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Civil liberties are too precious to waste on enemies

January 24, 2012 2 comments

Among the things that make rights — in particular, that basket of rights commonly referred to as “civil liberties” — actual rights as opposed to privileges, is that they are inviolable and universal. That is, even people you don’t like enjoy these rights, and are entitled to the protection of the same. And even people you do like have to respect these rights, or suffer the consequences for violating them.

Which brings us to the media reaction to the hassle Sen. Rand Paul went through with the TSA goons at the Nashville, Tennessee, airport. From an OpEd Paul wrote about the incident for the Washington Times:

Today, while en route to Washington to speak to hundreds of thousands of people at the March for Life, I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-foot-by-10-foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

The OpEd goes on to describe the TSA and its procedures as a “blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment,” though it ends on a weak — even impotent — note calling for nothing more than “legislation that will allow for adults to be rescreened if they so choose” so they don’t have to submit to pat-downs.

Anger at the TSA is nothing new, and it’s hardly partisan. People screamed about TSA intrusions under Bush, and they scream about them under Obama. Oddly, at least so far as bureaucrats are concerned, many people seem to object to being groped, electronically stripped, herded, told to shut up and otherwise abused just so they can make an early-morning  business meeting or drag the kiddies through the purgatory that is a Disney theme park.

But the Paul incident raises problems for some pundits — specifically, because the victim was a (presumptively evil) libertarian-ish conservative Republican, and the perpetrators were (presumptively angelic) unionized government workers. The result, at least at Gawker, was an odd rant about white, educated libertarians (author Max Read doesn’t seem too well-endowed with melanin himself, though I know nothing of his educational bona fides), followed by a bizarre tantrum about the supposed low stakes and “inconsequential” violations inherent in TSA procedures, so that libertarians should just shut up already about travel restrictions and pay more attention to the war on drugs.

Because … libertarians have been sadly overlooking the drug prohibition issue for lo, these many years, I guess.

Read then concludes by taking a labor-meathead route to a neo-conservative, law-and-order conclusion:

[T]he act of refusing a pat down, and calling it a “detention,” comes across as an unbelievably petty dramatic fit instead of the imagined noble stand against an oppressive government. Couple that with the fact that TSA agents are union workers, often minorities, just trying to do their jobs, and it’s really difficult to feel like this is a “stand” worth taking at all. Just let them pat you down, guy. Stop holding up the line.

Wow, Max. It must be embarrassing to be you. But it’s worse for your mom, I’ll bet.

Esquire‘s Charles P. Pierce didn’t even try for coherent, simply smirking about the incident and speculating that Rand Paul would have had no objections to a grope conducted by Tennessee authorities because — ha! ha! — ummm …

I guess because Paul necessarily supports civil liberties protections only against federal authorities? Pierce really needs to add a footnote there. Just to clarify.

Jessica Pieklo of Care2 suggests that the universe has a sense of humor, because Rand Paul was on his way to an anti-abortion rally when he was detained, and only people who share her overall views are entitled to have any of their rights protected.

That’s also Steve Benen’s position, at the Washington Monthly.

And Library Grape reads from the same script.

Oh, c’mon. I’m pro-choice, too, but do we really want to go to the position of “if you don’t agree with me, then this is just an exercise in irony and you get what you deserve”? That path seems a little … messy. I guarantee you that few, if any of these bloggers will satisfy even each others’ civil liberties purity tests (and certainly not mine), which is likely to leave us all grabbing our ankles, unprotected because of our ideological imperfections.

Which, I guess, is OK, so long as the violators are good, unionized, blue-collar types. Right?

A little Vonnegut, a little Coen brothers …

January 24, 2012 Reply

The latest review of High Desert Barbecue is from Prometheus Unbound, “a libertarian review of fiction and literature.” It’s a thoughtful and, I’m happy to say, very positive review. My favorite part is this:

I think the best word to describe the book is ‘fun’. The peculiar characters and the humor they create fit perfectly with the lean style and fast story. It is equal parts prose that Kurt Vonnegut would approve of, eccentricity like you might find in a Coen brothers dark comedy, and libertarian morals embracing the permissive side.

You can find the full review here (but be sure to check out the rest of the site).

Marijuana less damaging to lungs than tobacco

January 11, 2012 3 comments

Very interesting report from the Los Angeles Times. I suggest you spark up a bowl to celebrate:

Marijuana smoke does not damage lungs in the same manner as tobacco smoke, according to a study released Tuesday. But that conclusion probably will not change minds as to whether the drug should be legalized.

The study found that smoking marijuana on an occasional basis does not appear to significantly damage the lungs. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the paper supports previous research that has also failed to find a link between low or moderate exposure to marijuana smoke and lung damage. Marijuana contains many of the same chemicals as tobacco smoke.

Unfortunately, the article is likely right that “the conclusion probably will not change minds as to whether the drug should be legalized.” That’s because prohibition has more to do with power and fear of pleasure than it does with science.

‘I don’t care if they are shot themselves’

January 11, 2012 11 comments

Today is the funeral for Officer Jared Francom, the Ogden, Utah, police officer killed last week in a shootout with Matthew David Stewart at Stewart’s home. Five other police officers were injured in the gun battle, as was Stewart. The reason police were at the scene? Stewart was suspected of growing marijuana for personal use. His father said he used marijuana to treat his severe depression.

As you might guess, my take on the incident is a contrarian departure from the fervent celebration of the sacrifices made by the thin blue line. To that end, let me quote Herbert Spencer who, when told that British troops were at risk during their latest uninvited venture through the Khyber Pass, replied, “When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”

Yes, that’s harsh stuff, but I think that Spencer’s argument that human beings are moral actors who have to shoulder the consequences of their choice to support imperialist adventures can just as easily be applied to the actions of police officers who willingly don badge and gun to enforce immoral laws against consensual activities. British troops in Spencer’s time were volunteers, and so are police officers in modern America. Nobody forced them to take the job, and they have a responsibility to consider the moral consequences of their actions.

Spencer believed that wars of aggression would be less likely if men considered the justification for each war before donning uniforms, and it’s just as likely that intrusive laws would be harder to enforce if people thought through the laws for which they’d act as muscle before pinning badges to their chests. It would be equally helpful if bystanders would refrain from automatic accolades for soldiers and cops, just because they decided to serve the state.

Even when the folks in uniform are courageous, they deserve praise only when their efforts are in a good cause.

So, for now, I’ll reserve my strongest sympathies for Matthew David Stewart, whose life is now essentially over, whether he ends it in prison or strapped to a gurney. After all, he was defending himself and his property in that battle, even if his cause was as doomed as that of the Afghan army in 1878.