Where did he find jeans with pockets in the first place?!

If we keep on the path we’ve been on, this is the world of the future.  Metal detectors at the entrances to retail outlets and other public venues.  And because people can easily hide things in pockets, clothing manufacturers bend to “the will of the People” and stop making pockets.  Everyone — men, women, children — will carry their identification cards badges on the outside of their clothing and any personal items they insist on carrying will go into easily-x-rayed “purses” to speed the process of going through “detection lines” as they move around town.

Friday night, shots were fired outside a Bullard High School basketball game by a still-unknown someone.  By today the article with the large headline reading “Metal detectors at FUSD gyms?” noted that:

Gunshots fired outside a crowded gymnasium have prompted the Fresno Unified School District to consider using metal detectors at high school basketball games.  (Pablo Lopez and George Hostetter, “Metal detectors at FUSD gyms?” (January 25, 2009) p. B1, col. 2, above the fold, at the time of this writing, available online here.)

Now, the school district is arguably a part of the government.  And the government is arguably bound by the United States Constitution.  And the United States Constitution arguably protects citizens against warrantless searches via the Fourth Amendment.  So, arguably, the use of metal detectors outside a school gymnasium would be illegal.

Only since the United States does not honor the Constitution in spirit, but only in word — and then usually only in Orwellian attempts to justify wars to protect our freedom — it’s not.  That is, it’s not illegal; it’s probably not even arguable except for idiots like me who still prefer pockets to purses.

But you don’t have to go there if you dislike being a submitizen, I was told when I objected to metal detectors out front of the courthouse.  True that: I could change careers.  Only what if I ever get summoned for jury duty?  Or, worse yet, some blowhard-in-blue thinks I dissed him and charges me with a violation of Penal Code section 148 (dissing a police officer — you didn’t know that was illegal, did you?).  And you don’t have to go to a ballgame at Bullard High School.  Going places isn’t a right; it’s a privilege.

Uh, yeah.  Tell that to our Founders.  At least in their day, the tyrannical fascists against whom they fought were using written general warrants authorizing indiscriminate searches!  (That’s why they wrote the Fourth Amendment after they decided that generalized unwarranted searches were worth shooting people over and then did shoot enough of them to be able to write their own Constitution.)

Moreover, as the idea of using metal detectors in more and more places spreads, there will be more and more places one doesn’t “have” to go.  Eventually, some malignant wit will be telling me I don’t have to go to the grocery!

And what is this for?  Why this wholesale acceptance on the part of submitizens with respect to metal detectors and warrantless searches?  Well, didn’t you read the Fresno Bee?  Someone fired shots outside the gymnasium!

Okay.  What am I missing here?  The shots were fired where?  Outside the gymnasium.  Outside.

Someone want to explain to me how metal detectors are going to help in this situation?

“Yes,” I hear former-statutory-rapist-cum-police-chief Jerry Dyer saying, “but they could have fired the shots inside the gymnasium!”  We need metal detectors at the door now because the fact that someone fired shots outside the gymnasium last Friday means someone could fire shots inside the gymnasium some day in the future.

If this is the line of reasoning folks, then the grocery store scenario I started off with here is not all that absurd; it’s closer than you think.  And guess what?  The grocery store isn’t even arguably a branch of government.  So the United States Constitution does not prevent the grocery store from requiring you to submit to a search before being allowed to enter.

In the 1700s, there were occasional shootings in bars and other public gathering places.  Yet, for some reason, our Founders did not see fit to install security checkpoints at the entrances.  Hell, for some inexplicable reason, they allowed people to walk down the street with guns strapped to their hips, or even concealed under their jackets.  In broad daylight, no less!

Maybe they mistakenly thought the Fourth Amendment actually meant something.

Once — holy Moses! — somehow, someone even managed to get close enough, in a theater, to draw a bead on the back of a President’s head and blow a hole in him!  (And still the Fourth Amendment remained in place.)  Do you seriously believe the world is a more dangerous place today than it was in the 1700s?

Actually, as it turns out, the world is a more dangerous place today.  But it’s only indirectly because of submitizens.  The direct danger to our world today is the government’s increasing refusal to recognize the limitations placed on it by we, the People, in the United States Constitution.  Our submitting to the government flouting the law only encourages a lawless government.

This is the main danger, first, because the government is increasingly one of men and not of law; the government itself is increasingly the enemy of the People, beneficial only to those actually wielding governmental power.  Secondarily, it is true because the disrespect for law demonstrated by the government sets the stage for a disrespect for law among others.  When enough people no longer respect the law, we dissolve into de facto anarchy.

In that kind of world, we actually have to hope grocery stores do install metal detectors, hire armed guards and require us to empty our pockets before entering.  In a lawless society, there has to be some place we can find a little safety.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go buy a purse.

The funk started not so much because of the rules implemented by the court — the day California courts honor the United States Constitution will be a surprising day indeed! — but rather because of the reaction of other defense attorneys to my opinions regarding the newly-implemented rules.

Fear Does Not Trump Inalienable Rights

I alluded to an “attorney” standing nearby on the first day I encountered the new policy of searching, without probable cause and in violation of the United States Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, all attorneys entering the courthouse.  This criminal defense attorney derided me to the bailiff for my comments about the unconstitutionality of the act.  And, soon, I would learn he is not the only criminal defense attorney who finds no problem with searches lacking in probable cause “because of the safety factor.”

A public defender, for whom I’ve always had the utmost respect, upon hearing that I was researching how to sue the presiding judge for this violation of my civil rights, indicated that he was in agreement with the policy.  The reason?  One of his clients, he said, once tried to smuggle in a weapon which he was allegedly going to use against the attorney.

Now I understand someone not wanting to be attacked and injured (or worse) by one of his clients in a courtroom.  Frankly, I would not like to be attacked by a client, either.  (Just one of many reasons I listen to, explain things and fight hard for my clients.  But, then, as another criminal defense attorney explained to me, I’m a freak.) Heck, for some reason, I don’t want to be attacked by anyone, either inside or outside of a courtroom.  Maybe it’s a Freudian thing, or perhaps I was dropped on my head at birth by some slippery-handed obstetrician.

But here’s the thing:  My fear of being attacked by some idiot with a weapon does not justify the abrogation of everyone else’s constitutional rights. At least not “inalienable” rights such as those protected by the Fourth Amendment. In fact, the concern our Founders had for the possibility that someone might think some governmental function — like keeping us safe — would trump inalienable rights is exactly why the Fourth Amendment was enacted.

Avoiding the Violation by Avoiding the Court Does Not Work

And it’s not as simple as one guard suggested when he said, “So don’t come in.”  Setting aside the fact that I’m a criminal defense attorney who makes his living by trying to convince the courts that our laws and legal system should be more than a pretense, there are times when I’ve been summoned to the courthouse for jury duty.  You cannot refuse jury duty on the grounds that you do not wish to leave your constitutional rights at the front door.

Similarly, for people who have been ordered to appear in court, refusing to enter on the grounds that unconvicted citizens of the United States are entitled to Fourth Amendment protections can and will result in an arrest warrant being issued.  Even mere witnesses summoned to testify will find themselves subjected to a body attachment and jail time for the willful failure to abandon their inalienable rights and obey the summons.

The Times, They Aren’t A-Changin’

This morning, one of the court’s enforcers commented that “these are different times.”

In one sense, that’s true.  Our Founders would never have permitted such generalized searches without particularized grounds for believing the person to be searched had committed or was about to commit a crime.  They well understood the tendency of the government to abuse its power — a limited power given to it by individuals such as myself — and to begin to treat citizens as chattel, as Submitizens.  In fact, under the same conditions, our Founders came up with a plan: they started shooting the representatives of the government which violated their rights to privacy and to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

The fact that we willingly submit to the government which was created for the limited purpose of ensuring our freedom from the very acts of government which the British forced on early Americans and which are now being forced upon us is proof indeed that times are different.

This, however, is not what the enforcer — who, as another “defense attorney” pointed out, was “only following orders” (where have I heard that before?) — meant by saying “these are different times.”  He mistakenly believed that we live in more dangerous times.

In fact, there were significant threats faced by the early settlers which we do not face.  The governments — yes, the plural would be appropriate — of America were under constant threat of being overthrown.  Americans constantly were concerned with the possibility of having other countries — including most notably Great Britain — impose their will upon our as-yet-unborn nation.  Prior to the establishment of the United States, spies such as Benedict Arnold and Major John André plotted against us.

On a less politically-driven basis, settlers in America had to deal with Indians, the French, press gangs (which kidnapped Americans from coastal cities and forced them to work aboard foreign ships), bands of thieves threatening travelers, stagecoach hold-ups, bank robberies and more.

Early Americans Feared Unrestricted Government More Than Other Threats

In spite of these things and the ease with which unrestricted powers of search and seize would have increased the safety of Submitizens, the American people almost refused to approve the formation of the United States by refusing to approve the United States Constitution because it did not acknowledge that the government was restricted in how far it could go towards, among other things, searching its citizens.  (Back then, we were not yet Submitizens.)

It is…clear that they viewed the federal group as the greatest potential threat to their rights and freedoms, which is precisely why the Bill of Rights contains so many express restrictions on the power of government officials.  (Jacob G. Hornberger, Liberty, Power and the Constitution (September 4, 2006) Freedom Daily/The Future of Freedom Foundation.)

Early Americans knew that,

A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect. (James Bovard)

Give Them an Inch & They’ll Take Your Freedom

We would do well to remember what our Founders knew when they — in the midst of a world full of people and nations which sought their destruction as a free nation and plotted their complete subjugation — enshrined our pre-existing rights to be free from such searches as those daily forced upon Submitizens today.

Our personal freedoms are not what threatens us the most.  What threatens us the most is our failure to recognize just how completely our own government works to undo our constitutional protections.  Bill Clinton exemplified this threat in a 1994 MTV interview:

When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly….What’s happened in America today is, too many people live in areas where there’s no family structure, no community structure, and no work structure. And so there’s a lot of irresponsibility. And so a lot of people say there’s too much personal freedom. When personal freedom’s being abused, you have to move to limit it.  (James Bovard, “Democracy versus Liberty” (February 7, 2007) (emphasis added).)

But like our Founders — and unlike the attorneys mentioned earlier in this article who, deserving neither, willingly trade constitutional freedoms for a little security — I’m tired of the government unilaterally abolishing my inalienable rights for the sake of making some of us feel safe.

Together We Stand, Divided We Fall

At any rate, I began this article by saying that Nicole Black’s “Fear and liberty must co-exist” might help snap me out of the funk I’ve been in since the day I wrote Submitizens. And it has; not just because Nicole said what I feel better (and with far fewer words) than I just did, but because she reminded me that I’m not alone. There are real defense attorneys out there who haven’t become Submitizens.

My hope — and my goal — is that we can educate the rest of you so that you will stand with us and follow the example of our Founders with respect to our freedoms, without the need to resort to their method for achieving it.

Requiem to a Constitution

I linked a few articles in the post above, but three sites in particular I want to recommend to you for a serious read, in no particular order:

• Anthony Colleluori’s, “The Land of the Sheep and the Home of the Frightened”
• Mark Bennett’s, “Freedom vs. Safety”
• Andrea Bullock’s, “Would You Trade Liberty for Security?”

Don’t just sit there! Use the comment form below to join the conversation! Let us know you care! Let me know I’m not alone!