Another day, another horrifying SWAT Team atrocity.
The difference is that this one made me worry that by focusing on the drug war aspects, I might be losing sight of the bigger, and more ominous picture.
Here’s what happened. In a 3:00 a.m. SWAT Team raid, police broke down the door of a house to look for a guy who didn’t live there and severely burned and horribly mutilated a 19 month old baby.
“They searched for drugs in the home and did not find any.”
In my usual way, I asked, “How long will Americans continue to tolerate such police state terrorism?” And even “Imagine the outcry if they started treating illegals the way they treat citizens.”
In response, a friend asked a good question:
By deputizing police forces to be a “military” force has the government found its way around posse comitatus?
A very, very good question — one which the focus mainly on the drug war may cause people to miss.
The National Review has an excellent article about the latest incident.
Historians looking back at this period in America’s development will consider it to be profoundly odd that at the exact moment when violent crime hit a 50-year low, the nation’s police departments began to gear up as if the country were expecting invasion — and, on occasion, to behave as if one were underway. The ACLU reported recently that SWAT teams in the United States conduct around 45,000 raids each year, only 7 percent of which have anything whatsoever to do with the hostage situations with which those teams were assembled to contend. Paramilitary operations, the ACLU concluded, are “happening in about 124 homes every day — or more likely every night” — and four in five of those are performed in order that authorities might “search homes, usually for drugs.” Such raids routinely involve “armored personnel carriers,” “military equipment like battering rams,” and “flashbang grenades.”
Were the military being used in such a manner, we would be rightly outraged. Why not here? Certainly this is not a legal matter. The principle of posse comitatus draws a valuable distinction between the national armed forces and parochial law enforcement, and one that all free people should greatly cherish. Still, it seems plain that the potential threat posed by a domestic standing army is not entirely blunted just because its units are controlled locally. To add the prefix “para” to a problem is not to make it go away, nor do legal distinctions change the nature of power. Over the past two decades, the federal government has happily sent weapons of war to local law enforcement, with nary a squeak from anyone involved with either political party. Are we comfortable with this?
The Right’s silence on the issue is vexing indeed, the admirable attempts of a few libertarians notwithstanding.
(Emphasis added.)
The silence on the right is very troubling, for conservatives are among the few remaining champions of the dead white men who founded this country, and this sort of thing is precisely what the founding fathers intended to prevent.
Might the war on drugs be what causes conservatives to turn a blind eye? After all, it was Reagan’s baby, and the man is seen as a godlike figure who could do no wrong, so anything done in the name of the “war on drugs” is seen by many conservatives as tantamount to an extension of Reagan’s will. This means that anything seen as “backing down,” “going soft,” “getting all wobbly,” “being a squish,” etc. becomes a “betrayal” of Reaganism, conservatism, and even “conservative principles.”
Meanwhile, the militarization of police proceeds with a lack of genuine conservative opposition.
Any ideas on how to get these people to think?
Comments
6 responses to “Did Reagan really want a police state?”
Any ideas on how to get these people to think?
Prejudice prevents thinking. And the hatred of “drugs” is white hot among some conservative factions. But there is a countervailing force:
Think of the “living in a police state” mentality that half the kids get even if they are only occasional drug users in the 15 to 25 yo cohort. And some of the bystanders get the message too. It imprints them for life. Good job my prohibitionist friends. Because people who have experienced a police state are its most ardent foes.
And of course the occasional article in National Review doesn’t hurt.
Which is worse, the wide eyed zealot who espouses ideology out of conviction, or the smarmy, hypocritical politician who uses it for money and adulation? Ronald Reagan was a little of both. He convinced himself, and others, that Goldwater/libertarian conservatism would be the salvation (and it was, at least for his two bit career) but deep down he was always a New Deal Democrat collectivist.
Reagan was president of the Screen Actor’s Guild for two terms. He was a Democrat all through this time including his last term in 1959. He cut his teeth in collective bargaining – compromise being his true calling. He was never more than a B grade actor, that is until he found politics. And don’t bring up his Knute Rockne gig because one schlocky performance doesn’t make a career.
http://www.sagaftra.org/february-6-2011-ronald-reagan-centennial
Reagan became the epitome of a conservative: you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. He was a master of deceit in this regard. Spellbinding, apparently sincere, and rousing speeches were his forte. He charmed the wrinkles out of blue haired biddies from San Diego to Eureka, at the same time dazzling gullible and naive college kids. I know, because I was one.
I turned 21 in October of 1966 while Ronnie was making the rounds of college campuses in his run for governor. The auditorium was filled to capacity as Chuck Connors, actually holding his rifle, strolled on stage. After a rousing intro, Ronnie appeared with the 7 Mule Team music back up. What a show. Kind of like that schlub from Texas landing on an aircraft carrier to proclaim “mission accomplished” to the wild cheers of a captive, young, and ignorant audience. And how has that turned out? But never mind, back to Ronnie.
THE SPEECH, as it was later called, was Reagan’s only great accomplishment. He had 4 x 6 inch note cards with bullet points at his disposal, but really didn’t need them. His extemporaneous performance was masterful. Not only did he present well, he had the serious, reasoned argument down pat. That particular audience in 1966 was composed of young draft age boys, many voting age, and all witness to nightly body counts and body bags returning from Vietnam. What was the theme of Ronnie’s speech? The immoral and unconstitutional draft. He gave us the history from Napoleon and Bismarck, called it involuntary servitude, and promised that if we voted for him he would use his influence as Governor of California, the number one state, to have the draft repealed. Cheers, standing ovation. And he was elected that November with my vote.
The lying, two-faced, fucking bastard never had any intention of backing draft repeal. When Senator Mark Hatfield actually proposed it, Reagan said “maybe this isn’t the time” during a war and all. It was never the time for that fuctard (thanks Bill) for draft repeal, holding the line on the deficit, or any of the important libertarian issues.
All you need to know about Reagan is in this picture:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSUkDQYX76v2XpRwVuKAPVb1WILJgUr6UwEAJv3yl9NokH59oWYMA
And he was the best of conservatism. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on.
The dynamic entry (no knock or knock and enter) raid was a policy implemented to enforce drug laws and was widely supported by conservatives. The sad episode that prompted Eric’s post was due to the police using dynamic entry tactics to arrest a drug suspect.
The irony in all this is that conservatives are complaining about the aggressive police tactics that their staunch support of the WOD helped to implement.
It’s good news that conservatives are beginning to notice problems in our policing policies and starting to complain about them. It will hopefully hasten police reforms at the very least. But if you have the bad manners (like me) to make the connection between their support of the WOD and the aggressive police tactics employed to enforce the WOD, they will usually deny the connection and blame the Left for the problem of aggressive police tactics.
Conservatives and liberals are just opposite sides of the same reactionary coin. They are both certain that the other side is wrong on policy and that the other side’s policies will always have unintended consequences to boot. At the same time, they are both quite certain that their own policy positions will always work and do so without any unintended consequences whatsoever.
This creates huge blind spots for both factions, as each faction can only see what they think is wrong with the other’s actions and neither can or will see what might be wrong with their own policies. Both sides are loathe to admit that they have made or will make policy mistakes, because to do so would mean that the other faction is right, and neither side can stomach that.
While conservative voters are beginning to change their position on cannabis, they are bringing up the rear as conservatives still constitute the bulk of the shrinking opposition towards cannabis legalization. It’s generally bad politics to be on the other side of an issue that is rapidly gaining political support. But that doesn’t seem to bother the self-righteous social conservative. They are more than willing to lose an election rather than reconsider their position on cannabis. And they likely will do just that, lose elections here and there because many of them still have such a hard-on for the drug war.
Bonzo wanted a police state against those who opposed his selling dope to school children to finance the contra’s. That is why the children are coming from gautamala honduras and el salvador and not nicauraga bonzo wasn’t able to install drug dealers there!
Eric,
I’m not sure why you say conservatives aren’t opposed to this sort of behavior. Most of the conservative sites I read have disapproving articles regularly about this sort of thing. The pro-2nd Amendment organizations are especially on top of this, and have been for at least 20 years. Remember when President Bush (41) quit the NRA because they called SWAT teams “jack-booted thugs”?
The reason for the disapproval is clear–they are pretty sure the SWAT teams will be coming for conservatives soon enough.
“By deputizing police forces to be a “military” force has the government found its way around posse comitatus?”
Why yes. Yes it has. This is how Edmund Davis ruled Texas in 1870-74. It was really the only way he could rule the place given that the Union Army was officially out of the state.