4/20/2013

Is this where America used to be?

News report late 19 April 2013.  So they got the Boston Marathon bombers.

The fact that an average citizen found Suspect Number Two  after  the lock down order had been lifted plays into my theme today.  Call me cynical, but it's good that Suspect Number Two was found by Joe Homeowner and not a group of Law Enforcement Authority, else he'd have been Dornered.

When Law Enforcement Authority issues an "Order" to shelter in place, absent the conditions of actual public danger (a toxic cloud of chlorine gas, for example), isn't it our prerogative to look Law Enforcement Authority in the eye and respectfully say, "Fuck you!"?

Imagine.  Your town.  The wee hours of Friday morning.  Law Enforcement Authority says don't go to work.  Don't go to school.  Don't open your business.  Don't leave for that long weekend.  Don't get together with friends for a gaming party.  Don't!  Because all of you people moving around out there makes the job of Law Enforcement Authority more difficult.  What do you do? 

1.)  Go along.  Get used to it.  Call it the new normal.  Admit the terrorists won.  

2.)  Go along because of a presumption of good judgement on the part of Law Enforcement Authority, but then tell them after the fact that you are dissatisfied with their trampling of civil rights in their handling of the situation.  Okay, but then what about the  next  time they do it?  Go to option 1 above?  Stick with option 2?

3.)  Go about your business.  The world is a dangerous place on the best of days.  You might get hit by a garbage truck.  You might get blown up at the finish line of that little race you're running with twenty thousand or so of your closest friends.  Go about your business and keep your eyes open for danger and suspicious characters.  Go about your business in exactly the same way you would anyway, but with the added activity of watching for the bad guy. 

I guess I'm saying I'm for option 3.  Of course, Option 3 is likely to put me in danger of being falsely imprisoned (arrested) or Hernandezed.  Proceed with caution.

This is America.  Law Enforcement Authority take on the  office  -- that's why they call them "officer" -- of being the default mode for use of force to protect and serve the public good.  We are the public, so that would be our good they are supposed to protect.  Law Enforcement Authority is  deputed  by the public -- that's why some of them are called "deputy" -- to free us from having to join an ad hoc posse comitatus Nowadays (normally) our participation in the administration of justice is reserved to the jury power. 

This is America.  Pardon me for dropping the "F-Bomb" earlier, but I get worked up about Liberty. 

Things just seem to have gotten pretty upside-down in Boston.  

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