The 2011 Police State vs. Our Natural Rights to Presumption of Innocence and Due Process
July 11, 2011
The Salem witch hunters are now calling for Casey Anthony’s jurors to be executed as well as Anthony herself, the government wants to keep our homes under surveillance with “Smart Meters,” and there have been plenty of other examples of how Americans have lost a necessary basic understanding of presumption of innocence and due process. Government’s economic and personal intrusions into our lives and liberty – from the New Deal to the War on Terror – combined with the police state already in place, will put us into a most dreadful situation if there really is to be an economic collapse that would include martial law.
To coincide with the anti-market reactionaries’ War on Economic Growth and their economic police state with due-process-free compulsory reporting of private personal and financial information to prove one’s innocence, the post-9/11 reactionaries have been presuming Middle-Easterners, Arabs and Muslims guilty of terrorism, and encourage their apprehension, detention, torture and assassination, all without the due process of trial including evidence presented to prove an individual’s guilt.
The coercive demands by government to report one’s private matters are violations of due process through forcible extraction of information that could be used against oneself, or by threatening to do so. Such testimony or evidence likely does not reveal an individual’s commission of theft or trespass. But it could reveal “crimes” of violating government’s deliberately confusing rules and regulations, and, in fact, could expose an individual’s attempts to protect oneself from the actual crimes of theft and trespass committed by government bureaucrats.
Morally, the right of individuals “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,” and the right to presumption of innocence and due process, applies to all human beings, Americans, Afghanis, white or brown – all humans, period. Such natural rights apply to all our persons, labor, property, personal effects including cars, and our businesses, contracts and associations. Our persons, property, papers and effects are all private, not for the government’s eyes or snoopy noses, nor for our neighbors’ snoopy noses.
But the camel had already begun to stick its nose in the tent many decades ago. The American people have willingly forfeited much of their liberty, and because of this there are run-amok agencies such as the FTC and DOJ cracking down on made-up crimes of anti-trust and “monopoly,” an over-zealous SEC harassing innocent businessmen for “insider trading,” and now a Gestapo-like IRS adding thousands of new storm-troopers to enforce Soviet ObamaCare. With all these government crimes are the post-9/11 anti-terrorism police-state policies that were rushed through Congress, based solely on knee-jerk emotion and government’s fear mongering.
In a recent commentary, libertarian author James Bovard noted some readers’ reactions to his article regarding the U.S. president’s newest absolute powers to order the killing of “terrorists” without due process. One reader insisted that someone has to be the “judge, jury, and executioner,” another wanted to send Bovard and the ACLU to Iran, and another wanted to have Bovard’s name placed on the “targeted killing” list.
Trust government officials, soldiers, CIA agents and generals to be “judge, jury and executioner”? Trust the word of government officials, by their own subjective judgment and their own biased whims, to determine that someone is a “terrorist” and therefore deserving of being murdered on the spot, without actual evidence brought forth in an actual trial? Well, maybe in a banana republic, or a military dictatorship, sure.
But would the critics of due process, particularly those who identify with the Tea Party movement, approve of a DHS agent making a determination that, because someone participated in an “anti-government” protest, that therefore one is acting treasonously or is a “terrorist” with “militia” ties? Trust Janet Napolitano and her ilk to make those decisions, and not a jury? Apparently, Bovard’s reactionary readers had not read the DHS report, “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” The report [.pdf], sent to police departments across America, warned of “hate groups,” retired military veterans, people who opposed ObamaCare, abortion and illegal immigration, and those who rejected federal authority in favor of state control, as potential perpetrators of violence and terrorism.
Just what is it with today’s American culture that so many people do not understand – or are in outright opposition to – the actual principles behind the forming of America? Is it because of government education? The American Founders, after all, were educated not by government, but by books. Books by Voltaire and John Locke influenced the Founders’ principles advocating the individual’s inalienable right to life and liberty, freedom of thought and freedom of religion as well as free trade.
Part of our right to life and liberty includes the freedom from being questioned or searched by “authorities” unless one is suspected of having committed some crime against someone else’s person or property. We also have a right to freedom of movement and to travel – and yes, those are rights, and the government has no moral right to search, scan or x-ray someone unless one is suspected of an actual crime. And the government has no moral right or authority to stop a motorist randomly, period.
But now, government agents – from the local police to the DHS and TSA – are the ones committing crimes against the people, crimes of trespass, harassment and assault against travelers’ persons and property, on a daily basis.
The government also has no moral right or authority to apprehend, detain, torture or assassinate people, just because some government agents have determined them to be “threats” or “terrorists.” The Bush Administration knowingly swept up innocent individuals, including children and senile old people, and they did so randomly, in Afghanistan in 2001-2002. Most of the prisoners at Guantanamo had been innocent and uninvolved in terrorism, and the real purpose of the torture was to get false confessions or falsely implicate other innocent individuals. Can such a nightmare possibly happen in the U.S., for example, if a leftist White House administration decides to go after “anti-government” protesters, Tenthers and Tea Partiers?
What about the government’s going after “anti-trust” violators, “insider traders,” tax avoiders or business regulation violators? We already have S.W.A.T. teams breaking into homes and murdering innocents to catch student loan defaulters. These government-perpetrated crimes are happening every day now.
As so many Americans seem to naively and obediently approve of government agents’ subjective determination of innocent individuals as “terrorists” without trial, the envious and covetous presume property and business owners guilty of theft or fraud before the fact. But when we must report our activities to the government like it owns us, or even when we do business with the government (such as getting student loans or forced to take part in Social Security), we are asking for our own enslavement, and our own imprisonment.
One prominent example of a government bureaucrat who does not understand, or is in contempt of, the concept of natural rights, presumption of innocence and due process, is the newest U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. As Solicitor General and as the nominee for that post Kagan expressed opposition toward due process and in favor of expanded presidential executive power, has supported government censorship, and as U.S. Supreme Court Justice voted with the 8-1 majority to uphold the power of police to break into private property to impose warrantless searches.
When asked by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) about her views on “natural rights” at her Supreme Court nomination hearings, Kagan replied, “…to be honest with you, I don’t have a view of what are natural rights, independent of the Constitution,” as she was demonstrating her lack of understanding of natural rights in the context of the right to self defense:
Given Kagan’s previous socialist sentiments, as expressed in her Princeton senior thesis (.pdf), and her unwillingness to recognize an entrepreneur’s right to defend oneself against the government’s regulatory invasions, will Supreme Court Justice Kagan (and the many others in Washington who sympathize with her) endorse S.W.A.T. team tactics against individuals and businesses like those used to find student loan defaulters?
Whether regarding the mandatory reporting of private financial information or regarding armed agents physically breaking into private property, when government bureaucrats, police or neighbors forcibly intrude themselves into your home or business and your financial information, they are forcibly trespassing into private property, areas to which only the owner or owners have a moral right to access.
Now, I’m sure that plenty of legal “experts” and constitutional scholars will say this or that about the so-called Commerce Clause or about this or that Supreme Court decision, but none of that matters. The Constitution is just another man-made legislative document that does nothing to protect the individual or one’s property from others’ aggressions and intrusions, especially from the voracious, greedy tentacles of the State. Such man-made documents are not reflective of our natural rights to own, control and defend our persons and honestly acquired property, and do not protect our natural right to be free from the aggressions of others, and our natural right to presumption of innocence and due process.
People who love and cherish freedom need to realize that all human beings have a right to presumption of innocence (including Michael Milken, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and yes, even Osama bin Laden).
As America has moved further away from private property rights, presumption of innocence and due process, the closer we have come to a police state dictatorship.
Barack Obama expanded the Bush wars and presumption-of-guilt policies including PATRIOT Act warrantless surveillance and searches, and Obama expanded his own executive power to order further due process-free apprehension, detention, torture and assassinations. The Left has taken on a new love for this fascism, and the statists in Washington are becoming increasingly draconian and barbaric in their enforcement of nightmarish regulatory restrictions.
Soviet ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank financial fascism and other parts of government’s War on Economic Growth and the neocons’ War on Terrorism (not to mention the government’s War on the Family) are all a War on Freedom, and a War on America.
If there is an economic collapse, with rioting and looting and Obama-imposed martial law, one can only hope that the more honest folks amongst the monopolized local police and the military will disobey Obama’s orders in the name of keeping their oaths they are sworn to uphold.
Our natural, inalienable rights, including presumption of innocence and due process, are rights we have inherently. If martial law includes the suspension of basic individual rights and civil liberties, then they aren’t really inalienable rights. Either that or they are inalienable, which automatically invalidates any government-imposed martial law.
People need to have a better understanding of how closely related our economic freedom is to our personal freedom, and how our natural right to economic presumption of innocence and due process is closely related to our natural right to personal presumption of innocence and due process.
The federal government will cause the ultimate destruction of America, with its past century of centralization of money and banking, retirement security, medical care, and finance, as well as the feds’ Nazi-like drug prohibition and wars on foreigners. With the presumed coming economic turmoil and civil unrest added to the Total-State bureaucracy now in control, it looks like the perfect storm for total societal disaster. I hope not. But maybe now people will start to understand the necessity for decentralization (and in “national security” as well) as the only way to save America and save our liberty.