Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ames!coherent!dplatt From: dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Freedom of hate Message-ID: <24211@coherent.com> Date: 27 Apr 89 23:10:00 GMT References: <14130@gryphon.COM> <8132@chinet.chi.il.us> <216@frog.UUCP> <8200@chinet.chi.il.us> <755@maths.tcd.ie> <8251@chinet.chi.il.us> <767@maths.tcd.ie> <8301@chinet.chi.il.us> Reply-To: dplatt@coherent.com (Dave Platt) Followup-To: talk.politics.misc Distribution: usa Organization: Coherent Thought Inc., Palo Alto CA Lines: 120 [The following is a letter that I emailed to Patrick Townson yesterday, in response to one of his recent postings concerning the ACLU et al. Patrick wrote back and suggested that I post the letter, even though he and I remain somewhat in disagreement. Thanks, Patrick! The letter has been lightly edited, and includes some material I sent to Patrick in a second email letter. Please note the Followup-to: line. I don't think that news.misc is the appropriate place for this discussion to continue.] Patrick: there's one thing I think you should consider. The number of cases in which accused (or convicted) criminals are released or retried due to "technicalities" (such as a court ruling that evidence was illegally acquired) is quite small. The figure I remember hearing is that only 1-2% of criminal trials are ever materially affected by these sorts of rules. "Liberal" court rulings (such as the Miranda decision) have led to the generation of much noise and fury. They're a popular whipping-horse among groups that blame these "criminal-coddling" decisions for this country's high crime rate. However... there's little evidence that these decisions have had any substantial impact on the effectiveness of criminal-law enforcement. Most accused felons who are brought to trial, are convicted. The police, FBI, and other law-enforcement organizations have shown themselves quite capable of doing an effective job while staying within the boundaries that the courts have laid down. I agree that it's often difficult to interpret what the Founders intended, or how they would have suggested handling some of today's problems (which did not exist 200 years ago). However, our Constitution is a workable and effective framework for balancing our individual liberties against our need for a stable and workable social framework. The tendency of almost any Government (as an organization) is to gather greater and greater amounts of power unto itself, and to assert increasing amounts of control over citizens' lives. As the bumper sticker says, "Love your country, but never trust its government." There _must_ be some counterbalancing force, or we'll end up living in a country completely controlled by the State... either a reactionary right-wing near-fascism or a radical socialist/communist near-fascism. Neither of these appeals to me. Currently, the ACLU acts as that counterbalancing force. Admittedly, they sometimes tend to take extreme positions. Given their role, it's not surprising that they do. It's a standard negotiating tactic... you take one extreme position, somebody else takes the opposite position, and the negotiating process (courts, arbitration, etc.) studies both arguments and generally settles on a solution that lies somewhere in the middle. It's true that there's some risk that people may decide to give away some of their freedom in return for a promise of additional safety and security. Such freedom, once discarded, is often very difficult to win back... governments that acquire great power over their citizens are usually reluctant to restore this power to the people. This sort of thing has happened in many other places around the world. It happened in Germany back in the '30s. It happened, to a lesser extent, in America in the '50s. It happened in Argentina during the leftist insurgency that led up to the "dirty war". It happened a few years ago in Nicaragua after the Sandanistas gained power. I don't want to see it happen here. I recall reading a few years ago that a bunch of college students went out gathering signatures for a petition. The petition argued that the U.S. Government should be forbidden from performing a specified list of actions, and that American citizens should be free to perform specified actions without government interference. Only about 15-20% of the people that these students interviewed were willing to sign the petitions. A substantial number of people felt that the students were trying to cause trouble, were misguided, were Communist-inspired, or were otherwise promoting an ill-considered or incorrect cause. Very few people realized that they were being asked to sign a copy of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution: the Bill of Rights. _This_ sort of ignorance about our country's history and legal framework is what really scares me. I too, often find it offensive that certain individuals take advantage of loopholes, questionable interpretations of law, or other aspects of our Bill of Rights protection, and use these protections as a shield behind which to commit and (sometimes) get away with murder, literally. I do sometimes think, "It'd be great if somebody would just go beat the ^&*@&^ out of those SOBs. We know they're guilty; throw 'em the hell in jail without bothering with a trial, and throw away the key. Beat a confession out of them, just as they beat the brains out of that jogger in New York this week." Then, I ask myself if I, personally, am willing to give up MY protection against being treated in the same way if I were suspected of a crime. Would I be willing to have my friends so treated? Would I want my wife and relatives to be subject to arbitrary arrest and strip-search based merely on a policeman's whim? Would I want the FBI to be able to wiretap my phone and bug my house, based solely on an anonymous tip, without having to justify the intrusion to a judge? Would I want my company's records and assets to be subject to arbitrary seizure because someone in the D.O.D. suspected that we've developed a new (unclassified) technology that the Army would find useful? Am I willing to accept that I and everyone I know should be treated as criminals, simply because other people _are_ criminals? I wouldn't. I'm not. And I don't know of any way to guarantee that legal protections can be offered only to "good" people, and stripped away from only the "true" criminals. If one of us loses a Constitutional protection, we ALL lose it. Look at the USSR, or Chile, or El Salvador, and see where that path can lead. -- Dave Platt FIDONET: Dave Platt on 1:204/444 VOICE: (415) 493-8805 UUCP: ...!{ames,sun,uunet}!coherent!dplatt DOMAIN: dplatt@coherent.com INTERNET: coherent!dplatt@ames.arpa, ...@uunet.uu.net USNAIL: Coherent Thought Inc. 3350 West Bayshore #205 Palo Alto CA 94303