While both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of excessive spin and distortion, it has always surprised me how the Right is so unconcerned with self-consistency. Republicans in general, and conservatives in particular, love to tell anyone who will listen that they stand for freedom and liberty. They loudly proclaim their disdain for taxes, big government, and rules that get in the way of their freedoms (read making money). Yet, with the same breath, they'll tell you of their love of authority (e.g. the military, the Pope, and the police) and conformity (e.g. HOA's, vice laws, and what religion you should practice). In the end, they, not liberials, are the masters of spin. Everyone remembers the flag waving, and practically no-one remembers the rest.
So I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that there isn't any libertarian outrage over the police arrest of Henry Louis Gates. Since when is behaving badly in the privacy of your own home an arrest-able offense? According to both accounts, Gates eventually identified himself as the resident of the house. No where was it shown that he was a threat to himself or anyone else. So why couldn't the police just walk away? Aren't they the ones paid to have cooler heads?
I remember a friend of mine who worked for a Sheriff's department in Southern California. She told me that there was a code used by their officers to indicate they were bringing someone in who had shown a bad attitude. It was not on the books, and the person would never get charged. They'd be held in a cell for the 24 hours allowed by law before it was required they be charged with something. The whole being to let the person know who was actually in control.
Now I don't know what happened between the Cambridge Police and Gates, and I doubt we'll ever know for certain. I suspect that Gates, having just traveled half away across the world, might have been a bit cranky and didn't take too well to being questioned by the police. But frankly I find both parties stories suspect. Neither side's stories add up. But even if you take the police at their word, it troubling that they can arrest you in your own home for being uppity. And it is even more troubling that kind of power doesn't seem to scare anyone. Especially the defenders of freedom on the right.
6 comments:
Thanks for your visit and comment on my Pick a Peck of Pixels blog.
I agree with your comments for the most part. Especially about the right-wing and conservatives and what they say they stand for.
I think you put way too much weight on what individuals in power are doing. With this logic, we should feel free to wreck the planet because Al Gore does. His carbon footprint is positively colossal. His mammoth hypocrisy should make your own environmental views totally invalid.
Do they?
Perhaps I am. I was trying to make a point here.
I came across something relevant to this recently. I'm now completely convinced that the police, in the Gates case, acted in good faith. But I'm still bothered by the extent of the disorderly conduct law into personal liberty.
Someone was talking about being on a street corner across from a police event in DC. This individual was mouthing off about the police being wrong about the Gates arrest. One of the cops milling around heard him, came over and ended up arresting him. It turns out, at least in DC, you can be arrested for disorderly conduct for mouthing off anywhere - including inside your own home. So its part of the law. Now I wonder about the law in Cambridge. I wouldn't be surprised if its the same.
I still have a serious problem with this because its overly intrusive law.
I thought about this for a while and I think I understand why they make those arrests. You can't mouth off to a cop at all because to do so undermines their authority. Their authority is what prevents confrontations from turning into gun battles.
Example: If there's a fight going on in Pacific Beach, the arrival of a cop or two does a great deal to quell the disturbance. They won't have the ability to singlehandedly keep the crowd from turning it into a brawl, but their appearance on the scene calms everyone down. It's their implicit, societal authority that prevents the thing from escalating.
As soon as it becomes permissable to scream at them, they stop being agents of order and become just one of us. If you, instead of a cop, show up on the scene of a developing brawl, nothing happens to stop it until you demonstrate overwhelming firepower.
Cops cannot be treated like us. They need the cooperation of all involved. The tolerance for resistance has to be very, very low, otherwise just where that line is drawn becomes blurry and soon they're having to pull their clubs out and beat the PB brawlers instead of simply talking to the crowd.
As for Professor Gates, either he saw this as his winning lotto ticket and deliberately worked to get himself arrested or he's so filled with racial hate that he couldn't control himself. Who knows.
Addendum: We sometimes work with the Border Patrol. When they encounter a pack of illegals making their way across the border, they are typically outnumbered 50-1. Even if they had a chance to calmly reload, they don't have enough bullets to give one to each illegal. Their authority is the only thing that prevents the altercation from ending in death for someone (or lots of someones).
Take that authority away and you'll need to give them SMGs so they can spray the unruly crowd with bullets.
KT,
it may be naive of me, but I'd like to think that Gates didn't intend things to get so out of his control. Its also become quite clear that the police officer acted within the allowed guidelines - although I wonder if all this could have turned out very differently had he tried sitting Gates in the squad car to cool down. But at least no one got tased!
And while I conceed your point about Police authority when in a public place, I'm still troubled about the application of this within one's own home.
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