In “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,” his brilliant anatomy of covert state despotism, Edmund Burke noted that “the forms of a free, and the ends of an arbitrary [i.e., despotic] Government” are not at all incompatible. You may well live in a country in which the law of the land states that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” But it is the work of a moment for a despotic government to supersede that law in fact if not in name.
Consider, to take just one example, the Transportation Security Administration. When Senator Rand Paul was detained by the TSA for refusing a pat-down, the senator’s father, Congressman Ron Paul, declared that “the police state in this country is growing out of control.” Indeed. The chaps and chapettes who staff the TSA specialize in useless physical violation — useless, that is, for foiling terrorists or improving security: for intimidating citizens and encouraging the habit of docility, the intrusive searches are powerful tools.
But if the TSA is an obnoxious institution, it has plenty of competition from certain local police forces. Consider the letter I received yesterday from a friend in an upscale town in the mid-West:
Last Saturday, [my son’s] kids were playing in their front yards in the snow with the neighborhood kids. About 5 pm [their mother] called them in for dinner. James (age 6) came in, took off his hat and coat (he was still in his snow boots, snow pants, long underwear and long shirt) when [his mother] told him to run two houses down the street to get his sister to come home. James ran past [his father] who was waiting on the front porch for a client and watched James run down the street. He then saw a cop car make a u-turn, stop and walk up the neighbor’s walkway and confront James. [My son] was there within seconds. The cop said he was writing [him] up for James not having a coat on (temp was about 25). Now this house he ran to wasn’t more than 100 feet from [my son’s] house. Cop called DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services] that moment and said that James was barefoot, had inappropriate clothing, and lack of adult supervision. [My son] went back to his clients and Julie went to confront the cop. She was as mad as I have ever heard her and the cop was just abusive. Said he was writing down everything she said and kept asking her if she was done yet. [My son] called the sergeant on call who said he didn’t know the cop but would look into it. [He] got no call back. Sunday morning at 9 a.m. a person from DCFS appeared at the front door wanted to search the house and talk to James who was hysterical by this time. DCFS said they didn’t think there was going to be a problem. On Monday [my son] called the police department asking to talk to the police chief. Secretary wouldn’t put him through but sent him to another sergeant. [He] explained his story and sent him the photo he took of James after he got back into the house. Officer said that the picture was taken some time after the incident and [My son] could have dressed James up. [My son] wanted to file a police harassment complaint but the cop said, “If you do and we find that any of what you say is wrong, we will prosecute you!” [He] finally got a hold of the police chief who really wasn’t going to do anything about it. [My son] is giving up for fear of reprisals. Amazing isn’t it. Now we should call the police station so they can determine what type of clothing we should put on our kids before we let them out of the house.
Note the phrase “fear of reprisals.” I omitted the names of my friend’s son and changed the name of their little boy to minimize the chance of reprisals from this publicity. But think about it: since when should law-abiding citizens in a free country fear reprisals from the police or other government bureaucrats? The answer, of course, is “just as soon as that country starts treating its citizens as wards of the state.” I sent the above missive to a lawyer friend who advised that the best recourse was publicity in some local papers. I hope it is forthcoming. In the meantime, I hope my friend rallies all his acquaintances to do exactly what he suggested: call the police station every morning to get a bulletin on what to wear that day. A few hundred calls a day might just dampen police enthusiasm for this particular form of harassment. It will also while away the time until the town can get around to cutting the budget of their local police force and publicly humiliate the egregious officer who thinks he was hired to be a nanny-state bully not a public servant.
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What a vile and disheartening story on the state of affairs in what was once the land of the free and the home of the brave. Reads like notes from the old Soviet Union.
I’m back in my home town in Okla., which has always had pushy cops. People here cite the old bumper sticker about you don’t like cops, call a hippie. They say they would call the hippie. Of course, “hippie” means something different here. They often call themselves rednecks.
A chilling story that foreshadows what’s to come.
Yes, before the Nanny state took over the Police only harassed those in ‘Downscale’ neighborhoods. Thank god we still have the freedom to print unsubstantiated reports of gross police harassment of the ‘Upscale’ neighborhoods.
Sounds like Illinois, or possibly Wisconsin to me.
How can we help?
This kind of thing happens more ofter than you’d think. Check out http://www.freerangekids.com and review a number of the blogposts. Many are about similar incidents to this midwest family’s and others are more about the insane quest and coming requirments for perfect parenting.
If we disband the Dept of Security Theatre and the Touching Scrotums Agency, the terrorists win…
It sounds like a place where Democrats have been elected to local political office. They start out with a few regulations, then more and more until you find yourself wrapped in red tape and police and bureaucrats when you are just minding your own business living your life. Nothing described was intrinsically wrong. No crime was committed if viewed by a person with common sense. There are two problems: people elect Democrats and educrats are teaching our children. How do we get off the clown bus? Start electing conservatives. They won’t promise you everything you want, but you just might get your life back.
Local police chiefs usually report to a civil service/political appointee, like a city manager or safety manager. This appointee reports to a city council or similar elected body. The police chief doesn’t want to rile his political masters, so the people you need to complain to in cases of egregious officiousness are the politicians. In my experience, the Democrats are not likely to listen to you in matters of individual rights. A Republican, particularly a conservative, is more likely to listen.
All very well in theory. The problem is that the Founders understood that any unopposed authority was, in and of itself, innately evil. One needed to set up a system of counterbalances, wherein one person’s basic selfishness was balanced against another person’s basic selfishness. Once the system becomes tainted with alleged “altruism” it heads slowly to perdition.
Each of us weighs the respective merits of a debate by the degree with which we agree with one side or the other. Once we assume, or let someone else convince us to assume, that self interest is no longer involved, we have been fooled. We need to embrace self interest at least as heartily as the liberals, who cannot abide any disagreement whatsoever with their own self interest. If we are Nazis, they must be Communists. Do we not have the cojones to fight them? Then we will lose. Much as we have.
Reasoning does not enter into it. They will never agree with you. Pick a side. Defend it to the death. It remains as it ever was: the strong will have their way; the weak, not so much.
God bless America. We sure need it.
In most totalitarian systems, policemen are chosen not because of their high moral fiber and reasoning skills but precisely because of their lack of judgment and discernment. In fact, totalitarian regimes always look for exactly the opposite characteristics of free societies in their policemen (concentration camp guards were notorious for being among the dumbest of the dumb with bonus points for the most depraved and immoral of candidates).
These types are deliberately chosen because of their absence of critical thinking skills and moral introspection. They are chosen because of their willingness to blindly obey without any rational thought that may interfere with the proscribed process. Monolithic bureaucracies love these sorts.
We are now starting to see the effects of having this same sort of system being put into place here.
Love your column and how timely it is!!! Here in my small hometown in a quiet middle class suburb we are slowly being taxed into the poorhouse. One of the reasons is we have a police force that is the SECOND HIGHEST PAID IN THE COUNTRY. Know anyone politically connected? You can get on with a nice starting salary. Drunk driving arrests? Not if you are one of the local boys. But we have a unique problem. The tax money keeps flowing, we have an abundance of cops and a low crime rate. What to do? Let’s harass the crap out of the local citizenry and make police mountains out of molehills just to keep ourselves occupied and satiate our cop impulses. And buy tons of equipment too. We have everything but a police submersible and a helium balloon squad. Don’t look for the cop of yesteryear either. These guys have the night vision things, the artillery, the armored vehicles, and the weaponry to go with it. They strap on a beltload of attack and retrain devices that must add an additional twenty pounds. And should you complain, they will park down the street, turn a blind eye if you have a genuine complaint and let it be known you violated the brotherhood. That’s what you get when you exhibit “contempt of cop”. The police in this country are getting out of OUR control. I marvel when I hear so-called conservatives praising law and order types. Are they out of their minds? Can they not see where we are headed? The police are supposed to be serving the public, not threatening, menacing, and intimidating over all and sundry. I am as right wing as you can get but the day has long gone when we have to start seriously taking a good look at where all this is headed. I was very happy to see the Supreme Court slapped down their latest impulse: to hide a GPS device under a vehicle and follow it around without the owner’s knowledge. What’s next? Peering into homes with heat sensitive equipment? Oh right. They already do that. I know quite a few people who have been on the receiving end of their malice. Remember when we were told as little children the policeman is your friend? Don’t believe it. I tell people to avoid them as much as possible. They have the power to destroy lives and they wield it like a bastinado. The police have now become an OCCUPYING FORCE. It’s time we reverse the process.
I have been saying for about 30 years that the blind Law-and-Order “conservative” is as much a threat to this country as the leftists.
Consider the case of the once-free FreeRepublic. When 9-11 hit, all criticism of the Patriot Act, and other depredations against liberty, were verboten. People were banned, and a strict policy of “don’t speak against Anything That Will Keep Us Safe” was instituted. The site owner made it clear that Patriotism (meaning, anything Bush wanted to do in the name of fighting “terrorism”) trumped free speech.
And so-called conservatives defended this, and other such outrages.
And so liberty is lost, one bit at a time.
Drop the Liberal / Conservative slant, its nonsense.
Start with the battle of Athens Tennessee after WW2. This is why we have the 2nd amendment and best example why this is not Democrat Vs Republican but citizen Vs. government. Read this story before any further political ranting.
As soon as it becomes political the battle is lost. It has and always will be a waged war against entrenched special interests including law enforcement agencies.
US agencies like FBI, CIA, DEA, ATF have been smuggling weapons, drugs, laundering money and committing murder for decades while the Citizen goes about their day in blissful ignorance…every 4 years we have liberal / conservative charade that allows entrenched Government interests to maintain their regional corrupt kingdoms.
Drop the politics and see the world for what it is.
We endured small town (population 2000) policing for 15 years until we couldn’t handle it anymore. The last straw was the day our 13 yr. old son was ARRESTED for “peace disturbance” by riding his skateboard on the street. He was placed in handcuffs and taken to the police station. Making a long story short, during our son’s court appearance (yes, I said “court appearance”) the judge looked directly at the prosecutor and then at the police officer and said,”Let me get this straight. This young man was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace for RIDING A SKATEBOARD??? Case dismissed!!”
We now live in the suburb of a large city and, ironically, it’s much more peaceful than the small town. Believe me, I am not anti-cop. Two of my sons and one son-in-law are police officers in Chicago. I’m pretty sure some of these small town police forces are on some kind of power trip.
You have an elected Mayor? That would be my second call. Then every other elected official in town.
The American government is sending out a very powerful message: You bodies no longer belong to you. Your bodies are the property of the state.
Sounds like poor judgement on the part of the cop…and cops are always right, aren’t they? As the “Nanny State” grows and cops are diverted from their main duties of catching bad guys. They enforce non-criminal stuff like not wearing a seatbelt or kids not wearing bicycle helmets. Just doing their jobs to protect and serve. The culture of each police force varies from jurisdiction to jusidiction.
Not to question the valor of any police officer or honesty of municipal judge, but these two institutions are hold-overs from past days when each town was separated from others by vast open lands.
Anyone who has been in a municipal court knows the deck is stacked against him, these courts are too often seen by towns as sources of revenue, not places of justice.
It’s time America abolished municipal courts and replaced them with State courts where truly impartial decisions can be made by a judge not dependent for appointment or reappointment by how much money he brings in to a city. In fact, municipalities should not get any fine money nor profit from violantions of the law nor mistakes citizens sometimes make.
While we’re at it, put a final end to the secretive “enclaves” local police department sometimes are by replacing them with state-wide law enforcement removed from and above local politics and with higher standards, as all of our State Police departments are.
Citizens will benefit…and so will career police officers with the greater opportunity for advancement and choice of duty.
Liberty, State, and Union: The Political Theory of Thomas Jefferson | Marco Bassani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WTFtdvRa84&fe…
Annals of the Nanny State, Canadian Edition
Yesterday I opted out of program for my 4th grade daughter. Next year the schools want to put pedometers on them and measure their fitness levels. Also get involved with what they eat.
We have to start drawing lines and fighting back. Saying no however we can. Let Rand Paul be the one who starts this round of civil disobedience.
My girls are well raised. My husband and I are doing a great job. I absolutely do not need the gvoernment interfering.