“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.”
-Constitution of the United States of America-
Like many of you, I had a bit of a drive on Christmas day – 120 miles round trip and nearly all of it on the Interstate. Of course this being Florida, it can be hard to tell the drunks from the incompetent and the insane, but I’m sure that the fellow in the Honda who did a complete stop in the “Sun Pass” automatic toll lane was just a garden variety idiot, or else he wouldn’t have dedicated the next 20 minutes to trying to prove his Honda was much faster and more agile than my Corvette. I’m sure he convinced himself without much effort.
I’m not sure about he several mega-SUV’s that slowly lumbered to the end of a half mile merge lane and then attempted to merge at 20 mph into a lane traveling at 85. It’s easier to assess the little sedans loaded with passengers traveling at 45 in the center or left lanes – if they are 85 or older with chins resting on the wheel, it’s just incompetence. If they’re much younger, you can bet they’re as smashed as the young men in the full-sized pick-ups rolling at 95+ down the left lane in the pouring rain.
One way or another it was a circus out there and it thoroughly ruined the mellowness of the evening. It could have been a field day for the police had there been any in sight. It seems that my county and the adjacent counties had decided to set up road blocks on the secondary roads instead. Judging from the comments in the local paper this morning, you would think this was a very popular idea and the one fellow who happened to question the random searches was promptly drowned out by a flood or hyper-emotional tirades from MADD members and others who hate due process and the rule of law. If one cuts through the dubious stories of friends and family slaughtered by drunks, one consistent theme remains: if it saves one life it’s worth it. That’s a statement worthy of being posted, if not above the gates of hell, at least at tyranny’s door. To reduce it to the absurd, a total curfew would save many, many lives and a police state is a safe state.
More than the inconvenience of sitting at a roadblock while policemen justify their presence by writing tickets for broken tail lights and peering and sniffing into your car with flashlights and trained dogs and making intimidating comments, it’s the fact that one more increment of what was a guaranteed freedom has been lost in the name of security. Ah, but driving is a privilege, say the mothers of MADD and so might it not be just a small step to say that renting an apartment is a privilege or being a citizen is a privilege which necessitates searches without probable cause. In fact our government seems to operating on that presumption.
Somehow it makes more sense to Americans to insist that our troops being blown up in Iraq are “defending our freedoms” then to notice that our freedoms are being taken away in the name of safety or that the obverse side of the security coin is servitude. The granting of unwritten Writs of Assistance that allow police to detain, search and inspect citizens without probable cause may seem a small step toward safety, but it’s a giant step toward a police state.
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