It’s not hard to pinpoint the exact moments when the Constitution was explicitly disavowed by the robed shysters charged (by themselves) with “interpreting” it.
Once such moment was 21 years ago, in 1991, when the robed shysters of the Supreme Court “interpreted” the plain meaning of the Fourth Amendment to mean its opposite.
This was the year of Michigan State Police v. Sitz, the case that decided the legality of random roadside sobriety checkpoints on the basis of “compelling state interest,” as lead shyster and Badge Licker in Chief William Rehnquist put it.
Basically, the ends justify the means. “Getting drunks off the road” – anyway, anyhow – is what matters. Not the Constitution. Hence, screw the rule of law. Just git ‘er done, as they say.
But the Fourth Amendment does not have qualifiers – or exceptions. It reads simply:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Note especially the part about “shall not be violated.” That’s pretty strident – and pretty plain – language. There’s no room for “interpretation” – just perversion and rationalization, the means by which our robed shysters traduce the legal protections they were charged by oath to affirm and uphold.
It’s despicable.
Men such as Rehnquist are far from stupid, which makes them all the more loathsome for the tyranny they rain down upon us.
You can argue until you’re blue in the face about the Importance of Getting Drunks of the Road (or Getting Terrorists – or whatever it maybe). That is not the question – and Rehnquist, et al knew it.
The question is whether the Constitution is the law of the land – or not. And decisions such as the one rendered in Sitz prove that it is not. The law is the whim of the state and its “interpreters” – and, of course, its enforcers.
The Constitution’s protections do not provide exceptions for any reason – period – as noted in the Sitz dissent written by William Brennan: “…stopping every car might make it easier to prevent drunken driving… (but this) is an insufficient justification for abandoning the requirement of individualized suspicion.”
Exactly. There is no sufficient justification – other than specific, individualized suspicion – if the Fourth means what it plainly says.
Not that it matters.
And now, we reap the whirlwind.
The Sitz decision established the case law precedent – which is the real law of the land, as opposed to the Constitution. Ask any lawyer. What carries legal force is what the various Deeciders say the law is, not what the Constitution says the law is.
Endless ratiocinations – “compelling state interest” being one – provide the basis for Talmudic parsing by a profession dedicated to making the intelligible unintelligible, as well as arbitrary – precisely the opposite of the intent of the men who wrote our now-inoperative founding documents.
What made America unique in all the world – a country in which the individual’s rights were explicit and sacrosanct, without qualification, period – is gone. Has been gone, for many years now.
The case law precedent established by cases such as Sitz paved the way for the random gropes we’re now subject to at airports – on precisely the same basis of the (supposed) Greater Good, as defined by the robed shysters.
But perhaps the most depressing aspect of this is not the shitting all over the Constitution by the men charged to preserve and protect it. Rather, it is the slavish badge-licking endorsement of the same by “freedom loving” Americans. If the response to previous columns on the subject is indicative, there are large numbers of people out there who either don’t understand the Constitution or (worse) just don’t give a damn about it.
Give them some justification – some excuse – and they will gleefully do a jig on the document.
I’ve had several back-and-forths with one of these people, who constantly talks about the need to “get drunks off the road.” His mentality can’t connect the dots – or just doesn’t want to. He believes that because he doesn’t drink, he’s got “nothing to worry about.” But when I try to point out to him that drinking and driving is a sideshow, that once random and arbitrary laws are enacted – once the Constitution’s (ex) protections become inoperative or qualified at whim by the powers-that-be – we are all vulnerable by definition, because that is what arbitrary and random mean. It is akin to turning loose a driverless car with its gas pedal jammed to the floorboards. It can strike anyone – and “anyone” may just be you.
The founders wrote the Bill of Rights to put a driver behind the wheel. To make sure the “car” stayed on course and did not run off onto the sidewalk, leaving mayhem in its wake.
Oh, I know. The Clovers out there will huff that mayhem is not created by random checkpoints – or TSA gropes. Just a temporary indignity and minor inconvenience for the Greater Good.
Just wait…
bueno!
‘it’ began? c 1933 Solons ruled NOT joining new deal
farm program affected in ter state commerce by NOT
selling grain on mkt (farmer used all own produce on own farm)?
p . s. researcher says “most
w estern politicos cant pay prin., take loans to pay only int.
Uncle S ugar owes $199t (twelve 0’s)= 12x gdp of $13t/ year”
Dan,
If I understand what you are writing, you seem to be saying that the US govt is unable to pay the principle down and is stuck only making interest payments.
You may be interested on some information on social credit.
The Money Myth Exploded is a nice article that I think does a good job of simply explaining how money is created as a debt by private banks.
It is based on work done by
Clifford Hugh Douglas, an engineer, who developed the idea of social credit.
Michael Journal has many interesting articles dealing with money issues.
Merle Haggard said around 2002, that he had more freedom as a parolee in California in 1960 than Americans had nowadays. Always liked old Merle.
I do worry about Obama’s 2 appointments, soon to be a third also, to the Supreme Court. Most of us know Sonia of La Raza, but Ms Kagan has written that the type of speech we all sometimes make about things like immigration invasion and so on are NOT PROTECTED POLITICAL speech, she says that with a new MAJORITY on the Court our 1st Amendment can be trashed even better than the 4th.
See her 1993 article “Regulation of Hate Speech and Pornography After R.A.V,” (60 University of Chicago Law Review 873) if you are rich or in news media Lexis/Nexis has it.
Hi Ron,
I like Merle, too!
You’re right about Kagan; she’s a Soviet-style Commissar just itching to impose the same sorts of restrictions on speech that the court has already imposed on our other ex-rights.
These people – the entire federal government – are aliens, as far as I am concerned. None represent me or the people I know. They are tyrants who operate with impunity, on the basis of illusory consent manufactured by a rigged system (the two-party duopoly).
It’s going to come to a head soon, I think…
Our goose isn’t just cooked…it’s also “stepping.”
I have to disagree with your theme here though. You treat the Constitution as if it ever meant anything other than a bank-led treason against the Articles. The goal was always to centralize power, and it’s written in tricky legal language precisely so the sheep will think it’s about freedom when it isn’t.
That said, this crap goes right back to the founding. The revolution was supported by the poor and middle classes, but led by a few members of the upper class who felt the British stood between them and continental domination. Just look at the behavior during the Revolutionary War for proof – Hamilton’s fraud with the bonds, for instance, and the payment schemes for officers and enlisted men. Look up why Shays was rebelling.
I’m not disagreeing; in fact, I agree.
The fault line goes way back. Hamilton and his friends were only temporarily stymied by the Bill of Rights (and men such as Jefferson). The seeds were sown within the language of the Constitution itself.
The question before is: What do we do?
Writing – and talking it out – helps, because it gives voice to what many of us have been thinking, and confirms that we’re neither alone nor crazy.
But it’s the next step that’s steeper….
Yes, the USC was essentially a trick over the long term and should have never replaced the articles of confederation.
However, the USC and even the original intent of the currently abused wording was well documented as I understand it. The trick comes from a lack of understanding by the people so these new interpretations are largely accepted rather than the document itself. But how did the nation get to that lack of understanding?
Lincoln through his war achieved a power grab by violence but it didn’t kill the understanding of liberty. The federal government would have never achieved what it has if it had to continue for the next 150 years pointing guns at half or more of the population.
Miseducation is key. Bring forth massive immigration and government schools. People who weren’t brought up with concepts of american liberty and government schools to teach children some new interpretations of the USC, collectivist ideas, and so on. Reinforce this with the media. Now with that the federal government was able to expand to its present size and power.
The catchword is “reasonable.” Reasonable according to whom? He who defines the words wields the power. Back in the Age of Reason, reasonableness must have been a much more easily-defined and readily-available commodity than it is now, in the Age of Idiocy and Tyranny.
Bottom Line- Everything here is wrong. The problem being that no where else is any better.
Personally, I wait for Jesus to return. It will be a never before seen fireworks show.
You may have a long wait….
Eric,
A very good post and one that shows me that more Americans are waking up as this is a car site and others, not related to Constitutional issues are doing the same (as they should IMO). I do not agree that the 4th died in 1991 and others have pointed out when things truly started to go to rot. Full rot was in full swing by 1991 and though I have never read a post about heinous seat-belt laws, I am sure you have one somewhere and these preceded the horrible checkpoints- but your post was about the 4th. Thank you once again and look forward to reading many more- while the Internet is still open (albeit partially).
Another excellent article! Look at all the posts above, everyone is talking about jumping ship. This fucking beater can’t be fixed and we all know it. Just a shame..
The true death of freedom occured in this country when FDR broke the supreme court. The justices caved in over the threat and the combination of legislative, executive and judicial acting in concert to diminish true liberty has been the end result. Michigan v Sitz is just some more icing on the cake that FDR baked.
The science of enslaving a people is well established and understood. We’re to be presented with a series of choices. Each choice allows one to avoid an undesireable consequence. At the end you’re behind barbed wire, naked, head shaved and kneeling on rough concrete, waiting for the lights to go out from the bullet that will end your pain.
K-
Well if one wants to go way back… the decay began when the supreme court got to decide what was constitutional and what wasn’t. They took that power. The USC is in plain language, it needs no expert to understand or interpret it. But the lawyers need work so…. they become the compliant intellectual class in service to the state in this area.
As to our functional rights going down the tubes, as to the police state… well Eric’s choice is a good one.
The last time I got forced into one of these checkpoints I made my constitutional objections known. The cop suggested I move to Iraq. Which gets a point across the cop was too stupid to understand, he’s part of an occupying force.
Now I go around them. Sometimes I make it pretty obvious because I take the last turn for whatever lane I’m in. But then turn around and head the other way around the checkpoint because it’s faster. Haven’t been chased down yet.
One of these days I may take the bicycle through one just for giggles.
The 4th Amendment really tanked when the Supreme Court ruled in US v. Leon, that cops who violate search and seizure laws, but don’t know they are doing it, still get to keep the illegally obtained evidences to use against the defendant.
This placed the importance of the rules and laws on whether it would deter future 4th Am violations, as opposed to the proper question of whether it violated an citizen’s rights.
It should make no difference whether the cops did it wrong but didn’t know. If they did it wrong, then the evidence should be inadmissible.
The infestation of Hamiltonian Federalism began to turn to rot with Chief Justice John Marshall, a Hamiltonian Federalist who did all he could during his tenure to interpret the Constitution according to the Federalist doctrine and thus consolidate power in the federal government. (Please note that the term “federalist” was a piece of ingenious misinformation. The Hamiltonian Federalists were no more federalist than was Abe Lincoln. They were rabid nationalists, even monarchists.)
The dichotomy between federalism and nationalism has existed since the Constitutional Convention, when the Hamiltonians convinced the other delagates to illegally throw out the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution, contrary to the specific instructions to nearly all of the delegates from their respective states. The product, our current constitution, had enough loopholes that it, along with powermongering nationalists who have taken advantage of those loopholes, has given us the government that we have today. The Hamiltonians are in the lead and will win if something drastic doesn’t happen soon.
Indeed.
The term “federalist” is as disingenuous (and deliberately misleading) as is “liberal” in its modern usage.
Very few Americans know the history of their own country (which would be primarily their state) let alone the nature and causes of the War of Northern Aggression (what Yankees and the ignorant call the “Civil War”).
It is not possible to understand the predicament we are in without understanding what existed before 1865 – and what was lost after 1865.
Brent’s point about judicial review is right on. I’d go to the (so-called) “Civil War” (which was no such thing) as the moment when America, the republic, died and America the consolidated empire was born. All the disjointed, hypocritical and psychopathic characteristics that describe our country today were given voice by Lincoln and his henchmen. The Southern Confederacy was not perfect by any means, but it understood where the federal government was headed and tried to break away – without success, unfortunately.
The Northern war of agression aka the Civil war is indeed an excellent starting point. It was understood prior to that time that secession was a states right.
The real legal horror that came right after were the reconstruction acts which replaced lawfully elected state goverments with so called “rump” goverments and disenfranchised the citizens of those states. (passed over pres. Johnsons veto) The 14th amendment was ratified by yankee carpetbaggers and illiterate freed slaves.
As the legal objections wound their way through the various courts the congress passed a bill placing the reconstruction acts beyond the jurisdiction of the supreme court and none of the cases were heard.
K
That would also be my starting point as well Eric. When Lincoln imprisoned an entire state legislature just so the could not vote to leave the union (Maryland) and then Lincoln’s congress carved out a state to create another state’s votes in the house/senate (West Virginia) it was too obvious what was happening. Wilson, FDR, and even our present condition can be traced back to the tyrant Lincoln.
I would also add, there was the beginnings of “funny business” during the war of 1812.
Look up the definition of a civil war – it includes a war when one power wants to separate from the main power.
No, Gil – a civil war is when two or more factions within a state are vying for control of the state (or its government). The Southern Confederacy sought to leave the union and form its own country – just as the American colonies separated from Great Britain.
The “union” was a voluntary compact in which each sovereign state – hence the plural United States are not is, pre-1865 – delegated a few specific powers to the central government.
When these powers were abused beyond normal recourse, the states had the legal and moral right to secede.
Lincoln and his Yankees destroyed the American republic. They created a consolidated “union” held together at bayonet point – a “union” very much like a bad marriage in which an abusive husband threatens to beat/kill the wife if she tries to leave him.
You’re right on, Eric! Truly, our federal republic lasted only “four score and seven years,” thanks to Dishonest Abe, who established a consolidated nation at the point of the bayonet. All the Founders, except the Hamilton-led and mis-named Federalists, loathed the notion of a consolidated nation.
The old argument that, had the CSA won, government by/for/of the people would have ceased is hot air. The Southern Confederacy was a federal republic, the institution of slavery notwithstanding. The North’s main concern was losing cheap raw materials for Northern industry.
It is possible, though, that there would have been future conflicts between a Northern Union and a Southern Confederacy over expansion, both claiming rights to western lands.
To put the blame for the growth of government anywhere much past the ratification of the CONstitution itself is to ignore the actions of Washington and Hamilton just a few years after that ratification. When they enslaved 12,000 free men and force marched them the breadth of the country in order to collect a tax. Killing some dozen of those conscripted men along the way.
Yep – the (so-called) “Whisky Rebellion.” Many of the participants were soldiers of the Revolution – frog-marched by the thug Hamilton (who wanted to execute them) for purposes of deliberate torture.
Aaron Burr, like John Wilkes Booth, waited too long to serve his country.
There is a qualifier in the 4th Amendment: “unreasonable”.
Right – and it is unreasonable by definition to subject people who have neither done anything nor given any reason to suspect they may have done something to random and arbitrary searches/detainment. That is the very essence of unreasonable. To disagree is to give carte blanche to the government/cops to search anyone, anytime provided they have some generic “greater good” as their excuse. And that is the very essence of a tyranny.
A search is only reasonable if the specific person being searched has given some specific cause to warrant it. Period.
Only a Clover could regard dragnet-style random/arbitrary searches of everyone who just happens to be caught up in the dragnet as “reasonable.”
(I posted this later, but it makes more sense here.)
The catchword is “reasonable.” Reasonable according to whom? He who defines the words wields the power. Back in the Age of Reason, reasonableness must have been a much more easily-defined and readily-available commodity than it is now, in the Age of Idiocy and Tyranny
Agreed.
Surely a working definition of reasonable would mean that if you have given no cause or even hint of cause to suspect you might be “up to something” then the law and its enforcers have no business with you… ?
If we can’t (as a society) agree on that, our goose is cooked. Because it means we agree the law and its enforces need not have any specific reason to stop us/interrogate us/search us – and eventually, inevitably much worse besides.
In which case, reasonable no longer means anything.
Amen, brother! I’ve felt like we are no longer a nation under the rule of law for quite a while now. Between random checkpoints, to TSA groping, to eminent domain abuses, my heart tells me to get out now, but to go where? I’m not sure there is any country on God’s green earth where we can truly have the freedom our country’s founders were hoping for — freedom that we may have had for a while, but no longer do. Thoughts?
I ask myself the same question: Where can one go?
If you were a Jew in Germany in 1930 you could see what was coming – and leave. There were still free places left on earth, including the United States.
Ditto a person who had the bad luck to be born in Soviet Russia or East Germany.
But now the whole world’s Gone Government.
I suppose one could retreat to very remote/lightly populated areas and try to “fly under the radar.” That’s more or less the solution we arrived at.
But it’s not the same – not nearly as good – as finding a place to live where your rights are respected by the government…
I feel your pain Eric and Chris! My wife and I have been pondering the same question…WHERE TO GO?
Ironically my parents immigrated from South Africa when I was young to avoid the situation there, and her parents immigrated from India…same reason.
Now we’re looking at jumping this sinking Titanic.
My view is this: we have *theoretically* the best legal protections through the Constitution, R.I.P. But in fact the State still has enough fake dollars to keep paying its Gestapos, and endless money to implement a Stasi-like panopticon monitoring your every move–physical, financial, written, and spoken.
Poorer countries may have corrupt police and courts like here, but they simply don’t have the resources to create as tight a police-state as we have. Slip a little bribe here and there, and the *net* effect is greater freedom.
My real fear is what happens when it becomes widely recognized that FRN’s (Federal Reserve Notes) are based on *nothing*, and their value reverts to the paper it’s printed on. When the weh-fayhr checks won’t buy a Big Gulp, there will be hell to pay. Unfortunately the inchoate masses of Clovers have been carefully trained to direct their rage at the few remaining productive members of society…a.k.a. “the rich”. And not the REAL rich–the banksters who are feeding off the American corpse–but the ordinary “rich”, guys like me who drive ten-year-old, well-kept BMW M5’s that they fix themselves.
When that rage comes out, it will be the excuse the mounting federal occupying forces–known to us as “the police”–will take the gloves off. Martial law, here we come! The legal framework is fully in place. You just need to light a match to set the fireworks ablaze.
To what purpose is all this? Is it the blind meanderings of a drunk stumbling toward inevitable tragedy, or is it intentional?
I’ve speculated before. But in the end it doesn’t matter; it (the collapse) will happen, and it’s up to us non-Clovers to first protect ourselves, and second hope to rebuild a saner system in the aftermath.
Overall I’m convinced history could be re-interpreted as an epic battle between two sub-species of human: the empaths–normal people who feel empathy, love, loyalty, etc, and the sociopaths–who are about 2-4% of the population and love nothing more than POWER.
Please show me the downfall of the us governement? If you say it is financial then fine. If you say it is because it is a police state then get real. The government is evil because they tell you to do something any person with a brain would do and that is wear a seatbelt. Oh what an eveil thing.
How about those police stops where the police actually talk to you. Oh what an evil thing. As I have said before, I have not been beat up or tazed by the police and I know of no one that has personally. I have asked if anyone else has either and I have heard of none. If it was such an evil place to live I would be able to see the abuse with my own eyes or at least others here but I hear no response of such a case. The only thing I hear is the evil government stopping my car and talking to me. Evil.
Clover, I am allowing this post to get through just for purposes of illustration – to further dissect the Cloverite mentality.
A police state is one in which the rule of law is inoperative; or rather, one in which the state asserts an unlimited prerogative to decide for itself what the limits of its own powers are. One in which power is exerted over people at random, arbitrarily.
We have discussed numerous examples of precisely such things here at great length, so I will not repeat them again here. You’re too obtuse to get it – or you just don’t care.
I’m not sure which is worse.
“I would be able to see the abuse with my own eyes”
umm.. uh.. Dood, there are many things you can’t see with your own eyes. Does that make them all false!
yes Eric you discussed the evil police stopping to talk to you. The evil police that stop and check you for weapons before you board public transportaion. If they did not then hundreds would be killed. No Eric you do not give me examples you just call it an evil government. Give us some examples of innocent people getting beat up by police? I am sure you will come up with the handfull on the internet that have been replayed thousands of times.
Fine if you disagree with a tax that helps others or helps everyone. Is that an evil thing or a decided decision made by people that are elected and represent us.
Clover, your type will never get it. “Talking to the police” is not the issue. Being forced to talk to the police when you haven’t done anything is.
In a free country, a person who hasn’t done anything, who is just going about his business, has the right to decline to speak with a cop; to decline a search absent probable cause ; to decline to “show his papers.” To be able to go about his business without interference. To be able to tell a cop no – and for the law to support to the person saying no, not the cop.
America is no longer a free country – thanks to people like you.
I believe human rights are inalienable – meaning, not negotiable or subject to “terms” decided by some arbitrary authority. You believe the opposite. You believe various “greater goods” (as you define them) are more important than any individual’s right to (among other things) be free to travel in peace without random stops/interrogations/searches “just to be safe.”
But it is much more than a difference of opinion about the nature of human rights.
My position amounts to a bullwark against the state; the Fourth and Fifth amendments were written as lines in the sand beyond which the government and its enforcers may not tread without key conditions – such as probable cause or a warrant issue by a judge based on specific evidence of wrongdoing – having been fulfilled first.
Yours is an open-ended invitation to limitless control of individuals by the state. Because once you admit the principle that the state may control people not because of anything they have actually done but on the basis of some generic “someone might do” you have ceded to the state limitless power, since anyone might conceivably do anything – and therefore, any measure is justified to prevent such “anyone” and “anythings.” This is how we got to the state we’re in, where dying 95 year old cancer patients in wheelchairs are forced by pot-bellied 90 IQ government thugs to remove their adult diapers; were any failure to immediately cringe before a thug cop can result in your being Tazered or much worse. Where the people are no longer secure in their persons and effects. Where unreasonable searches are the new normal…
Your small-minded self only focuses on some particular outcome that you happen to favor – such as “getting drunks off the road.” You’re not smart enough to understand that precedent always becomes principle. That once you make a single exception or qualification to a basic human right on the basis of some arbitrary/random criteria divorced from a specific cause specific to that individual, you have fatally undermined that right and set the stage for its demise.
If you had any knowledge of history, if you understood human nature, you’d see the pattern and understand that all of this has happened before and is destined to happen again for exactly the same reasons it has happened in the past.
It is tedious – and pointless – to continue trying to explain the difference to people like you.
You won’t get it, ever – not even as they’re leading you off to a camp.
It’s all to keep us safe, you’ll say. The government is our representative. It has our best interests at heart.
Submit. Obey.
Aight Eric! That’s enough.. We HAVE to stop letting his posts through. You’ve summed up your position very eloquently. Sayonara Clover!
Agreed. No more Clover. He’s all over!
It’s easy to get disheartened and grim over the current situation, especially as it seems to be a never ending downward spiral. However, there are little bits of light in the darkness out there to head towards.
First, take a look at the freedom movement that is gaining steam unlike any other recent ideological phenomenon I’m aware of. I’m not talking the Tea Party or any specifics, just the general sense of awakening and discourse that has engulfed the country. People like Ron Paul have a lot to do with that, regardless of what you think of him or his positions. I consider the fact that the discussions are even being raised, and that people like you and Eric here are discussing such issues, to be a great thing. We’re not as likely to let our masters do all the thinking for us, despite what we were taught in public education.
Second, to get more specific to your question, you might be interested in looking up the Free State Project (Google it).
Third, I regularly come across reading and recommendations on how to expatriate and where currently good options are. While I don’t think it’s very realistic for anyone middle class with any kind of roots, it’s an interesting idea. Uruguay and New Zealand seem to be hot topics of late. I am also aware that the rate of expatriation has dramatically increased in the past few years as more people try to get out from under current rule. It’s getting so bad that the feds are passing legislation to make it much more difficult to do so. I often find myself fantasizing about getting on a motorcycle and just heading out to seethe world and leave Uncle Sam behind.
You’re not alone in asking the question. Not by a long shot.
Just caught this:
TSA Pats Down Cancer-Stricken 95-Year-Old Woman, Removes Adult Diaper (VIDEO).
TSA security officers at Florida’s Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport patted down a cancer-stricken, 95-year-old woman and forcibly removed her adult diaper during the search, CNN reports. Could this end up being yet another TSA PR nightmare?
Jean Weber was traveling with her ill mother on June 18 from Florida to Michigan to see relatives “in the final stages of her battle with leukemia” when the incident occurred.
Weber told CNN that while she thinks the officers may have been “procedurally correct…the procedure needs to be changed.” Weber noted that her mother had had a blood transfusion the week before.
While passing through security, TSA officials “felt something suspicious and they couldn’t determine what it was,” so they took Weber’s mother to a private room.
A TSA agent told Weber that her mother’s Depends underwear was “wet and firm and they couldn’t check it thoroughly,” so the mother-daughter duo left in search of a bathroom to remove the underwear. Weber did not have an extra pair of Depends with her.
Weber “burst into tears” but her mother was “very calm” even though she was forced to go through the airport without underwear. Her elderly mother was taken to the boarding gate without her as Weber was still going through security.
Rest here:
http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/06/26/tsa-pats-down-elderly-woman-removes-adult-diaper-video/
Switzerland. It seems that is the only country that is truly committed to decentralized government that respects individual liberty.
Unfortunately, the weather there is even colder than where I am at now so it’s a no-go unless things get very, very bad.
The bleat of the American sheeple is getting louder day by day – “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about.” Sure. And WHO decides whether you have done nothing wrong? Not you, that’s for sure; the cops make that call. Nothing pisses off a cop more than making a DUI stop and discovering that the driver is cold sober, so they look for any excuse to ticket or bust you to head off any accusations of harassment.
Indeed.
And, turn that around on a cop sometime. Video him. When he gets angry, tell him: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.” Ask whether you can pat him down – for “safety.”
See whether this calms him down… .
The more I consider the issue, the more I come around to the idea expressed by another poster here that there are basically two types of humans – whose interests are irreconcilable. The first group – the Clovers – are people who have an urge to control others, or be controlled by others. These are the type who advocate for pre-emptive “what if” or “someone might” laws such as sobriety checkpoints. People who believe the ends (as they value them) justify any means.
The second type – the minority – are people who loathe the idea of controlling other people and really loathe the idea of other people controlling them. People who believe in live – and let live (even if you personally would not live that way or think the way someone else is living is stupid) and who happily accept a little “risk” (or even a lot of it) as part of life as the price to be paid for liberty, which they value infinitely more than “safety” or “security.”
The two groups cannot exist together in the same social/political environment anymore than random checkpoints can coexist with the Bill of Rights. One or the other will eventually dominate.
In America, the Clovers now dominate.
The question is: How do the non-Clovers separate from the Clovers and prevent Cloverism from budding up again in their midst?
The trick is that the rule-makers continually re-define “wrong.” What’s right today might be wrong tomorrow and vice versa. You can’t keep up with it.
In English common law tradition, a crime only exists when a victim exists. A specific victim (or victims) of an actual, real action that caused some harm.
What we have today is a legion of manufactured crimes that have no victim, often based on some vaguely asserted “threat” – some “might be” or “could happen.” Sobriety checkpoints and TSA gropes are two excellent examples but there are many, many more.
Until we recover our senses – or enough of us do and figure out a way to render those who don’t (or can’t) harmless – we will continue our water slide ride into the pool of tyranny.