--- Dwayne Monroe <idoru345 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> self-criticism you inexplicably bring up. Indeed, I
> find it very, very strange that you seem to assume
> the
> only people who have anything unflattering to say on
> these matters are lefties grinding the usual axes.
>
> Come to think of it, this is an almost precise
> replay
> of what happened during the London shooting of
> Charles
> de Menezes in July of 2005 - I mentioned specific
> operational problems, you merrily went down an odd
> road talking about the Left.
>
>
> Quite strange, really.
WS: First, where am I supposed to complain about things that piss me off about the US left - on a right wing blog? That would be so lame.
Second, I complain because the left criticism of the government encroachments on individual rights starts really getting on my nerves. Not because the criticism of such enchoachments per se is not valid, but because the lefties, while having a good cause, fight it in a really lame and elitist way.
To be honest, I do not give a flying fuck about the war on terror for a very simple reason: there is a much greater chance of people like me being blown up in a terrorist attack than rounded up by government agents on trumped up terrorism charges.
What really concerns me is that the line of government being able to charge individuals for a *potential* rather than *actual* harm has been crossed long time ago in a very subtle yet pervasive way, yet nobody but a few looney rightwingers even noticed that. Like that frog that is slowly being boiled alive but does not notice it because the heat is rising in small, trivial and almost imperceptible increments.
Just one example: the so-called traffic laws. I am not a big fan of driving - as I said time and again on this list, so I cannnot be accused of any hidden agenda here. But I cannot help but notice that these laws and their enforcement penalize everyone (not just some small fringe group) for doing nothing else but crossing an arbitrary line drawn by government official in the name of safety.
55 mph or seat belts/helmet laws supposedly imposed to "prevent" accidents are basically the same thing as government arresting people to thwart a *possibile* i.e. not actually occuring harm. The key difference is, however, that everone can be charged with crossing an arbitrary "traffic line" but only a very few are ever charged with terrorism.
Even more importantly, those who are charged with terrorism can still be tried by a jury in real courts, as stated in the constitution, whereas millions of people charged with traffic "violations" are tried in kangaroo courts with no jury and in which the word of a cop is the word of god.
The government needs a warrant to search your house for evidence of terrorism, but need not be bothered with such formalities when the so-called driving "privilege" graciously granted to you by the government is involved. The cop can simply pull you over, search your car, subject you to a chemical tests (the so called implied consent doctrine) whenever he he feels like doing it.
One may argue that the consequences of traffic "law enforcement" are much less serious (a mere couple of bucks extorted from citizens under the pretense of law enforcement) than the consequences on a war of terror.
I disagree. First, almost everyone can be subjected to punishment for crossing an arbitrary line drawn by the government (even if no harm resulted from it), which makes it much more prevalent than government wrongdoing due to the "war on terror." Moreover, the everyday banality of the traffic "law enforcement" the acceptance of it as a part of the daily routine, the trival scale of its consequences, something that can even looks funny to victims, desensitizes the public to the fact that government can and DOES encroach individual rights despite constituiojnal gurantees, if it does it little by little, by "baby steps" supposedly to "protect" people from themselves.
As I said, that line had been crossed long time ago and affects almost everyone. If I were to pick up a fight against government encroachments on individual rights, I would concentrate on things that affect almost everyone and are in the air we breathe, almost invisible, trivial yet pervasive - instead of highly salient and spectacular but very rare and exotic cases of terrorism. In fact, this sort of effort to find "exotic" victims of government abuse while ignoring more "common" victims of a much more widely spread abuse strikes me like elite snottiness - pie in the sky and ostentatious lack of interest in "common" surroundings. After a while, it can really get on one's nerves.
Wojtek
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