The future of law enforcement
Over the course of the last few months there seems to have been a rash of wanton cowardice among law enforcement officials. Last month a man was pulled over in Oklahoma City because he had an anti-Obama/anti-abortion bumper sticker on his car. His house was searched by the U.S. Secret Service and he was eventually found not guilty of whatever crime he was never properly charged with in the first place. I still wonder if the Secret Service had a warrant to search this guy’s house. Even more puzzling is that if they did have a warrant, exactly what kind of judge would sign off on a warrant like that? The whole incident seemed surreal and Orwellian.
At first I was thinking this was an isolated incident. Maybe the cops in Oklahoma City are just pussies. Maybe this one Oklahoma City cop didn’t get any doughnuts that morning and it was his time of the month. However, it’s beginning to look like the State of Missouri is now jumping on the bumper sticker profiling bandwagon. Apparently a report issued by the state called “The Modern Militia Movement” catalogs certain telltale signs of a person being a suspected domestic terrorist. One of the signs include having a bumper sticker for a third party political candidate on your car.
It looks like Missouri law enforcement is following the same craven footsteps as a certain Oklahoma City cop. The report issued by the Missouri law enforcement agency also mentions “subversive literature” as another factor in identifying possible militia members. That’s such a wonderfully vague term. “Subversive literature” could mean anything from Mein Kampf to Atlas Shrugged. Who the hell decides these things? And more importantly, how do they vote? What is being sold as an educational tool for cops to protect themselves from those who may harm them is really just a cowardly attempt to use law enforcement as a means of stifling opposing political discourse.
Sure, some libertarians and militia members are paranoid whackjobs who exist on the fringe of society and sanity. On the other hand, considering the incident in Oklahoma City and the profiling that’s going on in Missouri, who can blame them for being paranoid conspiracy nuts? The bottom line is that nothing gives any law enforcement official the right to pull someone over based on nothing more than a Ron Paul ’08 bumper sticker. Totalitarianism always begins with fear. Fear can either be faced with the courage to tolerate differences of opinion, or it can be perpetuated by the cowardice of bullying anyone who disagrees with you. Unfortunately many law enforcement officials have an aptitude for bullying.
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I try to tell my libertarian friends that they need to distance themselves from the paranoid whackjob contingent of freedom fighters… alas, I never thought I'd have to actually honestly consider that they may have a point.
Yeah, it's kinda surreal in that way. The way things are going, even Alex Jones' paranoid fantasies might even come true.
I remember old bumperstickers that said, "Unlicensed Pharmaceutical Importers, LTD".. just a means of blowing smoke up The Man's ass. So consider that. 3rd party candidate sticker with a caption that reads, "Profile this, Bitches"