Peace? or the Constitution?
by tdaxp ~ August 17th, 2009
Our judges, leaders, law-makers, and war-fighters swear to protect the Constitution. Others argue it is inconvenient to do so, and the police should be transformed into a quasi-legal militia force to fight “actual criminals” (as opposed to what? de jure criminals?)
I do not worry too much about over-aggressive cops as a public menace. Where I live, the actual criminals are menace enough…
I am sympathetic to this argument. The Constitution is not a suicide pact, even if we industrialize death to defend it. Deep in our violent creed is the conviction that there are some things so dear, we expect others to die for it, if not ourselves.
While Dr. Henry Gates is clearly a Hero of the Constitution for standing up to the rogue (and armed!) Sgt. Crowley, others insist that Crowley is a Hero of the Peace for standing up to a rude (and impatient!) home owner.
So given our Constitution or Peace for our war-fighters what do we choose? All but pacifists, it seems, would choose the Constitution. Given our Constitution or Peace from “real criminals” what do we choose? Many choose Peace.
To get to the answer to this dilemma, of course, we need to go through the horns.
We need to stop criminals from ever being born in the first place.
That’s coming.
We had a President opposed to manipulating life before it was formed. That’s over.
We will have Peace and we will have our Constitution.
We will have new generations better than any in history.
We will live in a world, radically artificial twice over.
We haven’t begun to see what it will hold.
August 17th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
By actual criminal criminals I mean people who hit you over the head from behind, kick you the back of the head, once you are down, so hard your contact lenses fly out, and then go through your pockets. By actual criminals I mean people who drive down the alley in their car, block the old lady from closing her garage door, and make her give up her purse at gunpoint. By actual criminal I mean people who drive through an area where a rival gang has its turf, see a basketball game in progress and pop off at the young men playing, killing one and putting another in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. By actual criminal I mean a home invader who breaks into houses at night knowing terrorizes and batters the occupants and robs them. By actual criminals I mean people who loiter in the stair up to the elevated train platform sizing people up to rob them, then walk up and start the conversation with a sucker punch, then a demand for the wallet.
That sort of thing.
These actual criminals can be stopped, or caught, within the scope of the Constitution.
The citizenry have to act like grownups, however, and make the police be accountable if they get out of line, but respect them in the ordinary course of their duties, such as responding to a reasonable report that your own house is being broken into.
August 18th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Hey Lex,
Your first paragraph summarizes, I think, the Crowley/Peace side of the “Peace v. the Constitution” debate which seems to be going on.
Your second paragraph is rhetoric, but nicely done.
The third and fourth paragraph note that no Constitutional rights would be violated, if only people would cease speaking, assembling, petitioning, and so on in ways that are inconvenient for the police.
Likewise, criminals could be stopped within the scope of the Constitution, if the police were a professional and skilled crime fighting force instead of a powerful blue-collar union. But we’re not willing to pay for that.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:00 am
“…if only people would cease speaking, assembling, petitioning, and so on in ways that are inconvenient for the police.”
I did not say that, as you can tell, since you can read.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:27 am
Of course you did. I know that because I can think.
You say that Gates’s political speech (expressing his stance on the supposed oppression of blacks in America, etc) is a strike against him.
You say that Gates’s petition (the “intimidation” in which he makes it clear he will attempt to remove Crowley from his office) works against him.
You say that Gates was making a scene in his own home (that is, he was engaged in an assembly you dislike) and that works against him.
I was not pedantically quoting you, as was clear from the lack of quotation marks. Rather, I was demonstrating that you repeatedly sacrifice Constitutional rights for peace.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:37 am
“I did not say that, as you can tell, since you can read.”
Regardless of the merits of either side of this debate, this was the coolest comeback I’ve read in a while.
August 18th, 2009 at 7:38 am
Curtis, true dat!
I tried my best for parallelism, but as they say, imitation is the sincerest form…