Hail Caesar

From a constitutional point of view, every single war waged by the United States after World War Two was unconstitutional and therefore illegal. None of them had a proper declaration of war, passed by congress.

The federal government has given itself some cover by issuing various declarations and authorizations that fall short of an actual declaration of war. Additionally the War Powers Act, also unconstitutional, gave the President the authority to wage war without congressional approval if the war was under sixty days in duration.

None of these legalistic covers actually follow the constitution, but at least they have provided a method by which elected officials can assure the public that everything is being done properly.

Even when President Bush lied the country into war with Iraq, he used an Authorization for the Use of Force as his authority to send troops in. But that principle has escaped President Obama.

Obama has added a war with Libya to the long list of wars the United States is involved in. He claimed authority under the unconstitutional War Powers Act to initiate hostilities. And then the sixty day limitation passed, and the war did not end. President Obama still does not seek congressional approval.

And what was the reaction of congress? The House of Representatives passed a resolution rebuking the President, but it failed to halt funding for the Libya War. The one meaningful power the congress retained for itself - funding - is the one power that congress lacks the will to use.

The only thing left is for President Obama to appoint a horse to the Senate. "Hail Caesar" was the cry that brought down the Roman Republic. Will we hear a similar cry with regards to Obama?

Progressive Feudalists

In Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty, Murray Rothbard makes a good case about how Socialists are actually the middle ground between monarchists and libertarians. He does so by tracing the evolution of the political ideologies from the original French Assembly spectrum (wrongly considered to be the definitive political spectrum) to modern times where the different ideologies are thrown together basically at random until the original leftists are now considered to be on the right with their original opponents and the middle ground between the two is considered to be on the left.

He also neatly ties in progressives and fascists in with the feudalists, demonstrating how they are all superficial variations on each other, through a combination of direct ownership of the means of production, government and corporate mergers, and the regulatory state.

Progressivism has finally reached its final conclusion and become indistinguishable from the more extreme members of its family. Under President Bush and President Obama it has come to mean absolute power in the government and endless war, both for the sake of the ruling class. The rhetoric about having an omnipotent government for the sake of the people is rapidly fading away. First President Bush dropped any pretense about how "conservatives" favor any lessened role for the government in the lives of the people through the creation of the Transportation Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, and the passage of the USAPATRIOT Act, No Child Left Behind, S-CHIP, Prescriptions Drug Coverage for Seniors, and capping it off with the first round of Bailouts and Stimulus. Then President Obama dropped any pretense of how "progressives" favor any sort of civil liberty or commonality with the common man by continuing the bailout of Wall Street, expanding the War on Terror to include directed assassinations without a court order, expanding the War on Terror to include congress having no role at all, and passing a version of healthcare reform that as none of the goals that Democrats have clamored for years over such as Single Payer or other versions of socialized medicine, while also failing to move on any gay rights issues and expanding the Drug War.

Based on all of that, it is clear that Progressive now means an absolute authoritarian state with no concern for the people governed. It can still be debated if the US is a free country or a dictatorship, but there is no debate left that the leadership certainly has no regard for freedom and only has concern for their own power, and a willingness to shed as much of other peoples blood may be necessary to hold and increase that power. They have returned to their original root, described by Rothbard, as feudalists, the original enemy of libertarians.

It is time for liberals to abandon their “progressive” brothers if they want to reclaim what is left of their original identity as holding their ideology for the sake of improving the world and not just themselves. It is time for liberals to decide which way they want to go, it is time to choose between government and freedom, they cannot have both and they can no longer pretend that they can have both. It is also time for liberals to stop consider the term "liberal" and the term "progressive" to be interchangeable.

Fascism with Free Speech

One of the most difficult challenges people face in convincing people that the United States is far from free is that, for the most part, people still have a considerable amount of the right to free speech as allegedly protected by the first amendment.

There have not been any incidents to truly rival the White Rose Resistance Movement of Nazi Germany, in which the six people who were handing out pamphlets criticizing the government were executed. It is true that compared to Nazi Germany, Americans have pretty impressive free speech rights. Anybody can start a blog, or post to any internet forum, and criticize the leadership of the United States. There is no crime in saying that George W. Bush and Barack Obama are incompetent, idiotic, despotic psychopaths.

But doing so has no impact.

Sometimes internet activity can have an impact. In the case of Michael Nifong, William Anderson’s relentless blogging, combined with the defendants having the resources to defend themselves, not only led to the case being dismissed but to Nifong being disbarred, losing his job, and spending an entire day in jail. It was clear that the trial of Nifong had the entire court staff mystified because it was a prosecutor being put on trial for prosecutorial conduct. But that was an isolated case. Libertarians commenting on the case tried repeatedly to branch the discussion from this particular example to the behavior of the legal system in the United States and the behavior of prosecutors, only to have the audience disappear every time. While this particular case was impacted, the system as a whole was not impacted.

Or there is the case of the Critical Mass Cyclist, where the internet forced the case to not only be dropped but for the officer involved to be stripped of his badge. He was not incarcerated for his crime. This relates to the case of the BART shooting in Oakland, where the officer was convicted of fourth degree manslaughter because of the large number of cell phones recording the shooting - after the police attempted to confiscate all the cell phones in the vicinity of the shooting. In both of those cases, modern technology facilitated free speech to achieve some (albeit insufficient) justice, but libertarians commenting on the cases tried to branch the discussion from isolated incidents to police behavior in general, only to have the audience disappear every time.

In these specific instances, in these specific cases, the specific people involved were impacted by free speech, but the overall system was not impacted. Even so, there is discussion inside Washington on how to regulate blogging, because even isolated incidents show that the power of the elite is not absolute. It is when speech starts having an impact that government officials seem to be more than willing to sacrifice the first amendment. It is already the case that elected officials believe campaign contributions are not a form of speech at all, and have managed to convince many people of that.

Radio personalities John and Ken of KFI640 were unhappy with Congressman David Dreier area over the topic of illegal immigration. So they led a campaign to have him lose his next election, calling it "Fire Dreier" and urging people to vote against him due to his stand on illegal immigration. Their impact was such that, in his safe district, he won by a small margin instead of a large margin. That result was so troubling that the Republican Party filed an FEC complaint against them in a deliberate effort to chill political speech. The FEC has not taken any action against John and Ken or KFI.

Unlike the victory of John and Ken, Julian Heicklen is constantly being abused by those in authority, so that when he is not being arrested by police he is being involuntarily committed to the hospital. He is receiving this treatment for handing out FIJA pamphlets in front of court houses. He is not a major radio personality in a major media market, and that is why the police can continue to get away with this kind of abuse. FIJA pamphlets are a direct assault on the court system which has conspired to prevent people from exercising their full rights as jurors. In some states, such as California, it is currently illegal to hand out pamphlets on court house grounds at all, unlike in the places were Julian Heicklen does his work.

It is clear that free speech is under assault, but in a very careful manner to protect all speech except for speech that may actually make a difference. That way the average American will not ever encounter a situation where he will find his free speech to be limited, and thus will never believe that free speech is limited in the first place.

Arizona's SB 1070 works perfectly

Even though it has not yet taken effect, and not yet faced the inevitable court challenges, Arizona's Senate Bill 1070 has worked very well. In fact it has worked far better than the original authors could have imagined. This may sound strange considering how little time it has had, but as Ayn Rand would point out, if you want to know if something is right ask yourself "by what standard?"

It's actually surprisingly obvious how this bill is a success. Across the country people are debating it, but they’re all either debating "white" versus "brown" or "legal" versus "illegal." Outside of a small handful of libertarian commentators, nobody is pointing out that this bill has established a legal precedent for "papers please."

Some will think that, due to not being of the ethnic group most likely to be targeted, that they are actually safe. But, given the need to not appear to be racially profiling, the police will have license to stop anybody, at any time, on the grounds of "suspicion." And given the overly wide leeway given to police to stop people on "suspicion" that means anybody can be stopped at any time.

This means that if someone fails to show proper respect, they can be asked to show their papers. If someone insults a cop, he can be asked to show his papers. If someone stares too long at a cop, he can be asked to show his papers. Already the crime of "contempt of cop" carries the high risk of being assaulted, and then arrested for "disorderly conduct", with the additional crime of "resisting arrest" and "assaulting a cop" for anyone who tries to resist this unlawful arrest. Now an additional charge can be tacked on.

According to the statute, failure to prove citizenship can carry a fine of up to $100 and 6 days in jail for first time offenders. Originally the bill carried a fine of up to $500 and 20 days in jail for first time offenders. Those who fail to carry documentation more often face steeper fines and sentences.

What remains to be seen is how this act will be enforced on legal citizens who are simultaneously guilty of "contempt of cop" and failure to carry sufficient documentation. Will this require all people in Arizona to carry full proof of citizenship at all times? Will this require all people in Arizona to show said paperwork to police on demand or pay the fine originally intended for illegal aliens?

This bill worked far better than intended. The popular debate focuses on the racial and immigration aspects, and ignores the fact that this implements "papers please."

And the TSA actually reponds

In the blog entry The TSA Wants you Dead, strong accusations were made against the TSA based upon this blog entry at the TSA blog. The accusations were quite harsh, and quickly picked up on by critics of the TSA in the comments section of that entry of the TSA blog as well as on the Flyer Talk Forums Travel Safety and Security forum. The general harshness of the response has prompted a rapid response by the TSA.

The argument made by the TSA is that the dosage of X-Ray in an X-Ray backscatter is so low that it is safe. This ignores a couple of scientific facts: first, no level of ionizing radiation is actually safe, merely that some doses are safer than others, and also that ionizing radiation is cumulative so even safe doses contribute to a lifetime unsafe level.

The TSA spokesperson Blogger Bob tried to make this argument by referencing many experts who argued that the dosage was relatively safe if it provides a definite benefit. There are constitutional and practical arguments about the security benefits of backscatter X-Ray, but the most telling is that all the arguments are based on the option being the choice between not having the security at all or having backscatter X-Ray along with the risks. That is not a true choice.

Putting aside the constitutional arguments (it doesn't), putting aside the argument over whether this device actually increases security in the first place (it doesn't) there’s still one safety argument not made.

All of the supporting information that was made available, on the links that worked and didn’t require a fee to access, said that the dosage was relatively safe, but didn’t say it was absolutely safe. The supporting information didn’t comment on the safety of Backscatter X-Ray as compared to Millimeters Wave. It appears that the TSA, when seeking supporting information, presented the choice of "backscatter or no security" when the choice is actually "backscatter or mmw or no security".

With millimeter wave technology, the only problems are that it is unconstitutional and that it provides minimal security in exchange for the cost of implementation. In terms of the health of the traveler, millimeter wave technology is completely safe at the dosages required.

So given that a completely safe equivalent alternative exists why then is the TSA going ahead with backscatter instead of millimeter wave?

It has been a suggested that the choice to use backscatter has to do with greasing the right palms, that it has something to do with who currently employs Chertoff. Is simple corruption the reason the TSA is using hazardous procedures and putting the health of the traveling public at risk?

The TSA wants you dead

When the TSA first introduced the concept of Whole Body Imaging, since renamed Advanced Imaging Technology, there were many complaints. Many moral, legal, and constitutional issues were raised as to why Whole Body Imaging was a very bad idea. There were also safety concerns, but it was pointed out that if the topic is confined to milimeter waves then they are actually safe.

It was also pointed out that said explanation does not apply to backscatter x-ray technology.

It was explained that one of them was non-ionizing radiation, heat radiation. The other is ionizing radiation, cumulative radiation. One of them is safe because the only danger is in dosage and the moment the source is removed the exposure is over. The other is unsafe because each exposure adds to previous exposures, which is why doctors try to be sparing in the use of x-rays.

So what does the TSA do in response? The TSA is expanding the use of backscatter. Not mmw, but backscatter.

It is bad enough that the TSA has a perverted desire to strip search all passengers, on the premise that we are all criminals who have not yet been caught. It is bad enough that the TSA is going to use this same technology on children in violation of child pornography laws. But now the TSA has decided that in addition to violating our own fourth and fifth amendment rights that THEY WANT TO GIVE EVERYONE CANCER.

And the ironic point is that these security measures aren't effective to anyone wearing leather.

These questions were posted on the TSA blog, but the primary blogger - Blogger Bob - has not been willing to answer any questions on this subject.

How long until this abomination of an agency is dismantled and the employees are put on trial for treason? The Nuremberg defense is not supposed to be admissible in any court, and whatever constitutional basis there may have been in theory for this agency has long ago eroded by the TSA's unconstitutional terrorist activities in practice.

A fully private healthcare system

Although it appears that Obama may be dumping the public option (for now) many of his supporters both in and out of government are still pushing for a taxpayer funded public option. Allegedly this public option would be a Government Sponsored Enterprise, after the fashion of such success stories as FNME or FDMC. It is called "alleged" because no part of the upcoming healthcare bill that will eventually be voted on by either the House or the Senate has actually been finalized.

On a libertarian internet site (probably on Lew Rockwell but the original reference cannot be located), someone suggested that he would support the public option – including a 15% tax increase - in exchange for the private option actually being private.

The private system would be completely private. It would not be regulated in any way. It would be free of all FDA regulations, DEA regulations, and medical licensing. Anybody can be a healthcare practitioner, and can prescribe any medication. But any prescription would be considered nothing more than advice since no medications would be controlled.

So as an experiment, this idea was run by several supporters of socialist medicine.

Theoretically there should be no reason for them to oppose it. They get everything they allegedly want - full government run medicine with all the controls, paid for by those who do not want government medicine. They get free healthcare paid for by their opponents. They get all the controls they say people need. They get all the licencing, all the regulations, and all the restrictions they say people need. And they get to have those who prefer a private system pay for their public system.

The suggestion was greeted with horror.

For some reason, even though the suggestion gave them everything they say they want, they didn't want it.

They were obsessed with the question of how someone in the private system would know which medicines to take. It was suggested that people in the private system would go to any fraud who claims to be a doctor, and only wanted the medicinal freedom in order to "pop pills". Such arguments would indicate that advocates of socialist medicine need the government to prevent them from going to frauds and would need the government in order to not "pop pills".

It seems that the argument in favor of Socialist medicine is more than simply an attempt by the advocates of that system to have "free" healthcare. There is for some strange reason a desire to ensure that everyone else is in a controlled and regulated system as well, a desire to control and regulate everyone else.

The TSA

Times have been difficult for the public relations department of the TSA. A story was released on CNN describing the MMW imaging system being introduced as a new security measure. Included in the CNN story was an image as the TSA screener would see.

This image was considerably more graphic than the one the TSA has been using to assure everyone that there was nothing improper going on with the imaging system, that this was not an electronic strip search, that the images were "family safe" and could be used "on the cover of Reader's Digest."

Scanner Images - NSFW

The image on the left is the one provided by the TSA. The image on the right is the one provided by CNN. The only change to the image is to make the CNN image larger to be of comparable size to the TSA image - meaning that even when smaller the CNN image showed considerably more detail than the TSA wanted the American public to know about.

The TSA spokespeople assure the traveling public that the capability of the computers to store those images has been disabled. As any technical person knows, that the capability exists means that it can be reenabled at any time with no difficulty. The assurance that the capability is currently turned off offers no reassurance to anyone who understands how computers work. This capability is turned off as long as the public is worried, and can be turned on at any time.

Because the images were so graphic, a major concern was whether or not children will be subjected to these searches. As it turns out, Children will be screened, although any informed parent may choose to opt their child out of MMW screening to opt for a frisking instead. Any child old enough to stand unassisted with hands raised will be a possible sbject for this screening.

This makes the TSA the world's foremost child pornographer. Every single TSO who works around one of these machines could be considered a criminal for their participation in this procedure. Every TSO who is in a position of authority of them, going all the way up the chain of command to the head of the TSA (and higher) is potentially liable for conspiracy to and aiding and abetting child pornography.

The TSA is already seen as criminal by most people Apparently it was decided that the reputation of the TSA wasn't bad enough in the eyes of the public. Those who work there are already seen as criminals. Now those who work there risk being seen as sex offenders.

The Authoritarian Mindset

When encountering those who have a desire to tell others what to do, to dictate to them, one can try to classify them into different categories. C. S. Lewis did so by discussing the difference between the dictator who dictates out of greed and the one who dictates out of a desire to help others. The former, he said, was preferable because his greed could sometimes be sated.

Another way of looking at this is to compare those who desire to dictate because of a specific action they see (or fail to see) in others that they want to correct. While they consider themselves lovers of liberty they are all too willing to violate it for "just this cause" or "just that purpose." It could be the moral authoritarianism of the war against vice or it could be the socialist authoritarianism of the war against differences of ability. In neither case does the person involved see himself as anti-liberty, but they see themselves correcting a flaw in liberty.

But the worst dictators are the ones who most strongly desire to be dictated to.

Some people, a minority but they actually do exist and are the antithesis of libertarians, are actually comfortable in an authoritarian system because it frees them from the necessity of decision making. They do not need to rely on their own judgment. Experts, who have been recognized by the government as experts, are more qualified to make decisions for them.

These people hate libertarians because libertarians are willing to challenge the experts. Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize, and libertarians reply with "So what? He's still an idiot." Libertarians even say that the Supreme Court has erred on occasion, and not just when later courts overturned earlier judgments. And sometimes the libertarians who say these things are self-educated and do not have the necessary certificates to prove that they know what they actually do know.

An individual must not challenge the decision making of the proper authorities. That one could do so challenges their worldview to the core.

These people also make the most severe dictators. When given power their decisions must never be challenged because they have to be right because they have all the certificates and credentials that say they are right. Dissent is not to be tolerated.

These people make the most docile slaves and the most demented dictators.

The Prevalence of Police Abuse

There are certainly more stories of police abuse hitting the news outlets, at an accelerating pace. This is resulting in greater awareness in the general public of the police abusing their powers. Whether it is tasering a driver on the highways of Utah, tackling a kid in Baltimore because he is riding a skateboard, strip searching the victim of an assault, or the many examples of SWAT team raids of wrong houses often resulting in the death of either the occupants or even police, these stories are circulating with an ever increasing frequency.

There are two theories about why this is so. One is that the rise of inexpensive digital cameras and video cameras has made it easier to capture police misconduct, and the rise of YouTube has made it easier to spread the stories captured. In the past these issues were investigated only if the news were to make an issue of it. As video cameras became more popular it was still up to the news, but it was harder for news outlets to ignore police abuse. As a result of private footage of Rodney King being aired on television the police involved were eventually held accountable.

The television networks can choose whether or not to air any privately recorded footage, and as a result it is possible that many recorded incidents never were shown to the public. The internet enables people to bypass the major media and as a result those incidents are available to be viewed by anyone with an internet connection. Being viewed, it then becomes possible for the public to pressure the media into covering the story in ways never before possible.

Another theory is that these incidents are indeed becoming more common. The erosion of civil liberties that has taken place over the last seven years of the war on terror, coupled with the almost forty years of waging the drug war, has created a climate where government enforcement officials are not only given greater authority, but given more incentive to act against those who question their authority. Failure to show respect, or even obeisance, is considered a direct challenge to the authority of the officers and it must be punished.

This is abetted by the taser, which is considered a non-lethal instrument (except for the times when it is lethal). This leads to it being used as a method of “pain compliance”. This is in violation of the entire Anglo system of law because pain compliance is a euphemism for “punishment” and that can only be decided in a court of law by a judge and a jury, not by a law enforcement official. Any officer who uses a taser for the purpose of disciplining someone who is not a threat but guilty of not obeying an officer is guilty of assault and battery – and that is before the question of whether an officer can give a "lawful order" in the first place that must be obeyed.

It is clear that many police feel that they are above the law that they are sworn to enforce. This is shown in so many ways, most recently by Jimmy Justice as he films the police breaking even simple laws and their irate reactions as he calls them on their activities. Sometimes catching police breaking the law can lead to legal trouble for the person with the camera, which is why Jimmy Justice acts pseudonymously.

Sometimes filming of law enforcement officials leads to their discipline, although not as often as it should. This trend is only going to accelerate. Some jurisdictions are fighting back with laws that prevent us from videotaping the police or even taking still photos as they perform their duties, calling these activities spying or obstruction respectively. The question remains how well ordinances and charges of this nature will hold up in court against what is left of our civil liberties.

Given the abusive nature of police today, it is a good idea to have a camera handy even if local ordinances forbid it. When accused of resisting arrest and disorderly conduct – a charge used when there is no specific law being broken but the officer simply doesn’t like what is being done – a camera recording the incident may be the best defense as it was in the case of a bicyclist assaulted by the NYPD. It can be used as evidence against the charges, and may even be useful if the department actually decides to discipline the officer.

The police state cannot happen without the police

{After reviewing last week’s post, I felt the topic of the police needed to be explored in much greater depth. If we have a police state, it will be the police who make it possible.)

There are two problems with law enforcement: sins of commission and sins of omission. A crime of commission is when individual officers themselves are guilty of offenses against individual members of the population they are supposed to serve and protect. A crime of omission is when fellow officers do nothing to restrain those officers who are guilty of the crime of commission.

People are being conditioned to not resist the government. That is why the police lately favor an “overwhelming show of force” – sending out a swat team to arrest a single individual. Often these raids occur in the dark of the night, when the targets of the raids are likely asleep and therefore disoriented and unable to react quickly to the raid by doing things such as asking to see a warrant or identifying the assailant before attempting to defend their own home. On services such as YouTube, examples of police brutality are becoming increasingly common and these examples are getting increasingly greater coverage and exposure.

But even swat raids aside people get abused in individual encounters with the police, as in the case of a motorist in Utah being tasered, or a victim of an assault being forcibly stripped in a jail cell, or many other similar incidents which may ultimately cause the police to stop allowing their actions to be videotaped.

All these incidents are good for convincing people of the futility of standing up to the police. While it is the law that if the police officer is acting in an unlawful manner civilians have a right to resist the police, exercising that right would most likely be futile. The only check remaining on police activity is civil (never criminal) cases against the police, which often stick the department (and therefore the city) with the bill. In the most egregious cases officers are disciplined, in that they are suspended (sometimes with pay, sometimes without) or fired for activities that would get anybody else arrested.

Those incidents are crimes of commission. The remainder of the problem is crimes of omission. When an officer commits one of the above offenses, fellow officers should remember that they are supposed to serve and protect the public, but instead rally behind the officer in a show of solidarity. This is often known as “the blue wall of silence”, and any attempt to punish offending officers runs up against a problem: only the government can launch criminal proceedings against those who should be so prosecuted, and those in the government doesn’t do that against their own as often as they should. Only when it becomes so blatantly obvious that government officials are protecting each other that public outcry is impossible to ignore do government officials get targeted, usually a single sacrificial lamb to protect all the rest.

Internal investigations too often clear offending officers, and district attorneys too seldom file criminal charges against criminals with badges. An honest and upright officer should arrest a fellow officer if that officer is also an offender. That is a crime of omission.

There is more to the issue of crimes of omission, an aspect rarely explored but of greater importance. In a divided government such as the United States government, the theory is that any portion of the government can impede the execution of an unjust law. Congress can fail to pass a law, the president can veto a law, and the judiciary can nullify a law. The president can also fail to enforce a law, a principle seldom examined. It is the executive branch that is charged with the task of enforcement. All front line representatives of the government are executive branch agents, whether the agent is a health inspector, a clerk handing out a welfare check, or an officer of the law. Some are representatives of the federal executive, some are representatives of the state executive, and some are representatives of the local city or county executive.

The only way laws are ever enforced is through the actions of executive agents. This is true of both good laws and bad laws. Whether enforced by a single officer or by a swat team, there is no enforcement without the action of executive agents. That applies to citations issued, arrests made, and prosecutions filed.

When onerous or odious laws are passed, it is up to the police to enforce them. Unfortunately too often the police do enforce them, as it is their job – and their job is to do their job. Suggestions that certain laws not be enforced are anathema to many people. Whether the topic is officer nullification or jury nullification the objection is always that the law, no matter how bad, must be obeyed and if one disagrees with the law there are channels within the system to change the law. That a law might be so bad that it should not be enforced is increasingly regarded as a fringe view.

The most common objection to legal nullification is framed as the nullifiers “making up the law”, which is the exact opposite of nullifying a law. When a law is made up, it means the officer or jury is creating a law from scratch to enforce. When an officer can “make up” laws it becomes possible for an officer to say “I will arrest you for the crime of depositing money into your own savings account even though no legislative body has passed such a law.” Nullification is the opposite. Nullification is the officer saying “I will not arrest you for depositing money into your own savings account even though a legislative body passed such a law.” The law is made up by the proper procedure, it is simply not enforced. There is no law creation in nullification, either by the officer or the jury.

The other objection is that the police officer might fail to arrest for actual crimes because the criminal is a close friend. That happens already. That happens every time an officer fails to arrest a fellow officer and every time a district attorney fails to file charges against an officer. It is impossible to completely eliminate all corruption from the system. If the ability of a good officer to ignore bad laws is eliminated, it has absolutely no effect on a bad officer to ignoring good laws, an argument parallel to the self defense argument of “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” That objection is no reason to prevent an officer from being allowed to actually think, actually make conscientious decisions regarding the laws they are called upon to enforce.

Politicians actually do not enforce any laws. Some of them, before their political careers, were in the military or the police, but currently none of them lift a finger to actually enforce laws. Many leaders of dictatorships are accused of “killing millions”, but in truth they personally killed very few people – they only ordered others to kill. None of the commanders in a war actually kill enemy soldiers; they rely on their own soldiers to do so for them. President Truman did not drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a pilot did. Without the police, politicians truly are impotent. The police state is truly dependent upon the police. That is why in any conflict between any officer and anyone outside the power structure, the government sides with the officer.

Those who desire a police state have two things to fear, an informed jury and an informed officer. Those who fear a police state have one thing to fear, an unthinking officer. When the police state arrives, it will be due largely to the sins of omission of the officers involved, without whom the police state would be impossible.

Shining Lights on Bad Practices

For one brief shining moment there was a website where bad police officers could be publicly exposed. The website in question, Rate My Cop, lasted only a few days before government complaints shut it down. Go complain to the hosting company.

There are many websites that purport to expose bad practices in certain demographics, such as Rate-My-Teacher, Rate-My-Neighbor, and the very good Source Watch. Rate My Cop is directed at government, much like Source Watch or Project Vote Smart. The difference is, this is directed at those who actually enforce the rules.

Yes, the police, they are a very special group. They are the ones who actually enforce the laws. Elected officials do not enforce laws. Without the police (and other agents of the executive), there is no police state, and the elected officials become nothing more than caricatures of themselves, blustering impotently about their own importance.

Those who show ire to the police do so knowing that the police are the front line of the government. Anybody who despises police does so knowing, at some level, that the oppression is the result of the police, and that if one is driven to actually resist governmental injustice it will be the police who are the individuals involved in the struggle.

The police are often given the special defense of “just doing their jobs”, as if that were sufficient defense when they enforce bad laws. Suggest that the police should decline to enforce bad laws and the reaction is a furious (and frightened) clamor as people demand to know if that means the police can make up the law on the spot. The fright isn’t so much that police would be able to create law, but that some law somewhere might go unenforced.

To make things perfectly clear, suggesting that the police decline to enforce a law has nothing in common with suggesting that the police can create law.

That website was treated as a threat to the police. Threats to police are threats to the entire power structure of the government. The crimes that are most harshly enforced and punished are crimes against the government, and any equivalent crime without the government as a victim has a less severe punishment.

That being said, the website was not a threat any more than YouTube videos are threats.

That being said, the police are becoming increasingly reluctant to release videos to the public.

All the website did was shine light upon the police and their activities.

So now this brings up another topic, that of essential privacy rights. Some try to make an argument of equivalence between giving officers privacy and giving civilians privacy. The difference is that police officers should be held to a higher standard, instead of the current practice of holding them to a lower standard. Instead of saying “if anyone else did that it would be a crime” the mode of thought should be “for civilians that would be acceptable behavior but you are a cop.”

In the performance of their duties, police should not expect, should not even ask, for privacy. A reluctance for their activities to be exposed shows that they know they should not be doing what they are doing.

There was a time when police were considered public servants. That time seems to be forgotten. Instead it seems the laws apply to everyone except those in power, and of course the front line.