A Ney York libertarian has some fun with the growing Police State in which he must live, and how easily people are accepting it.

For one example, he points out that train attendants warn you to be on the lookout for unusual things, but So Many unusual people ride the Train, carrying all manner of things, especially after the bars close! It’s a meaningless admonition.

He says it’s like we have set up a “search society” without rhyme or reason. For example, if you don’t consent to search they refuse to let you into a facility — so the bomber could just go down the road and try someplace else, no big deal.

He also talks a little about how things have changed since he was on a police force, back in the day when you needed a real reason to justify a search. Now you don’t really need any reason at all.

He thinks we Like living with the thrill that we are always at risk, makes us feel like we are living in special times, and puts a little spice into our sitcom-loving lives.

But, he concludes seriously: He warns that since we have come SO far so fast, with so little protest, that he envisions something akin to martial law occurring if we actually DO suffer another major terrorist act.

Just a little food for thought.

The ‘War on Terror’ by Fred Reed

. . .

At rush hour, the trains are packed with people carrying briefcases and large bags. When the bars close, the cars swarm with drunks, people in turbans and dashikis and with dots on their foreheads, swarthy men with mustaches chattering in Spanish or languages unknown, transvestites, schizos conversing with God, their little voices, or the wall, and lots of people who look like revolutionaries.

There is something unconvincing about so many of these terrorism preventives. Yet they are everywhere. The papers carried stories about New York’s random searches of passengers on the subway, for example. Washington’s subway was pondering the same idea.

. . . Quite irrationally, officials said that anyone who didn’t consent to being searched could simply leave. This obviously would include terrorists, who would walk out and go the next station. That is, we will search everybody except those we are looking for.

When I was on the police beat, cops had to have probable cause to search anyone. This was defined as “an articulable reason for believing that a specific person was committing a specific crime.” Carrying a bolo knife and a severed head meets that standard. I’m not sure that riding a subway is adequately suspicious. New York’s searches seem to establish the principle that local jurisdictions can search, with no reason at all, anyone aboard public transit – buses, subway, trains, ferries. Why not people within fifty feet of governmental buildings, in crowded places thought attractive to terrorists, or on sidewalks?

And of course if they find illegal paraphernalia of a non-terrorist persuasion, such as drugs, or cigarettes without a tax stamp, they will arrest the bearer. Soon it will be pirated CDs. The police will naturally use “random” searches to conduct fishing expeditions.

It is curious that an entire system of constitutional protections can be dismantled just by ignoring it. I would have thought it more difficult, but it isn’t.

. . .

My suspicion is that if bin Laden manages another major attack, or anyone else does, we will see something very close to martial law. It will be welcomed by all but a noisy few because it will be to make them secure and to take care of them, and give a wonderful sense of living through parlous times, just like Sergeant Rock, and all.