Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power. – Friedrich Hatzel
I could have started this essay with the famous Martin Niemöller “first they came for the communists” quote, but I’ve already used it; besides, this one makes an important point the other doesn’t. The apathy implied by Niemöller is only part of the reason people sit idly by while governments persecute others, and there is another, darker aspect to which Hatzel alludes with the phrase “moral weakness”: by and large, people tend to ignore evil as long as it’s being inflicted on those they don’t like. That holds true whether the perpetrator is a government, a collective group such as a religion, corporation or political party, a government actor such as a prosecutor or cop, an official of any collective group, or an individual perceived as an “authority” due to education, fame or whatever. As long as those being systematically persecuted, insulted, vilified, excluded, abused, assaulted, robbed, imprisoned or even murdered are the “bad guys”, the outsiders, the pariahs or even just “Not Our Kind, Dear,” most people are too morally weak to stand up for them even if they recognize the harm inflicted upon them as an evil.
Tyrants are well-aware of this, which is why campaigns to increase authoritarian control always start with some group who are hated or feared by many in that society (such as ethnic, religious, political or sexual minorities). “Criminals” are a popular target, and an especially effective one because it’s so very easy to create them by simply passing a law against some consensual behavior and then inventing myths about why those who break those laws are subhuman and therefore deserving of maltreatment. American “authorities” have become very good at this in the past few decades, and nearly every demonized group now falls into at least two categories at once: “sex offenders” are both criminals and sex minorities; “terrorists” are both criminals and religious minorities, etc. Whores are the most perfect victims of all: the “sex trafficking” narrative wraps criminals, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities and foreigners into one tidy package and tops it off with “children” to “rescue”.
After the legal precedent for violating a particular right is established with outcasts, it is easily extended to merely marginalized groups, and eventually to everyone (because you never know where those dirty witches/terrorists/sex traffickers/drug users/child molesters might be hiding; they look just like real people!) And by the time members of the majority group finally begin to wake up all the cops are armed with tanks and machine guns and the judges have given them carte blanche to invade, steal, assault, violate, maim and kill. The time to speak up was when the rhetoric started, when the hatemongers were still just talking and the politicians had not yet recognized the target of their venom as a “safe” one. While most of the young men being thrown into cages to rot were black and Hispanic, white America couldn’t be bothered to question the morality of mass incarceration. While most of the victims of prosecutorial overreach were businessmen and professionals on the one hand and poor minorities on the other, hardworking blue-collar folks indulged in the modern equivalent of jeering and throwing overripe fruit. While organized “feminism” was only subjecting sex workers, “rapists” and “deadbeat dads” to its aggressive smear campaigns and systematically destroying important legal principles (such as presumption of innocence, witness confrontation and equal protection) only in sex-related cases, American women cheered them on and shouted down those who questioned their actions. And when the targets of intrusive surveillance were only “criminals” and scary brown people with weird clothes, those who pointed out the growing danger were derided for “tying the hands of police”.
But now that the precedents are well-established, the machine that hate built is grinding up white people, middle-class people, women and sacred cows alike. The cops are smashing down their doors, murdering their pets, beating and caging their sons and sexually assaulting their daughters. Imperial prosecutors with absolute immunity to the consequences of their actions are hounding ordinary people into bankruptcy or death for heinous “crimes” such as building houses or downloading computer files. Women are increasingly prosecuted and imprisoned using the legal tools created by “feminists”, and nobody is safe from the burgeoning surveillance state. And all because instead of strangling these abominations in their cribs, unprincipled cowards cried, “They’re just babies!” and proceeded to feed and nurture them until they grew completely out of control.
This is an excellent description of the sad world (not just the US) as it is today, sadly I cannot see it improving while the masses blindly follow the purveyors of fear who are allowed to use this fear to subjugate their people.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of declaring ‘us vs. them’ but it’s hard not to when I think several of us who regularly comment here recognize the state of affairs for what it is. The trouble is, and I realize that this is going to sound very cold-hearted, is that even though the machine is grinding up those who previously supported it and even contributed to it, not enough have been ground up to cause the realization that what’s happening is anything more than a handful of ‘isolated incidents.’
It’s a belief, probably more akin to a hope, that the system won’t grind them up. I’ll admit that I fall into this category, thought I’d venture I’m more naive about it than others. I’m also at a loss as to how this trend can be reversed, if indeed it can be reversed without bloodshed. I certainly would not like to see my life end in the second Civil War or the American version of Robespierre’s France.
So yes, things might be getting out of hand, but it’s not completely out of control to the point where enough people have become angry enough to do something about it. And even if there were enough people, in today’s society has their own opinions about how to fix things, making consensus nearly impossible.
You WILL live to see that day though – we all will.
And that’s why I am hoping (because that’s all I feel I can do at this point) that when that day comes it’s more akin to the fall of the Soviet Union versus the examples I’ve cited above. Actually, perhaps that’s why we have not reached that day, because as foolish as many people can be, they aren’t totally ignorant of things like WWI, WWII, etc. Who wants to risk going back to that again?
As the saying goes, ‘better the devil you know…’
American policing is totally corrupt, to the core. There is no reforming it. It needs to be done away with, and something new put in it’s place.
Again, the problem is when some people have power over others.
The mechanism that turns erstwhile good, moral people into a foaming-at-the-mouth mob, often against the entirely innocent, is easily the most terrifying corner of the human mind, for me. Doubly so since, to date, I’ve been spare this affliction; it’s an alien experience to me.
Oh, it’s not religion. It’s some pointless grouping command deep in the human software that turn them into predatory sheep. Just try mentioning to a group of atheists that you’re not a progressive; no religion necessary for them to enter burn the witch mode.
No arguments from me. I was thinking of a broader definition of religion than merely a belief in God. Your definition is more accurate than mine.
It scares any rational person. But the big danger to watch for is when groups with axes to grind learn to manipulate that mechanism, usually by inventing phony emergencies. On the right the boogeyman is usually something everyone fears, like drugs (up to now) or terrorism; on the left it is usually some groundless health scare or environmental “crisis.” What both wings have in common is that the people hyping these phony emergencies are NOT your friends.
Because of course there could never be a legitimate health or environmental crisis. Of course the fear of these things can be used just like the fear of terrorism is, but the basis of The Feared Thing can be just as real, be it al Qaida or a tsunami.
Maggie, when you wrote this article … were you thinking of the drone killing of Anwar al-Awlaki?
That was the “WTF” moment for me – a time when everything I believed just came unraveled. I seriously hate Islamic terrorists so badly that when I retired I was saddened by the fact that I wouldn’t be in uniform to see the last one put in the ground. Call me racist … I don’t know (and really I don’t care).
So when al-Awlaki got “droned” I immediately hoped that he had died a painful and slow death.
But then I got to thinking …
An American citizen, not a combatant, not even really on a U.S. acknowledged battlefield (he was in Yemen, I believe). No due process. To this day, there is still no clear cut plan for “due process” whenever the regime declares an American citizen a “terrorist”. Obama could declare me … or anyone … a terrorist and he has a main stream media that’s only too happy to oblige him by making up evidence to support his proclamations.
And I have to apologize to you Maggie. A couple of weeks ago I made a statement that the U.S. “doesn’t torture much”. You disagreed. Well you were right. I was thinking of the THREE guys we waterboarded … but I forgot – until I was reminded this week – of all the guys we’ve handed over (and continue to hand over) for rendition to our more barbaric “allies” in the middle east.
A couple of times when I was in Iraq – we captured a few insurgents. We’d ask them questions … they wouldn’t talk … so we just say … “Well we got to get back to the ship / base” … so we’d call Iraqi police or military to come pick up the dudes we had in custody. In one case, the Iraqi police called us back the next day to give us the information an insurgent refused to tell us. “How did you get that information out of him?” my OIC asked … and the policeman just replied … “He’s more comfortable talking to Iraqis than Americans.”
Riiiiiight.
I had a buddy who told me he turned over 6 insurgents to Iraqi police to hold for a night … and the next morning there were only 5 and the police told us “one tried to get away – so he was shot.” Well, not surprisingly – that policeman ALSO had info the insurgents “decided” to share with him. Wonder how he got it? We didn’t care – he didn’t volunteer the fact that he tortured the guy so we simply wiped the thought from our minds (even though we knew how he got the info).
And you know, were it possible to just restrict these kinds of things to Islamic terrorists – I’d have no problem with that. I certainly turned a blind eye to it when I was over there.
But it IS NOT possible … eventually it comes around to all of us as well – and we become the targets.
So I don’t feel bad about what we did, and still do to terrorists. We are still many orders of magnitude more civilized, and more respectful of human rights than the terrorists are. But I have become sickened about what all of it has done to us.
I still hope Al-Awlaki is painfully burning in hell … but his … assassination by the U.S. government was an unpleasant epiphany for me.
The immediate inspiration was the driving-to-suicide of Aaron Swartz, but that wasn’t any kind of eye-opening moment for me; such moments are extremely rare in my life, and have never influenced my perception of the wrongfulness of any person or group of persons having power over another (which I have recognized as evil since my late teens).
As for your realization about torture: lots of people make the error of only ascribing culpability to the government for actions it performs itself, with its own instruments. But when an institution is as powerful as the US government, its silence and inaction (in the cases of “authorities” under it) or delegation and encouragement (in the case of other countries) render it very culpable indeed. The very existence of the Drug War, the arming of local police departments, the declaration of absolute prosecutorial immunity by SCOTUS and the refusal of US authorities to prosecute constitutional violations by state and local governments (except in certain politically-motivated circumstances) make it at least 75% culpable for all of the tyrannies inflicted by state and local governments, courts and police forces even if Uncle Sam himself had no direct involvement. If you as a parent give a baseball bat to your older son, declare verbally that you are angry at your younger son and then stand by and watch while your older son beats your younger to a bloody pulp, it’s highly disingenuous for you to then declare that you’ve never abused your children.
I was reading this yesterday:
“In one case, they hauled someone in on a drug offense, attempted to beat a confession out of him and, when the guy started bleeding on the floor, made him lick up his own blood. One of the officers — Thomas Boyd Chandler — then threatened the suspect that he’d be shot and buried in a hole in the desert if he squealed to anyone about the enhanced interrogation techniques used on him in custody.” — https://t.co/8Yu8QVZ8
Now, this was only officially sanctioned on a local level, but imagine being taken into custody at that police station. Not fun.
This is why I think the main problem we have these days in government is corruption (and that goes for the US Justice department, from Holder on down).
And this is exactly why every man who has ever loved me, as a girlfriend, daughter, sister, friend or whatever, has become furious at me whenever I have any dealings I ever have with cops: I never back down, ever. When they start shouting demands, I reply “No!” or shout my own questions back. You know how cops used to deface driver’s licenses as a message to future cops that “this one has a bad attitude”? My license was full of them. Every cop in my home town knew my reputation, and I’m sure it was one of the reasons I was targeted for rape back in ’95.
I know full well that if I’m ever subjected to a “no-knock” raid and assholes start yelling “Get on the floor!” I will shout back “Fuck you!” and I will be shot or beaten to death. But I’ll die on my feet rather than on my knees.
Heh, I was watching an Japanese animated cartoon where the two protagonists were about to be executed by the Prefectural Governor and they made the exact same statement to him, “If living means grovelling to the likes of you I’d rather die on my feet.”
They escaped, of course, it was an upbeat cartoon… but I guess law enforcement never really changes.
Well of course I know you don’t usually have eye-opening moments but … I’m not you. Maybe you are just too smart for it but I was raised to be a patriot and to be proud of America. I’m a physically strong man and a damned tough one – but not the sharpest tool in the shed intellectually – so I bought what my parents and grandparents sold me. On top of that – I’m a man … which means I’m manipulatable not only by women – but by governments. Yeah, I know – these are lame excuses but I’m trying to dig out of the dunder here and into the light of enlightenment.
I didn’t even know who Aaron Swartz was until you mentioned him above. 🙁
I’ve read his Wiki though, just now.
Please don’t take that as bragging, because it isn’t; it doesn’t mean I’m better or smarter or wiser or more moral than you are. It’s just the way I’m wired; I don’t trust authority that I do not freely choose to submit to. Not now, not ever, and (as I said in my reply to PWS above) it will probably get me killed someday. Even in kindergarten I argued with the teacher when she said that Columbus was the only person of his time who believed the world was round..
I grew up in a cop family, so I’m incredibly cynical about cops, even though my Dad was scrupulously honest. (Because part of his scrupulous honesty was enforcing laws even if he personally thought they were immoral. Also, because he told me stories about cops who weren’t as scrupulously honest as himself.)
Of course, it didn’t help that the cops around here wanted to do an “asset forfeiture” on my Lexus (they didn’t succeed, thankfully) but that didn’t wake me up or anything, it was about what I expected from them.
Maggie,
I’ve generally been immune to the “eye-opening moments” as well but there was a particular instance where it occurred to me. I was visiting family in SLC when the Ruby Ridge fiasco blew up in Northern Idaho. The initial news report was that Kevin Harris had robbed a bank and killed two police officers. My initial response to
that was, “what are they doing dicking around with these guys? Just get the job done!”
I later found out that that was the USG’s first attempt at spin for a complete clusterfuck that they had initiated. And I was furious at myself for buying the gov’t propaganda line.
So when Waco came along, I wasn’t buying anything the gov’t was selling. A lot of the same actors, institutional and individual were in on that clusterfuck as well. Lon Horiuchi – infamous for shooting Vicki Weaver in the head with a sniper rifle because he thought officers were in imminent danger (geez, the officer safety canard NEVER goes out of style, does it?) was also at Waco where fire from his and other similar “stands” were used to keep the “perps” contained after the conflagration started.
Now, a disclaimer that shouldn’t be necessary but so often is. Just because I decry the violations of the civil rights of these American citizens does NOT mean that I think their respective beliefs of Millerist Millienial Apocalypticism or Millennial White Separatism have any merit. They don’t. I consider racism to be the lowest form of collectivism out there and the one with the most irrational foundation.
I was in the minority, even on the 2nd Amendment newsgroups, protesting the gov’t treatment of these citizens – where I was then accused of being an apologist for white supremacists and religious nut jobs – hence the disclaimer above. The irony to me was, as more information came out about Waco, the more people started to agree with me – and then these newly agreeable types started trying to pin Ruby Ridge on the Clinton administration. What the partisan hacks completely ignored is that not only that Ruby Ridge happened in its entirety under Bush 41, but that the BATF assault on Waco happened 13 days into Clinton’s presidency. There is no reasonable way to tie the initial assault to Clinton, although I do hold him and Janet Reno responsible for the subsequent siege, fire and mass murder, not to mention the travesty of justice that proceeded from there in the Federal courts.
The problem wasn’t a particular political party – it was both political parties and the carte blanche that they have extended to the apparatchiks and nomeklatura of the unaccountable bureaucracies and their enforcement arms. I use those terms because they originated in totalitarian countries; these behaviors are totalitarian cancers in our body politic and if they are not excised, in their totality, our polity is doomed. There is a reason why totalitarian countries are called “police states.”
If Lon Horiuchi and his accessories had been prosecuted for murder under color of law for their conduct at Ruby Ridge, as they rightly should have, there would never have been a Waco. Instead, the AiC for Ruby Ridge was promoted to the #2 spot in the FBI – until belated public outcry forced a recission of his promotion.
This is the methodology of the unaccountable. Rudy Giuliani distorts the law as a prosecutor and wins a lucrative political and speaking career. Fitzgerald plays footsie with organized crime connections with ties to 9-11 terrorists and uses the power of the AUSA to thwart journalists trying to publish those facts. The prosecutor behind Aaron Swartz’s suicide has a history of this behavior and has done very well out of it, career-wise.
There’s not much that we peons can do about this directly except to attempt to get the “law and order” types we know to look with a more jaundiced eye upon the pronouncements of gov’t functionaries. And to avoid falling into their propaganda trap of approving the prosecution of the other. As Rand pointed out in Censorship: Local and Express, “…in the transition to statism, every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right’s least attractive practitioners.”
Janet Reno, who was Attorney General at the time, “made her bones” prosecuting Satanic ritual abuse cases. She was literally a witch-hunter before she became the top prosecutor in the United States.
I never understood how this bizarre figure, who wasn’t even what you would call charismatic in appearance, could rise so high in American politics.
Yeah, I never understood that either. Maybe Clinton just had a hankerin’ fur some gator wrastling.
But we should give Reno credit for one trend. The trend where law enforcement “take complete responsibility” by… not taking any responsibility at all. This has now spread to the politicians and the bureaucrats. So Kudo’s Reno! You made political hypocrisy and form of uber-hypocrisy.
As to the satanic ritual abuse cases… Grant Snow was the most egregious, but the irony that most flabbergasted me was her assertion that what she did at Waco – using CS gas on children was, “for the children.” That’s right up there with, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
thanks pws for the link. I had not heard of the Ileana Flores case before probably because of her guilty plea. I don’t know if this changes what level of hell I think Reno deserves to be consigned to, but I thought the treatment meted out to her star “witness” (read – victim) dovetails well with what Maggie wrote about in her column. It might also be a counter-example where torture actually does give the torturer “what she wants to hear.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fuster/interviews/ileana.html
Yeah, the thing about torture is it has multiple uses. In lot’s of places it is used to break someone’s will so they will say what the State wants them to say for propaganda purposes.
Torture has three uses:
1) to produce a false confession,
2) to terrorize the local population (this can happen to YOU),
3) to give the torturer a hard-on.
It is useful for nothing else. The Romans used it to deter certain crimes (this can happen to YOU), but they knew it was useless for gathering information. The Inquisition used it to gather information, and got people confessing to flying through the air and fucking demons in the moonlight.
I hate to come off as a conspiracy guy, but are we SURE that it was suicide?
In addition, it’s been shown time and again that torture and coercive interrogation cause the victim to confess to whatever they think the torturer wants them to say.
I’ll bet most of those times you are thinking about, the cops told you they confessed to what you suspected.
How many confessed witches do you think had really laid down with Satan? My guess is fewer than confessed the crime.
Not only is it wrong. It’s useless. Giving incorrect info to waste your time perusing. Unless your suspicion is the truth, in which case it was also useless – the truth was already known.
In addition, it’s been shown time and again that torture and coercive interrogation cause the victim to confess to whatever they think the torturer wants them to say.
What the torturer wants them to say … is the truth … and that’s almost always what they get.
Look … I don’t condone torture but lets get off this imaginary science that it doesn’t produce quality results. It absolutely DOES produce quality results. Since the beginning of time, tribes and governments have trained and maintained specialized torture units for the purpose of punishment and interrogation. They didn’t do this for their health, or because they especially were fond of it – they did it for the results it produced.
It’s even acknowledged that torture works in the U.S. Code Of Conduct for fighting men and women …
As you can see (if you read between the lines) … there’s plenty of room in there acknowledging that especially brutal methods of torture could, and probably would work.
If torture simply ensured the guy told his captors “what they wanted to hear” … then why was I never told to tell my captors what they wanted to hear vice the truth?
During the Cold War, as a submariner we often engaged with the Soviets in areas they considered to be their “territorial” waters. I knew why we were there, and what we were doing (though not all on the crew did). Everytime we went on one of these missions … I was given three cover stories for our operations to repeat to my captors …
Cover Story 1: Was always a vague statement about “training” … “We were on a training exercise” … or some such nonsense.
Then I was told … “if they continue to PRESSURE you (read: “Torture”) then you can say …
Cover Story 2: Which would be a little more detailed, yet still very vague.
Then, if the PRESSURE continued … I could repeat …
Cover Story 3: Which told them pretty much what I was doing but nothing else, and it was still very vague because it didn’t give them information about how successful our mission had been, or specifically what kind of information we had collected.
It was suposed to end with “cover story 3” … but we all knew that when the guy breaks out a blow torch to torch your testicles – you’re going to tell him everything he wants to know.
There is NO penalty for a GI who reveals classified information while being interrogated via torture. This is because – we acknowledge that every man has a breaking point and the one who torture can find it if they are determined enough … and sadistic enough.
Yes. But he will tell you everything. Starting with cover story. Moving through truth. And then into fantasy. In some order. Until the torture stops.
And if you grab and torture someone who doesn’t know what you want them to know, you get tons of garbage.
Look up Abu zubaydah for one of the more high cost false confessions. And Maria of Ituren for one that is less likely to cause disagreement on it being false confession.
I followed your suggestion and it led to this little gem…
Blaming the Victims of Sexual Torture
If the men interrogating the witches were to become aroused, it was assumed that the desire originated not in them, but instead was a projection from the women. Women were supposed to be highly sexually-charged beings, while the celibate Inquisitors were supposed to be beyond such matters. Of course, the women were expected to admit that they were causing the interrogators to become sexually aroused, leading to a new round of questions and possible torture.
I guess they had “sex rays” even back in the old inquisition days. So nice that our society has progressed so far on this subject since then, isn’t it? /sarc
Krulak, if I torture you long enough, and badly enough, I can make you confess to witchcraft, or communism, or terrorism, or being Obama’s favorite butt monkey. If you want to pretend torture is useful, you have to pretend that witches were flying around Europe. That John McCain was an “air pirate.” That, as Dave points out, Maria of Ituren could turn herself into a horse.
THAT is what torture produces.
Or, as the Onion put it: “American Citizens Split On DOJ Memo Authorizing Government To Kill Them”
Someone I used to view as a friend recently declared that we should “put our faith in authority” after I reposted an excellent critique (from a woman who is an anarchist) of the liberal/left condemnation and stereotyping of gun owners. It turned into a discussion of authority and overreach and that’s when the friend dropped that jewel, among others. And when she became, in my eyes, a former friend.
Yes, the weird thing is that even Left people who support Occupy, or are fairly strong Lefty anarchists, or otherwise pose as anti-authority radicals get a little strange when the subject of guns come up. I’ve noticed it on some of the blogs I read.
I always say, “Ok, how about when they put you in the ghetto? When they put you in the cattle cars? When you are actually at Auschwitz? On line for the ‘showers?’ When they are about to turn on the gas?”
It seems like they can’t conceive of a situation where violent resistance is the only option. They want to sing kumbaya all the way to the crematorium.
Maggie and I each had the displeasure of interacting with someone on twitter saying something to the effect of “Even if someone broke into my home, I wouldn’t want to have a gun. I would never want to have a gun”. You could basically hear/smell the smug wafting of the newly-typed tweets. Basically the police would intervene… somehow.
That’s the obvious hint that it’s not reasoned position. A reasonable person, even a pretty extreme pacifist, could probably admit that there are situations where it’s better to have a gun than to not; this guy* was probably one of a litany who think guns drive otherwise sane people into a murderous rage though their gun-rays.
*Assuming it was a guy
Maybe the fact that my Dad wore one openly on his hip throughout my childhood robbed it of its mystic totem powers. I mean I knew it was dangerous, but I didn’t worry about it more than I worried about the propane tank that was in our camper, which my parents made sure I also knew was dangerous.
But yeah, it does seem that mystic gun rays are a problem for a lot of people. Even drawing a picture of a gun, at the wrong place and time, can bring down the full wrath of Authority on you these days.
Or, look at what happened to Star Simpson at the airport.
When seconds count… The police are only minutes away. And likely to shoot you instead of the perp anyway!
Statistically you are safer without a firearm in the house.
If somehow magically I could conjure a loaded gun into my hand at the moment it was needed, but have it gone the rest of the time that would be great. But I can’t.
So you gotta pick what situation to prepare for and which to hope don’t happen.
My wife’s 3yr old cousin shot his mother (wife’s aunt) in the head with a 38. While the aunt was babysitting my wife and her older sister (5 and 7).
So my guns didn’t make it past the steady dating phase. But I think everyone has to choose their own balance of what fears to ignore and which to act on.
To bad other peoples fears have external consequences. From prohibitions, to unnecessary war, to crazy regulations, to gun violence. It’s frustrating.
Just decide for yourself and keep your laws, prisons, and bullets to yourself.
That depends, of course, on your proclivity for suicide and poor storage practices. If one has neither, I suspect the odds of being shot with one’s own gun are quite remote.
Amen.
Well, that’s complicated. For an inkling of how complicated, see here.
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/
What isn’t complicated is that I have the right to self defense and a gun is the most effective means toward that end. That’s why I have one. And I think
we’ve seen enough instances of police abuse to know that one does not have to live by the gun in order to die by one in the hands of a state enforcer.
– Kipling
I don’t share the optimism of some who post here that there will be a revolution in our lifetime, or that the good guys will wind up in charge if there is. History shows that people who aren’t starving won’t risk it. Still, if there is such a revolt or even just civil unrest (and we’re already seeing some of that), and the police are not to be trusted, then the last thing you should ever want to do is to disarm yourself.
I’m of more or less the same view. I think the democratic institutions of the Western world are actually quite intact; voters more or less get the policies they want. As such, I’m skeptical of predictions of revolution; people won’t revolt against a popular status quo. Even if they did, what would they replace it with? Looking at the policy differences between the US and Canada (from a libertarian perspective), it’s hard to say the American Revolution was a worthwhile venture beyond symbolism. I think a future revolution would be much the same; bloody, costly, and ineffective.
Instead, I think we’ll continue to see incremental gains and losses in various freedoms. The masses will gripe, but that’s what they voted for.
They have that “it won’t happen to ME…but I’ll pray for YOU” mentality. Exceptionalism. Ugh. Of course, when the examples you gave are mentioned, then that’s being dramatic and invoking Godwin’s Law and blah blah blah stupidcakes.
” But I’ll die on my feet rather than on my knees.”
“I don’t trust authority that I do not freely choose to submit to. Not now, not ever, and …it will probably get me killed someday.”
There are times, Maggie, when pragmatism is more appropriate than valour. But I don’t suppose that you’d listen to me. So, listen to Percy French instead, pay attention to the ending:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=0pOwNXJkd7E
(This is the least worst recording I could find.)
The words are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slattery%27s_Mounted_Foot
Oh, it’s not valor, nor even courage or pride; it’s just plain, 100%, died-in-the-wool stubbornness. I’m not kidding; it’s like a reflex with me. Remember, you’re talking to the chick who stood there naked arguing with 15 fully-clothed cops who were there just to arrest her.
Pfft! Nudity is so easy for you!
You may call it stubbornness, Maggie, but reaching back to my point earlier in this thread, that might be what it takes to actually cause change. Until enough people decide that not only are they angry enough to want change, but also decide they are willing to give up everything (posessions, home, loved ones) in order to effect that change, then those who might know how to make this world better will probably always be outnumbered by those who wish merely wish to be left alone to try and live their lives as comfortably as circumstances allow.
Not to mention, not only do people have to make the two decisions I’ve mentioned here, they would also have to be capable of zealously guarding themselves in order to prevent their turning into what they’re fighting against once they’ve solved the problem.
just smile at the cops and say nothing. it will piss them off more. or say lawyer please… I just re read Connick v. Thompson: U.S. and it is pretty chilling. Obvious agenda of one segment of the court (RIGHT). That decision only takes away potential civil damages away for an accused who is not afforded his proper rights at trial. The onus is now on the State Bar Associations and Discipline Authorities to make sure prosecutors who act with conscious disregard to Brady protections are dis-barred. Period. Ironic that the majority used that as their only argument of an avenue left to effectively deter prosecutorial misconduct. But in reality if, states stick up it might do more. The actual prosecutor who tries a case is already civilly immune. Potentially losing their license to “serve justice” might deter these rogue nut-jobs to adhere to their ethical obligations..
[…] of minorities, even small and unpopular minorities, the precedent set by their maltreatment will be expanded by slow stages until it encompasses everyone but the rulers themselves. But it’s clear that most don’t […]
[…] minorities, even small and unpopular minorities, the precedent set by their maltreatment will be expanded by slow stages until it encompasses everyone but the rulers themselves. But it’s clear that most don’t […]