Dearborn, the Police State, and Islam vs. the Constitution, Liberty, and Christianity

HT to facebook friend Ellie Corrow. Another example of the Constitution and liberty vs. the Police State and thuggery.

κηρύσσω ὁ λόγος! (2 Tim 4:2).

Interesting...

Sometimes the "cure" doesn't help at all but makes things worse. Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. was one such (perhaps) well-intentioned attempt to make life better through more laws, more regulations, more police powers, more courts, and more jails. It failed. It made society more violent. It made treatment for alcoholism even harder to get. It penalized people who did not abuse alcohol. The only people who benefited were the police, courts, lawyers, and politicians.

Today, alcohol is a legal drug, while many others remain under the same federal prohibition (only without the legitimacy of a constitutional amendment). An argument can be made that the drug problem can better be handled in the way Portugal is doing than by filling up jails and spending billions of dollars to do so.

Personally, I think the most dangerous addictive drug out there is government. Once people are hooked, it's next to impossible to wean them off - whether they are addicted to the welfare state of the left or the warfare state of the right. But the Portuguese have demonstrated that it is possible to get off the government fix and approach social problems without resorting to the high of the police state.

Maybe its time to think outside the box a little bit and start limiting rather than expanding government. It might be worth a shot. What we've been doing for the past 80 years isn't really working.

Government at Work

In his letter to the Romans (13:1-7), St. Paul instructs us that government is sent by God to keep order, and we are obliged to obey the law and subject ourselves to the "higher authorities." However, government itself is obliged to likewise submit to "higher authorities" - especially its own obligation to act out of protection of its citizens and the motivation to do good and restrain evil. Government at all levels is prone to corruption and the perils of "absolute power."

Hence, part of the exhortation of Romans 13 is for government to obey the moral law and any other limits imposed on the government by the law itself.

In 1849, Henry David Thoreau wrote: "That government is best which governs least" (a quote sometimes incorrectly attributed to Jefferson or Paine). Since this writing, we've seen such worldwide exponential growth in government as : the American federal government's complete takeover of the states, the centralization of Italy and Germany, the creation of the American Federal Reserve and the IMF and World Bank, two world wars, the Great Depression, the rise and fall of worldwide Communism, the press for a united European state, and the rise of the post-WW2 American superstate. In the 20th century alone, government has killed 203,000,000 people.

Some recent arbitrary and ridiculous examples of why small government is better than big government:

• Lap dancing teachers get "punishment by paid vacation"
• Private citizen prosecuted for not handing over a coin found on private property as a child
• Government takes money from citizens to buy 7,000 olympic personnel 14 "free" condoms a day, and sends more when that runs out
• Heroic county bureaucrats ban coffee and doughnuts at hardware store

Bonus: a commenter on this last story wrote:

Stop me when this sounds familiar:

Step 1: You are free to do XYZ.

Step 2: You are free to do XYZ, but you must ask permission first.

Step 3: You are free to do XYZ, after getting permission, but are subject to reasonable "health and safety" regulations.

Step 4: You are free to do XYZ, but only after applying for a permit or license, paying the fee and getting permission. XYZ is subject to a variety of restrictions and regulations for the good of the community.

Step 5: You are free to do XYZ, but only if you are a member of a class with a certain kind of education or training and accredited by an "independent" XYZ organization or association. You must apply for a license with a steep price tag, and only a few licenses are available each year. XYZ is heavily regulated and managed by distant government bureaucrats. Cottage industries spring up to navigate you through the legal, procedural, and insurance issues involved with doing XYZ.

What's step 6? Come on, everyone, you know it.

Even a cursory glance at the news on the internet on a day to day basis is chock full of the folly of government - even here in my small city Gretna, Louisiana (the Louisiana part should have been a giveaway of funny business). And the one guy on the City Council who is saying what needs to be said is himself a crook.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Since government officials are God's ministers, they should be held to the same standards of conduct that you would expect of any other minister. We should not allow government officials to use Romans 13 as a fig leaf to cover their own misdeeds.

If you're being tired of being taxed and controlled to the hilt by corrupt government at all levels, you might want to read this book. It also explains why the majority of Americans now believe this about their own federal government and several states are starting to decentralize and wrest control back from the feds. And when you are ready to hold government accountable, you might want to read Lew Rockwell every day instead of the MSM and pro-government talk radio mouthpieces from the left and the right who all complain about Big Government and then propose the solution: Bigger Government.

Had Enough Yet?

More from your friendly neighborhood Transportation Stupidity Administration. Don't you feel safer?

And don't you love all the "privacy" these "public" employees enjoy when they commit what would have been crimes for us "little people?" If the passenger had played a "joke," how would this situation been different, and what would have been private about how it would have been addressed?

I'm not exactly sure why, but the juxtaposition of the words "privacy" and TSA just don't seem to go together...

Remind me again why we broke away from Britain (and don't tell me to read the Declaration of Independence, it only depresses me...). Of course, things are even worse there these days. Where is William Wallace when you need him?

"Now, how do you follow a story like that?"

When guns are outlawed...

Here is a sobering warning about tyranny.

This is exactly what happens when governments outlaw firearms, when juries (largely thanks to public school indoctrination) are ignorant of their right to nullify such verdicts (instead of spending 20 minutes to obediently send an innocent man to prison for five years), and when brain-dead bureaucrats are permitted to exercise power.

The people of the UK fell asleep at the switch, and the Americans are not far behind.

This is yet another reminder that one should never make any statement to the police without legal representation.

If there is any sane person in the entire British legal system, this man will be cleared - which is why I'm not optimistic.

Doesn't Anyone Read Orwell Anymore?

Creepy.

I think Fred Reed (U.S. Marine combat vet, Southern redneck, intellectual, adventurer, expat, wordsmith, journalist, bon vivant, and truly conservative social critic) drew a bead on this nonsense last year with this column. Here's a few lines about his dismal trip to Washington, DC:

Meanwhile, things get loonier on the street. I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore from DC by train and, so help me, they’re doing the same garish security theater on trains that they do at hairports. Cops and German Shepherds everywhere. To buy a freaking commuter-rail ticket, you need a photo ID, and they type heaven knows what into a computer.

Okay, suppose I show up at the Obedience Training window with my suitcase full of Semtex, buy my ticket with my own ID or any ID with a balding ugly mutt on it—they barely look at it—and blow the 9:07 MARC to metallic sawdust. After the fact they assemble my shards, check the computer, and determine that It Must Have Been Fred. This miraculously brings the dead back to life. Bet you didn’t know I had such powers.

None of it makes sense, except as Pavlovian conditioning. Every few minutes a tedious recording plays in stations saying to call some number if you see suspicious behavior. Blah blah blah. No one pays the least attention. No one writes the number down. Has anyone ever called it?

“Uh, I want to report suspicious behavior.”

Voice, annoyed at having the Redskins game interrupted: “Yeah, what?”

“Well, there’s like, this guy, he has a funny looking raincoat and he keeps, you know, looking around, and I think his left hand is twitching.”

“Uh…yeah. Tell him to stop twitching.”

“What if he, you know, blows up or something?”

“What am I, your mother?”

I don’t get it. Something is happening to this country. It still has a lot going for it—friendly people, great diners, good blues, country bands, widespread availability of illegal drugs. But the government is out of control. Everything is illegal and watched. It’s getting so you can’t shoot cats from a car window with a twelve-gauge any more. Who wants to live in that kind of world? We’ll probably be overrun by cats, drown in them.

Today I went to the Hill to see the new Visitors Center. As usual, cops everywhere, squad cars parked on sidewalks, steel stop’em-cars plates rising from streets. People don’t seem frightened, but the government is, or pretends to be.

The Visitors Center turns out to be underground at the Capitol. It is said to have cost $761 temporarily deflated green ones and has the mental fingerprints of Albert Speer all over it: It’s huge, drab, squarish, monumental without even being imposing, with the élan of a K-Street office building.

I don’t get it. This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ’fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.

How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.

How Low Will They Go?

Here is a disturbing account of police tasering an unarmed legless man in a wheelchair.

I've been watching these stories in the news for a while now.

Tasers are often sold to the public as a device that can replace the lethal use of guns by the police. But the reality is that police officers routinely use tasers in situations where they would never even think of even unholstering their revolvers. It has become common to read about tasers being used against unarmed pregnant women, grandmothers, and now even middle aged guys with no legs in wheelchairs.

The bar is getting pretty low.

About 20 years ago, I served as a corrections officer and worked closely with sheriff's deputies . I sympathize with what law enforcement people have to deal with on a daily basis. I'm not anti-police by any means. But I am opposed to police officers usurping the role of judge, jury, and executioner. I am opposed to police officers (or anyone else for that matter) trampling on the Constitution.

The bottom line is that this guy posed no threat to anyone - especially not to able-bodied armed police officers.

I'm wondering just how low they will go. What's next? Maybe we'll soon be reading about people with no arms and no legs being tasered. Or maybe people paralyzed from the neck down on nursing home gurneys will be given the shock treatment for cocking an eyebrow the wrong way (and thus intimidating the frightened officers into acting out of concern for their own safety).

Then again, truth is stranger than fiction. Here is a story about RCMP officers in Canada who tasered an 82-year old man with pneumonia and a portable oxygen tank on a hospital bed.

And if "internal investigations" continue to give rubber stamp approvals to anything and everything police officers do, no matter how ridiculous, there will be a terrible backlash that will only serve to hamstring honest cops who don't go around tasering the elderly, cripples, the deaf and mentally disabled, and other people who pose no threat.

And if you're up for a little high-voltage commentary about this topic, if you like no-holds-barred sarcasm, check out this rant by William Grigg.

It's aboot time...

What a joy to see Canadians taking a stand against tyrannical government - especially since two thirds of the people living in my house are Canadian citizens.

The so-called and Orwellian named Human Rights Commissions (both national and provincial) are a stench in the nostrils of any human being who believes in liberty. They are a blot on the long Anglo-Saxon tradition of fundamental freedom and the rule of law.

We don't have exactly the same type of quasi-judicial bodies in the U.S. (yet), but the creeping police state is making use of a similar principle - the use of "implied contracts" to take away our fundamental liberties - even those freedoms explicitly protected by the Bill of Rights.

For example, the courts routinely rule that by signing up for a driver's license, you are surrendering your 4th Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. In other words, police officers may detain and question any driver without a warrant or reasonable suspicion. Why? Because, by signing his driver's license, the driver has waived his rights.

A similar trick is used when matters that should be criminal are redefined as civil. For example, our speed and red light cameras in Gretna, Louisiana operate under the color of law by creating a system by which drivers can be fined without due process, with no witnesses, and with no evidence that the person has broken any law - and there is no judicial recourse. Such fines are civil matters, and the normal constitutional protections do not apply.

While such tyranny is minor at this point, and can be avoided by driving at 25 mph at all times in my otherwise wisely governed hometown of Gretna (the speed cameras are mobile and attached to a little white van and are often set up where the speed limit is not explicitly stated), what has happened in Canada is that Christians are being fined thousands of dollars for simply expressing the opinion that they agree with Holy Scripture. Pastors can (and have been) brought before these extrajudicial star-chambers and given fines in the thousands of dollars.

I had previously posted this video of Canadian freedom-fighter Ezra Levant's testimony before the HRC that he was summoned to. Compelling stuff.

Liberty is not just an American slogan. All people around the world crave liberty. Nobody wants to be ruled by tyrants. We all want freedom. And woe be to those who want to take or withhold liberty from people determined to have it. Both liberty and government are gifts of God, but when government tramples on our liberties - especially our freedom to preach the Gospel - it's time for those governments to change.

Bully for the Canadians!

HT: Rev. Mike Keith, the Scottish Lutheran.

Back in the USSA

More evidence of our descent into a fascist police state.  

This is the kind of bullying that inevitably accompanies the centralization of power into a single party, single branch of government, and/or single person - whether he is lauded and exalted as: Our Commander in Chief, the Caesar, the Dictator, or the Obama.

This is why the founders of the United States created a republican form of government with checks and balances, in which the president "presides," he does not rule or reign.  The president oversees only one branch of only the federal level of government.  He is one cog in a complex wheel of the republic.  He is not our president; he does not preside over us - but rather is the chief executive of the executive branch - which is supposed to be checked by the courts and by the legislature.  He is also the commander in chief of the military - not of the civilians - and, if we were true to our founders and to the Constitution, we would have no standing armies (Jefferson considered standing armies and paper money to be the most dangerous threats to liberty - and history bears him out).

Over time, the American Presidency has become a Caesarship waiting to blossom.  And we have seen past presidents acting with Caesarian pretensions, as in the overtly-fascist Lincoln and FDR administrations.  And, of course, most of us have been "educated" not to point out the emperor's nakedness, even though we can read the Constitution with our own eyes.  To the contrary, we're taught that the Constitution must be read and interpreted by judges and lawyers, the secular priests who assure us we can't read the "sacred" text of the "living" Constitution ourselves.  We're also brainwashed from an early age to accept any and all claims of government power as that which makes us "safe."

And instead of resisting this ominous trend toward hypercentralization and concentration of power - the citizenry just goes along like sheep.  

Even the prayers from the LCMS Commission on Worship use almost worshipful terms of the president of the United States, speaking of him (and other government officials) as "our rulers" and our "leaders" (which takes on a different tone if translated literally into the German of our forefathers).  I remember the negative reaction of a few conservatives when one of Obama's spokesmen said he was ready to "rule" from day one - and yet, our own synodical prayers use this kind of language without flinching, as though we, like the early church, lived in an imperial military dictatorship, or like the church of the reformation era, live under a system of potentates and princes.  

When Washington refused to be crowned, some Americans adopted "No king but Jesus" as their motto.  The people of Israel themselves refused God's advice that they have no monarchical system of secular government - but they wanted to be like other nations, with disastrous results.

But now that Washington has become synonimous with the city that serves as the seat of Big Government, and now that his image is on a fiat note of debt and spent entirely on credit - Americans now shrug and presume that stopping, harassing, and performing searches and seizures on citizens for having anti-abortion literature is normal in a republic that guarantees individual liberty.  We collectively either condone or excuse, or simply surrender to the ridiculous notion that these words were a threat to Mr. Obama - who is ensconced hundreds of miles away surrounded by heavily armed military personnel and an army of secret service agents.  We consider it completely reasonable that agents of the government entered this man's home and snooped around to make sure he wasn't part of a "hate group."  Our ancestors at the time of the American Revolution certainly had other ideas about such "proactive" government.  Our kith and kin in Europe and Africa in the twentieth century also knew a thing or two about it.

We are also all-too-quick to accept government explanations for banning shampoo bottles and nail files from airplanes, not to mention allowing government bureaucrats at the airport to either fondle or look at nude images of our wives and children - all in the name of "safety."   And a police officer in Oklahoma City can't seem to figure out that Barack Obama's life was not in danger because of a sign on a car.  Even he could not resist the urge to harass and bully a citizen going about his business.  What was really happening was that Barack Obama was in danger of being criticized.  And that is something a Caesar cannot endure.  That is the real issue here.  We're even seeing this same tableau in the LCMS - which incidentally also has a "president" who is also seeking a centralization of power, as well as a bureaucratic board that is using threatening legal letters to strong-arm a "no criticism" agreement from the men who run the radio program Issues, Etc. outside of synodical control.

And the last word is the key to understanding this failure of common sense.

It's always about "control."  That's why Lincoln shut down critical newspapers and FDR seized private gold, whose investors were critical and dubious of his redistributive "stimulus" plan.  That's why Julius Caesar was declared dictator for life, why Stalin murdered his critics by the thousands, why the Chinese government is always seeking to censor the internet.  It's about control.  It's also why the founders of our republic did everything they could to decentralize and dilute power with healthy checks and balances and a dose of humility to elected officials - to avoid the kinds of things we see every day and accept as normal and healthy: the desire for government to control everything in our lives.

But that's how the police state works.  It depends on all of us to shut up and allow it to happen.  Police states (and churches) depend on duping the many (by propaganda) into believing these things are all for our good, as well as bullying the few (by threats and force) who know better.

Dr. Veith has a great blog entry quoting Alexis de Tocqueville on how these things generally weasel their way into democratic societies.

The police state's worst enemy is the little boy who points out the emperor's nakedness, the one not buying the propaganda and not intimidated into silence.  That's why the police state doesn't want those "little boys" of every age and sex to have signs, blogs, or radio programs.

Alice's Restaurant

Probably the funniest eighteen minute song ever recorded. A blessed Thanksgiving Day to all.

Important advice concerning police interviews

In this video, a law professor from Virginia, James Duane, explains why no-one - even innocent people (especially innocent people) should talk to the police when being suspected of a crime. This is counter-intuitive, since our knee-jerk reaction is to "prove" our innocence (after all, the innocent have nothing to hide). But the founders of the Constitution understood why protections against self-incrimination were so important, and the much misunderstood and maligned fifth amendment became part of the Bill of Rights.

This video is quite a wake-up call. I was skeptical about this at first, but Prof. Duane's presentation has made me rethink the matter (and I used to be a corrections officer myself).

Officer George Bruch of the Virginia Beach Police Department gives his side of the story as a police officer. The revelations he makes here are really fascinating. If you'd like to watch Officer's Bruch's retort (and I highly recommend that you do), click here.