fiat, secure in the fact that a President who has 34 Senators in her pocket in fact has unlimited power.