Posted On: Friday - February 2nd 2018 9:20PM MST
In Topics: US Police State Pundits Liberty/Libertarianism
This post starts off with a big, and hopefully interesting digression, but trust me, this pundit should be mentioned first thing in this post. A writer named Vin Suprynowicz used to be this writer's favorite libertarian columnist, as I used to read his more-often-than-weekly columns on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website. I first checked the wikipedia page on him, which is suprisingly devoid of opinion against the man, then the LVRJ site, where I can only see that he stayed on writing for them at least into 2013, but they sure make his archive hard to find, if it can be at all. Then, I found out also today that he is still about and writing, and his site, VinSuprynowicz.com, will be next to be on the blogroll. Yea for that find!
I had enjoyed Mr. Suprynowicz's column for a number of years, and it was around 2008 or so that he had a column on the Global Climate Disruption(TM) nonsense that I mentioned here due to the fact that I ended up in a multi-month long on-line comment debate. Unfortunately for me, because I won said debate, it was subsequently wiped from the LVRJ site as they reformatted to make it look prettier, or something.
Besides being a real Libertarian and Constitutionalist, Mr. Suprynowicz (thanks, MS, for copy/paste!) ran for vice-president along with the Neil Smith Libertarian candidate back in 2000 for Arizona ONLY. The other 49 states had Harry Brown with VP-candidate Art Olivier. Trust Arizona when it comes to liberty, or at least take my word for it. They have been always in the forefront, whether it's Constitution-abiding gun rights, coming up with people like Barry Goldwater, taking their own initiative in guarding the borders, Arizona seems to be tops a lot. That's why a US Senator named Juan McAmnesty, or something to that effect, needs a lot of damn explaining. "Joo got some splaineen to do
The guarding of the borders mentioned just now brings up another thing. Mr. Suprynowicz was one of the first Libertarians that'd I'd been reading, say a decade and more ago, like the Lew Rockwell types, who got pretty wise quickly about the immigration business. Free markets, freedom of travel notwithstanding, most likely Mr. Suprynowicz was smart enough to know that the people entering the formerly very liberty-minded state of Nevada were not quite so liberty-oriented having come from the 3rd-world with average sub-par IQs. That's what some of the Libertarians, the ones people tend to rightfully call Libertards, just won't get - almost none of these newcomers is ever going to vote for Constitutional small government, much less subscribe to Reason freakin' magazine!
Vin Suprynowicz signed and gave me a copy of his book The ballad of Carl Drega when I met him in 2010 or so, when I showed up at his newspaper office just to come shake his hand and say "good job". I had already read his Send in the Waco Killers and both are very readable books that are illustrative of our modern day police state.
OK, the reason for the post title is that Mr. Suprynowicz would oftentimes bring up examples of how the US was becoming nothing less than a police state, still news to me at the time. More than once, I'm sure, he had brought up the point that Americans used to have great distain for the authorities and being forced to respond in any way to any of them. This relates directly to Amendment IV of the US Constitution, here:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.Read that carefully, if you're not familiar. Mr. Suprynowicz used to relate how the phrase "Papers, please!" was hissed at by the audience in theaters watching all the old movies in which the Nazis were up to their police state tactics. In German, in the movies, it was "Papiere, bitte!". (Funny that there are not many movies showing the Russkie and Chinese Commies up to the same thing - topic for another post). Americans were rightfully prideful in the past of the freedom they had back then.
You don't have to go back that awful far, or talk to people that awful old, to have known an America with lots of freedoms that are gone now. On this "reasonable search and seizure" principal, has it not been totally blown to bits by the TSA at the airports? "Reasonable" does not mean "Feeling people up around the ass and genitals for possible weapons? Sure, sounds reasonable to me." No, it means there must be a reason laid out for that particular search in a written warrant that has been signed [by a judge, one presumes] with a reason for the search.
Any government authority of any level asking for ID, not as part of a requested service, but as a random investigation, is against Amendment IV, but you're not gonna see many people caring anymore. Traffic stops for investigation rather than citation for a violation are another example. It was just a couple of decades ago that I never carried any IDentity Papers of any kind ... no wallet, in fact... just keys and cash, what more do you need? I had gotten pulled over for various speeding violations, but the cop had just asked for my drivers license number and looked it up. Yeah, still Big Brother stuff, for that time period, but at least no "papers". Then, I got pulled over at a DUI checkpoint which pissed me off to begin with but turned into a fine of ~ $200 in present-value because of the lack of the license card with me. It was a double whammy, and the court sent my check back to me because of the bad language in the memo field! (Yes, I had to send in another to avoid a warrant.)
The stuff we used to take pride in snickering about, the "Mah Authoritah" crap that we knew people had to live with in the East Bloc, China, and parts unknown, well, Americans just live with it now. "Hey, it's those Moslems that caused this - it's just the way it is now." they'll tell you, even if they have the courage to be honest about it, by their thoughts. Well, what is the country, a damn kindergarten? You take it out on the people who caused the problem, not on the whole
It was still in the 1990's when you just needed to bring a ticket, basically as proof of payment and a receipt for your seat to get onboard an airliner. In fact, it could be someone else's ticket, so long as you had paid, that's what matters - just business there. Try going to the airport without your papers, please! nowadays. All this is not going to get any better soon. Don't like my attitude? Talk to Vin Suprynowicz - I believe I got it from him.
This post was really geared toward a lot toward the TSA (part of "Motherland Security" another moniker and agency Vin, Peak Stupidity and lots of Americans of 30 years back would have laughed off as "that stuff
PS. Here is Vin Suprynowicz's "about" page.
Comments: