When those cold war movies I grew up on wanted to let you know the scene was not in the land of the free, we were furnished with Angst ridden scenes where the protagonist was asked for his papers by someone in a leather trench coat on some dark street corner. Maybe his accent was showing, the cut of his clothes -- maybe it was just routine, but we were all grateful that back here, in "freedom" we could go about our business without worry and the government was on our side.
The strangest thing about Arizona's new knee jerk immigration law is that Arizona is the spiritual home of small-government libertarianism and the feeling that Government is a necessary evil; perhaps more evil than necessary. They don't want the government telling them when and where or if they can keep and bear and conceal weapons, what they can eat, smoke or drink or what they can do on their property. They don't trust public education or public radio and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them. I suspect they'd raise holy hell if the police were to stop them at random looking for contraband or illegal weapons or even a drivers license, yet they're apparently quite happy to demand that anyone "suspicious" in that state must keep proof of citizenship on their person at all times, display such proof to any cop that feels like demanding it, or face serious consequences. Of course, if you're white, you're probably all right, so never mind.
To any unbiased observer this alone would more than hint of a police state and unconstitutional government interference in private life.
Sure, if the Arizona police were perfect human beings there would be little concern, but they're far from that. Still, those self-styled Libertarians seem quite happy to give unprecedented and perhaps unconstitutional power to Law enforcement to stop people and demand papers. It's pretty hard to maintain the pose of strict constitutional limits on government when the power reserved for the judicial branch is given to a cop on the beat. The various issues surrounding protecting citizens from government powers of search and seizure were a cornerstone of our rebellion against British rule -- as I shouldn't have to remind anyone.
Dare I speculate that the Libertarian label might, for a great many people, sometimes be only the phony ID that authoritarianism carries?
Evidently fear of aliens overrides high principle and what Arizona really wants is a government that cuts a swath through the law to root out what they want rooted out -- and the Constitution be damned. What they want is a government that lays it's fingers heavily on people they don't like and lays completely off anything that stands between them and whatever they please. Sorry cowboy; when you add in the racist element, this situational Libertarianism is too much like Fascism to make it worth trying to find a difference.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteThe more I hear, the more I think this law is going to bring on the boycotts but good. I no longer trust the Supreme Court majority to make sound, intelligent decisions (several of them seem like they would vote for absolutely anything so long as it was sufficiently right-wing and authoritarian), so the answer may lie with economic power. The law rests upon so Nazified a concept that I don't see even a large minority of Americans finding it tolerable.
"Situational Libertarianism" is a fine phrase -- it aptly describes the attitude a lot of our current Libertarians adopt. It's often just another way of defending one's own at everybody else's expense, with the added bonus of sham beyond-it-allness and utter objectivity about government.
Capt.
ReplyDeleteDo you really think that 'libertarian' is just another word for authoritarianism in drag?
Really?
Its kind of like 'conservtives' thinking that a 'conservative' supreme court justice is someone who will rule for limited government and individual freedom...
You will never find a conservative supreme court justice that does not side with big government and big business...
'libertarian' and 'conservative' are today just terms for the folks that were 'law and order republicans' in the 1970's
You know, I'm sorely disappointed in the Libertarian haven in Arizona. It seems as though all political parties are dumping their core beliefs. Hell, it was but a short two years ago they were vociferously supporting a family whose father was forced to leave the U.S. every year to renew his work permit, leaving his family for months to fend for themselves.
ReplyDelete“In the wee hours of a Tuesday morning in December 2004, Buca's daughters, 10-year-old Darby and 4-year-old Daisy, reached up from their bed, hugged their daddy, and went back to sleep. Outside their back window, the sun was still waiting to cross the distant cattle pastures that rise up from the far bank of the New River valley, far below their mountaintop home in Ashe County, North Carolina. Buca (whose surname I am omitting to protect his family's identity) was among thousands of Mexican men flowing south from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the weeks before Christmas. The girls would not see him again until February.
Reason Magazine http://reason.com/archives/2006/02/01/americas-criminal-immigration
The political parties in this country have become unhinged and are now nothing more than mobs of disenfranchised, myopic piss ants doing whatever is necessary to antagonize the citizenship of this country. You can no longer depend upon ANY political party to support their core beliefs.
It is hard to find a silver living these days (there isn't any) because the only silver to grace our shores of late was a certain self-styled libertarian Fiddlestix who surveilled us for bashing points as thought police would like to get inside your underwear.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, money talks, and boycotts bite, and if that is what it takes, then let the Ignominious State of Arizona sink into third world status ... an outcome they so richly deserve.
This law will NOT stand.
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with immigration enforcement.
This is all politics as usual. National, and local.
I thank you for posting this, and other posts on our insane "papers please" state.
We need all the help we can get to have this exposed and over turned.
This is interesting.
ReplyDeleteBehind the Arizona Immigration Law:
GOP Game to Swipe the November Election
http://www.gregpalast.com/
"What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected."
As Tao rightly points out it isn't them new-fangled Teabaggers after all. It's merely the same old line of GOP nonsense they've peddled forever and a day. My first encounter was the red-baiting in the 1950's followed by the love it or leave it 60's followed by the Silent Majority ad infinitum.
The more things change...
ART:
ReplyDeleteI had this up 2 days ago. Palast is spot on as usual.
http://realityzone-realityzone.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-gop-behind-arizona-immigration-law.html
The latest on George [ill] Will (link):
ReplyDeleteColumnist George Will is of the opinion that Arizona's police officers are capable of handling the task that the state's draconian new anti-immigration law drops into their laps. That is to say, they must do a better job at enforcing illegal immigration statutes, without racial profiling, and do so effectively enough to not get sued. Will said:
( ... )
On the other hand, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, who I am assuming is something of a master of the "complex and demanding craft of policing" seeing as how he's been a policeman for over five decades, begs to differ. Per Amanda Terkel, Dupnik called the law "racist" and "disgusting" and "stupid" and, in his "nuanced judgment" could not be enforced without mandatory racial profiling. Dupnik's reckoning of the legal issue is that he's just as likely to be sued for racial profiling as he is for not doing enough racial profiling, so he's standing pat, and will not enforce the new law.
I live in Az. Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio has already declared he will have another [round up] this week end. Jesus Christ would fit their profile.
ReplyDeleteArthurstone, damn interesting, that article. Also of note, those fraudulent and misleading census mailings conducted by the RNC. There seems to be a culture within the GOP, raised to the level of high art by Karl Rove, to rig election results. If memory serves, GonzoGate started in Arizona with the firing of a district DoJ attorney.
ReplyDelete"Columnist George Will is of the opinion that Arizona's police officers are capable of handling the task that the state's draconian new anti-immigration law drops into their laps."
ReplyDeleteGeorge is the patron saint of hypocrisy. Almost anything is an unnecessary stain on the purity of libertarian principle --- but this time only can we trust the government not to misuse an unconstitutional power.
Jesus