Recently
by Joel Poindexter: Celebrating
the Wrong Anniversary

There’s really
no other word that would accurately describe the behavior of the
many agencies that stormed through Boston and its suburbs this week.
Thousands of State and local police, sheriff’s deputies, FBI SWAT
employees, Homeland Security Shock Troops, and National Guard soldiers
conducted a massive search – virtually none of it in compliance
with the 4th Amendment – in search of a single teenager. They practically
ordered an entire city “locked down” and were presumably prepared
to begin arresting residents who refused to comply with what amounted
to martial law.

Now, just for
a moment consider what the effective lock down means. As Charles
W. Johnson presented the situation on Facebook, lockdown is “from
the vocabulary of prison wardens, referring to a condition in which
inmates are temporarily completely restricted in their movements
and confined to their cells, in order to allow prison guards to
conduct searches or contain and control what the inmates are doing.”
He then asks these two questions: “If the police have the power
to put a city ‘on lockdown,’ then what does that make the city?
And what does it make the innocent people living in it?” Well, it
would make the city a prisons and the residents would be inmates,
naturally.

Now, had the
search not ended as early as it did, one question that seems appropriate
is, “what about the 3rd Amendment?” Perhaps the least-addressed
of all the amendments in the bill of rights, it’s no less relevant
to the situation. While it refers specifically to soldiers, little
distinction exists in light of these two photographs. The individual
on the left is, according to the
source, a member of the FBI, who helped in the search. The individual
on the right is a soldier in Afghanistan. Note the similarities
in the uniform, the equipment, and the weapons. Whatever legal differences
exist between the military and civilian law enforcement are at this
point irrelevant.

As a matter
of routine we would occupy a home during operations in Iraq. Not
only did the Iraqi people not have so much as a fig leaf of a bill
of rights, but how were they to resist if they didn’t feel comfortable
with our presence? The same goes for the people of Boston. Despite
having the supposed protection of the bill of rights, it’s rather
obvious that it either authorized the operation or was powerless
to stop it, to borrow a phrase from Lysander Spooner.

Wilton Alston
asked on the LRC blog “Didn’t The Terrorists Win A While Back?”
He
wrote:

Armored police
vehicles. Tactical teams. Everyone under house arrest. Soldiers
and/or other armed enforcers roaming the streets. House-to-house
searches. We call it, ‘Terror in Boston!’ In any one of the several
places the U.S. has invaded and/or is currently deploying drones,
they’d call it, ‘Tuesday.’ Perspective. Stated differently, maybe
the ‘terrorosts’ (sic) won a while back?

This is the
larger point I hope to convey. The United States has, rather quickly,
devolved into a totalitarian state that in terms of its militarized
law enforcement is not much different at home than it is abroad.
Of course the tactics are much more heavy-handed overseas, the police
and military still do a reasonably good job not shooting innocent
people here. Trigger-happy LA cops notwithstanding, they’re not
nearly as dangerous here as they are in places like rural Pakistan
or many parts of Yemen. Villagers are routinely preyed upon by drones
launching hellfire missiles at children collecting firewood, wedding
parties, and those brave enough to try and rescue survivors of those
attacks.

A number of
commentators have mentioned this already, notably Scott Horton,
that all of this despotic martial law was worthless in terms of
actually apprehending the suspected bomber. (I hope you’ll forgive
my quaint use of the word “suspected.” Indeed he’s more than likely
to be treated as an enemy combatant without rights.) As it was reported
in the news media, within minutes of the lock-down being lifted
a man stepped
outside for a cigarette and noticed the boy hiding in his boat.
He immediately alerted the police, who then proceeded to engage
in a spectacular show of force, throwing grenades and reportedly
firing hundreds of rounds at the wounded suspect. Thankfully no
one has been reported injured by the unnecessary gun battle. 

This raises
another question related to the lockdown. Presumably it was in order
to make it easier for the police/military to locate the suspect,
Mr. Tsarnaev. But given how much effort the government put
into the search, and how little exertion was necessary to actually
locate him, one wonders how soon this all could have been over had
a million pairs of eyes not been shuttered inside their homes for
the better part of the day. We can’t know for sure, but it
does seem to be a reasonable question, given the facts.

The residents
of Boston and its surrounding communities are celebrating the heroic
work of the police/military, and they’re expressing thanks for capturing
the kid. Of course they’re not likely to feature testimony
from residents who may be shocked at the extreme level force or
the total disregard for existing law related to probable cause and
those antiquated warrants. Many no doubt feel much safer. But
should they?

The government
claims a virtual monopoly on security and defense services, and
yet three people were killed and as many as one hundred and seventy
six were injured by the bombings. If they’re supposed to protect
people from violence, they failed. Not only did they not prevent
such an attack, they couldn’t even capture one of the suspects without
some random guy Jonesing for some nicotine. It’s also noteworthy
that the younger the suspect, the one captured alive reportedly
ran over the older one after he’d been shot by police, after which
he was captured. Had he not been run over, one wonders how long
it would have been before he too was found.

Most aren’t
considering the implications of what just took place and what sort
of precedent has been set for such a situation in the not-too-distant
future. To be sure, this will become a standard procedure likely
to play out in cities and towns across America, albeit on a smaller
scale and with less reporting. A murder suspect will be on the loose
and a city’s police department will invoke the “Boston Rule” or
some such phrase, and they’ll lock down a part of town, storm into
people’s homes, pull them into the streets. It’s not so much a question
of when, but how often and under what circumstances. No doubt much
of the actions were the result of the high profile case, but such
is the way with government. Once it gets a taste for new power,
the state uses it, early and often. Chances are good this will become
the new normal. “It worked, didn’t it?” they’ll say. And just like
the two hundred SWAT raids a day that grew out of a single city’s
decision to specially arm and train one unit, this will be repeated
until it’s so common as to be unremarkable.

Of course the
constitution is no guarantor of liberty, and its amendments are
equally powerless to restrain the state. But given its purported
function and that it’s supposed to represent the highest law in
the land, it’s instructive to compare the actions of the state –
and the people’s reaction in general to government action – with
the laws. Watching it all unfold and seeing the mostly positive
response makes me feel a bit like Walter Sobchak from The Big
Lebowski, wondering if I’m the only one who cares about the
rules. 

Motive, too,
is an important element that seems largely overlooked. It’s too
early to know exactly what lead these young men to allegedly set
off bombs at the Boston marathon. Assuming the remaining suspect
survives (as I write this on Saturday morning he’s still with us)
the details of his plot will be revealing. There is some speculation
as to the role the FBI played in all of this. The aunt of the two
suspects indicated the FBI had been involved for as long as three
years, and Daniel McAdams raised
the question of what role, if any, they played on the LRC blog.
These are reasonable questions, considering the FBI was involved
in the Christmas
Tree bomber, the Newburgh
Four, this
guy, this
guy, and these
guys, among many
others.

Is it so hard
to imagine that at some point these operations could get out of
hand, and someone who has been radicalized by the FBI actually pulls
off an attack? Fortunately they were able to control those other
situations, but had they not been involved in such activities we’d
all be better off. It serves no legitimate purpose for them to concoct
an attack, spend years molding a patsy into carrying it out, and
then come rushing in to save everyone at the last minute.

There is of
course blowback as a possible motive, one that seems entirely likely
given the long-standing policy overseas. And it could simply be
that whoever was responsible for the bombing is someone with sociopathic
tendencies. However it turns out to be, the lessons that come from
the events in Boston this past week are that the police state we
live in is unable to protect the people of this country. Furthermore,
the people seem content to live in these circumstances and are actually
thankful to do so. Here’s to hoping that at least a few more people
saw this for what it really was – totalitarianism – and will begin
to question the motives and tactics of those involved.

April
22, 2013

Joel
Poindexter [send
him mail] is a student of economics and part-time writer;
he is a columnist for the Tenth
Amendment Center and a contributing author to Voices
Of Revolution: Americans Speak Out For Ron Paul. See his
blog.

Copyright
© 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in
part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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