Looking different is not probable cause

For perspective on racial profiling and warrantless searches, see "Black Men Can't Run," an excellent personal narrative from Paul Myers in the UK Guardian. We require police to have warrants for searches for a reason: when we give the State authority to conduct arbitrary searches, we open the door for officers of the State to act on personal and institutional prejudices, which will lead to an increased number of violations of civil rights among people who look or act differently.

Today's history snippet

Among my summer reading is Joachim C. Fest's biography of Hitler*. Hitler had been Chancellor for a month when, on February 28, 1933, the Reichstag was set ablaze. The fire aggravated fears of possible Communist-sponsored terror and revolution and gave Hitler a pretext for expanding state power with an emergency decree "for the protection of the people and the state." Fest talks about how conservatives who had helped bring Hitler to power, thinking they could use him for their own purposes, facilitated the establishment of Nazi dictatorship:

The decisive factor was that the conservatives made no effort to preserve the rights of habeas corpus. This "fearful gap" meant that henceforth there was no limit to outrages by the state. The police could arbitrarily "arrest and extend the period of detention indefinitely. They could leave relatives without any news concerning the reasons for the arrest and the fate of the person arrested. They could prevent a lawyer or other persons from visiting him or examining the giles on the case. . . . They could crush their prisoner with work, give him the vilest food and shelter, force him to repeat hatead slogans or sing songs. They could torture him. . . . No court would ever find the case in its files. No court had the right to interfere, even if a judge unofficially obtained knowledge of the circumstances."**

Protesters declaring equivalence between Nazi Germany and post-9/11 America go a little too far. Still, one cannot read the history of Hitler's seizure of power without seeing some parallels to actions undertaken by the American government in the name of fighting terrorism. Reading history gives us good examples of how fear can lead democratic republics down the wrong path.

*Joachim C. Fest, Hitler, Verlag Ullstein, 1973. English translation by Richard and Clara Winston, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974.
**Fest, p. 414, quoting Arnold Brecht, Vorspiel zum Schweigen: Das Ende der deutschen Republik, Vienna, 1948.

Jean Charles de Menezes

The UK is not the US, right? We don't have anything to worry about when British police shoot an innocent man, right?

Consider: British police spot a man wearing a bulky coat in the London Underground. They chase the man into a subway car, pin him to the floor, and shoot him several times. Jean Charles de Menezes, 27-year-old Brazilian, and innocent man, dies. Al-Qaeda is laughing: they no longer have to sacrifice their own operatives to kill innocent people. Western authorities will do it for them.

I don't hate cops. but I live in increasing fear of their power over our lives. Apparently, in response to the July 7 mass transit bombings, London police now can justify killing a subdued suspect (suspected of what? running? bad summer fashion sense?). Do American cops operate under the same rules of engagement? If they do, any citizen who wants to survive a trip outdoors will have to follow these rules:

• Don't wear anything unusual.
• Don't make any sudden moves.
• Don't go anywhere near places under police surveillance (contact your local PD for a complete list of currently surveiled terrorist suspect sites).
  
• Don't look grouchy, nervous, or interested in anything.

There probably is no good policy reform that would have avoided this tragedy. It's not the first time the police have shot an innocent person, and it won't be the last, as long as police have to chase bad dudes and make split-second decisions. But the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes provides a very vivid example of the danger of letting our fears of terrorism rule our daily lives. In the pursuit of terrorists, in their fear of more bombings, London police have killed an innocent man, without trial, without appeal.

Rationale

Fear threatens free speech and freedom in general. Jihadist cowards, afraid of the possibility that their sons, daughters, and wives might choose the freedom of the Western world over their stifling traditions, attack the softest targets they can find, killing innocents. Trembling citizens, rattled by these attacks and by the propaganda of their governments, acquiesce to increasing restrictions (random searches on the subway, watch lists with no clear due process rights, GPS locators mandated in cell phones, police authorized to shoot to kill suspicious individuals wearing bulky overcoats) in the futile hope that increasingly powerful police and military organizations can ensure that nothing bad will happen ever again.

I feel compelled to act against that fear and the encroachment on freedom. But what is one person to do? Where does one find the lever, the fulcrum, and the Archimedean place to stand to move a fearful populace (and an increasingly fearsome government) back toward the freedoms on which America was founded?

Some might argue blogging is the antithesis of action, or at best a very pale form of action. Speech is action, sacred action, but blogging is not necessarily action. For one thing, there is no guarantee that the blogger's words will be heard. One can speak all one wants, but communication, by definition, is an interaction between sender and receiver. The blogger is sending, but if no one is receiving, no communication takes place. Blogging sounds a lot like a tree falling in the woods while everyone else is at the beach.

So what is the point of a blog with the title, “Patriot, Act!” Does the blog live up to its own title, or is the title nothing more than a play on punctuation?

I offer the following reasons for this blog. You, gentle reader, may evaluate these reasons and the blog as you see fit.

1. I want to add my voice to what so far seems, much to my distress, to be a minority of Americans who recognize the danger of sacrificing freedom for their own false hopes and the government's false promises of security.

2. I want to publicize arguments that others may use to justify and promote political action.

3. I want to organize and expand my own ideas in an attempt to clarify my philosophy, if not for the world, then for myself.

4. I want to test my First Amendment rights to make sure they are still in effect.

5. If those rights are not still in effect as they ought to be, I want to provoke a reaction from the powers that be, in hopes of setting the stage for a forum (e.g. public discussion, media attention, court battle) that will offer patriots a chance to re-establish those rights.

6. I want to promote my vision of the inalienable human rights every person should hold sacred and every social contract should protect.

As a speech teacher, I tell my students that public speaking is a bedrock of civilized democratic society. In forming a society, we have abandoned force as a means of solving problems. Instead, we appeal with our words to the emotion, reason, and moral sense of our fellow citizens. I thus exercise my freedom of speech here in hopes of preserving civilized democratic society.

Where have all the conservatives gone?

One should not ascribe much credibility to online polls, but consider this distressing result: seeking a little conservative solace at The Weekly Standard, I clicked on their Question of the Week:

Following the terrorist attacks on London earlier this month, police in New York City began conducting random searches of bags at entrances to the subway. Do you believe these searches are constitutional? Do you believe they are necessary?
*Yes to both
*No to both
*They are constitutional but unnecessary
*They are unconstitutional, but they are necessary

I clicked on “No to both” and eagerly awaited some comforting results from my fellow conservatives. Alas, no such results were forthcoming. At the time I participated in the poll (08:30 CDT), the results were as follows:

Yes to both 66%
No to both 10%
They are constitutional but unnecessary 9%
They are unconstitutional, but they are necessary 14%

I thought conservatives stood against this sort of big-government intrusion into our daily lives. Instead, this (again, unscientific) poll suggests that a large majority of conservatives are willing to ignore or wrongly interpret the Constitution to justify random searches of any citizen who has the nerve to poke his head out of his house and try traveling through his country. Remember, “random” means the search is based on nothing remotely resembling probable cause, on nothing at all, really. A random search is the most arbitrary intrusion possible into our daily activities. Where are the conservatives who should bristle at such government behavior?