LOONS AND THEIR 'TOONS

[wserra]

Black, yellow, brown, child, female, poor were not "freer" from government 100 years ago and that is "most" of the people who were alive then.

The Nineteenth Amendment, permitting half of the population to vote for the first time, was ratified in 1920, 89 years ago. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), holding that people could be placed in concentration camps based on nothing more than their ancestry, was decided 65 years ago. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), reversing ("beginning to reverse" is actually much closer) centuries of de jure segregation, was decided 55 years ago, during my lifetime.

[fortinbras]

My own attitude about "diminishing freedoms" ..... a century ago I would have been freer to starve to death in the street, to be worked to death in some brutal factory doing 10-hour days six days a week with no insurance or pension, to be denied the right to vote, to be denied a decent education, etc.

Hey, just so long as I don't have to quarter British soldiers .....

[Prof]

My own attitude about "diminishing freedoms" ..... a century ago I would have been freer to starve to death in the street, to be worked to death in some brutal factory doing 10-hour days six days a week with no insurance or pension, to be denied the right to vote, to be denied a decent education, etc.

Hey, just so long as I don't have to quarter British soldiers .....

Famspear, you and others make good points. But, LawDog was speaking of freedom from government. He forgets that until women were granted the vote, over one half of the population had no say in the government, local or national. Most minorities were also excluded from voting.

Women and minorities had few if any rights against government interference in their lives, whether by the use of chain gangs in the South or other forms of governmental coercion in the form of inequitable inheritance, marital, or custody rights (i.e., the sheriff would return a beaten child or abused woman to her or its abuser, without question).

LawDog and JRB want to focus on the current ability of government, particularly on the national level, to interfere. That is true and I do not mean to ignore their points. Mine is that the “good old days” were as bad or worse. And, speaking of government corruption and the corrupt use of government to oppress, look at Homestead or other union disputes.

[Pottapaug1938]

LawDog and JRB want to focus on the current ability of government, particularly on the national level, to interfere. That is true and I do not mean to ignore their points. Mine is that the “good old days” were as bad or worse. And, speaking of government corruption and the corrupt use of government to oppress, look at Homestead or other union disputes.

I'm in the middle of reading "Big Burn", about how a massive wildfire in Idaho and Montana, in 1910, was instrumental in reversing corrupt efforts, by our government, to allow robber barons to ruthlessly exploit our national forests for their private gain, without the slightest efforts at conservation or restoration. For the first time, the idea of public land as a national treasure to be conserved, became politically popular.

[Prof]

Black, yellow, brown, child, female, poor were not "freer" from government 100 years ago and that is "most" of the people who were alive then.

The Nineteenth Amendment, permitting half of the population to vote for the first time, was ratified in 1920, 89 years ago. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), holding that people could be placed in concentration camps based on nothing more than their ancestry, was decided 65 years ago. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), reversing ("beginning to reverse" is actually much closer) centuries of de jure segregation, was decided 55 years ago, during my lifetime.

Wyoming, among other states, had allowed women to vote prior to the 19th Amendment. It just made it uniform throughout the country.

Actually, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho granted women the vote before the end of the 19th Century. Those states, with small populations, certainly don't really affect the point I was trying to make. To be "free" from government, you have to have some defense/influence.

[Judge Roy Bean]

I'm in the middle of reading "Big Burn", about how a massive wildfire in Idaho and Montana, in 1910, was instrumental in reversing corrupt efforts, by our government, to allow robber barons to ruthlessly exploit our national forests for their private gain, without the slightest efforts at conservation or restoration. For the first time, the idea of public land as a national treasure to be conserved, became politically popular.

An equally fascinating story just aired last week on Independent Lens (PBS) about the history of Butte, Montana, unions and the mining industry.

The disaffected fools who like to believe in apocryphal restoration of the good-old-days don't want to dwell on what it was like for some people, but those who are content to live with the gradual and steady erosion of freedoms like to point out how bad it was and how the "progressive' movement has made things better for larger numbers of people.

I believe it was Frank Herbert who wrote in one of the Dune novels something to the effect that "... freedom diminishes as numbers increase."

I happen to believe there are those who wish to accelerate that diminishment.

[Brandybuck]

Put it this way, Prof...James Madison, the so-called Father of the Constitution, said that, during peacetime, about 90% of governing should be done at the state and local levels. Does that sound anything like the big government socialists we have running things now?

But the state and local governments at the time still wielded a lot of power. I'm not talking about JUST slavery. I'm talking about restrictions on free speech at the state level, state establishment of churches, state controls over banking, state controls on the press, etc. In rural counties you had sheriffs acting as virtual feudal lords, and in cities you had political machines with enforcers. Government-business collusion was rampant.

We did have smaller government overall, simply because it was less bureaucratic. And in some areas it was indeed less intrusive than it is today. But much of what makes many people think government was smaller, was instead its decentralized nature.

[Duke2Earl]

It is true that some seem to yearn for a past that wasn't anywhere near as good as it seems to those people in retrospect but that really doesn't matter. The real truth is we aren't going back. We can't, we won't... it simply is not going to happen. We can all argue about the meaning of "freedom" and who was "free" and how it was 100, 200, pick a number, how many years ago. It doesn't matter... you simply cannot put those worms back into that can. The country and the world moves forward, like it or not. The one true constant is change. You can bitch and moan all you want, you can try to slow down the change.... but you can't stop it and you can't go back.

[Tax Man]

What always amazes me about these clowns is their fervent belief in, and desire to return to, a past of American freedom and economic prosperity that never existed.

Being perpetually angry at reality is a bad way to live a life.

Depending on how far back in the past you want to go, that depends. I mean, if it was before your lifetime, you weren't there. So at best you can make an educated guess.

As far as economic prosperity, I don't know, but I have little doubt that most people were freer 100 years ago when the federal government was smaller and most governing was done at the state and local levels.

You mean before the states were bound by (most of) the Bill of Rights?

[Judge Roy Bean]

... The country and the world moves forward, like it or not. The one true constant is change. You can bitch and moan all you want, you can try to slow down the change.... but you can't stop it and you can't go back.

But if you are among those who can steer the change to benefit themselves you have an advantage unavailable to the "lower class."

[Gregg]

I guess I am at a loss to figure out how I am less free now than in the past.

Well, for starters, you've lost the freedom to not only buy and sell, but also beat and rape women and children. I'm not saying you would, but I am saying that it's really not on the table anymore.

If you're female, you're now almost expected to get a job and earn a paycheck instead of working your ass off at home keeping house, managing the property, finding inventive ways to stretch every resource at your disposal, and raising the babies fathered by that guy who bought you for a pig at the local fair. Well, the ones that are still alive, that is. Could be worse, I suppose. You bargained cranking out another vaginal hellspawn in exchange for getting your man to stop skipping his weekly bath. Life couldn't get any better!

DAMN YOU EVIL GOVERNMENT OVERLORDS!

Ahh, the good ole days

[LPC]

Black, yellow, brown, child, female, poor were not "freer" from government 100 years ago and that is "most" of the people who were alive then.

The Nineteenth Amendment, permitting half of the population to vote for the first time, was ratified in 1920, 89 years ago. Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), holding that people could be placed in concentration camps based on nothing more than their ancestry, was decided 65 years ago. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), reversing ("beginning to reverse" is actually much closer) centuries of de jure segregation, was decided 55 years ago, during my lifetime.

Some other recent freedoms:

1. The exclusionary rule prohibiting the use of evidence seized in violation of the 4th Amendment did not arise until Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914). The same rule was not applied to the states until Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). There was no damages action for 4th Amendment violations until Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971). Until those cases were decided, the 4th Amendment was just an admonition because a violation of the 4th Amendment had no legal consequences other than a frown from the judge.

2. Similarly, confessions coerced from defendants in custody were often used into the 1930s. See Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936), in which the court's opinion began: "The question in this case is whether convictions, which rest solely upon confessions shown to have been extorted by officers of the state by brutality and violence, are consistent with the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States." The fact that the court had to address the issue in 1936 is appalling.

3. The right to be provided legal counsel in non-capital felony prosecutions by the states was not established until Gideon v. Wainright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), the Supreme Court overruling a 1942 decision that had reached the opposite conclusion.

So the federal government might have been smaller 100 years ago, but so was the scope of federal rights. That meant that (1) the government official abusing you was local and not national and (2) you had no remedy in court.

To me, "freedom" is not the same as a lack of government, but is measured by the ability to enforce your rights and freedoms in court, and by that standard things are MUCH better today than 50 or 100 years ago. Those who think that they would have been "freer" 100 years ago are only able to do so because they imagine that they would have been in the majority and not the minority, the slaveowner and not the slave, the employer and not the employee, the persecutor and not the persecuted, the oppressor and not the oppressed, the powerful and not the powerless.

[Pottapaug1938]

Uh, slavery had been abolished for over 40 years in 1909.

Legally, yes; but Jim Crow laws and other such evils -- in all sections of the country -- sometimes made the distinction between actual and virtual slavery very indistinct at best.

[Prof]

Uh, slavery had been abolished for over 40 years in 1909.

Legally, yes; but Jim Crow laws and other such evils -- in all sections of the country -- sometimes made the distinction between actual and virtual slavery very indistinct at best.

And, if UGA will look at the history of peonage in Birmingham, where AL state sheriffs sold vagrants (mostly Black) to the mines, he will find that what looks a lot like actual slavery survived until the early part of the 20th century. Of course, "white slavery," e.g., sex slavery, has never vanished. Neither has debt peonage (which is still practiced today in sweatshops and other places where illegals are imported to work in the US.

Certainly, Black Americans were not freer in any sense 100 years ago, whether we mean free from want or free from governmental interfence, for local government enforced Jim Crow, debt peonage, etc.

Again, Lawdog, look at the Homestead Mine and Pulman strikes for evidence of what local government did to the unenfranchised. Also, look at the history of the Texas Rangers in the period around the end of the 19th century, and you will see official, local oppression on a very large scale.

In other words, quit digging before your hole gets any deeper.

[Brandybuck]

Well, for starters, you've lost the freedom to not only buy and sell, but also beat and rape women and children. I'm not saying you would, but I am saying that it's really not on the table anymore.

Thinking about this overnight, I realized that this has nothing whatsoever with the government or its size. You can legally beat and rape women in Saudi Arabia, even though they have a MORE intrusive government than ours. The size of the government is wholly unrelated to the protections it affords the people. So something else besides the size of government determines the rights of the individuals. And that is culture. For the most part, the government mirrors the culture. If the government strays too far from the culture, then the culture will replace the government.

So in a way, both sides in the thread are correct. People did have fewer rights in the past, but the government was still smaller.

[wserra]

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

And you're just the one to do it.

[LDE]

OK, I wrote what I think is one of my best posts to this topic and instead of posting it it only allowed me to "save a draft" for unknown reasons. I did so but I can't find any way to get back to the draft. Any suggestions?

[wserra]

The board has been a little squirrelly lately, but it has never only permitted me to save a draft. In any event, to retrieve a draft, hit "Post Reply" in the appropriate thread, and below the text box you should find a "Load" button.

[LDE]

It disappeared, so I'll try again from scratch.

*****

None of us here has the experience to know how free we would have been living in 1909, so instead let's go back to 1981, the year Reagan was inaugurated. That was the beginning of law 'n' order politics for the Republicans, alternating with nanny-state coerciveness from the Democrats. (Neither party believes in freedom; they just want to use the power of the state to crack down on different things.)

Here's a partial list of ways I'm not as free as in 1981. I'm writing as a resident of central Texas, but it's pretty much the same in any state.

I am under constant surveillance by satellite and even by Google's roving cameras. As I drive the 30 miles to work I am often almost constantly in view of law enforcement, whose numbers and power have only increased. In the city there are security cameras in many public places. Here in the country I'm subject to flyovers looking for marijuana plants. There are now robocams at many intersections so I can be fined automatically if I run a stop light, even by a fraction of a second. If my cell phone is on, my whereabouts can be tracked via GPS and some models of cars will track me automatically.

If I lend my car to a friend and he picks up a hooker or buys some crack in it, the car may be seized and sold for police income even if I've done nothing wrong. If I'm found holding a few thousand dollars in cash and the police find that suspicious, it can be seized even if I'm never convicted of a crime and even if I have a good explanation. I'm not getting it back.

If I'm suspected of drunk driving, and I refuse a breathalyzer, the police can obtain an instant warrant by telephone to draw my blood. If I'm convicted, even after serving my sentence, I can be forced to install a breathalyzer in my own car.

I can be searched or wiretapped without any more due process than the federal government alleging terrorist activity to a secret court using secret evidence I can't ever force them to produce.

Were I a legal alien, even one who came here in childhood with a family who are U.S. citizens, and I committed even a misdemeanor, I can be deported to a country I don't even remember. First, I will be thrown into an immigration jail in dungeon-like conditions for months with little recourse.

Were I a public-school student, I might be subject to search, even an invasive body-cavity search, for crimes such as possessing aspirin or a butter knife. I can be sent for months to a hardcore reform school for such petty offenses. I may have to pass through metal detectors to enter the building, which is patrolled by armed, uniformed officials with walkie-talkies. I have no freedom of speech, even off campus. In Texas I'm coerced into reciting not only the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag, but the Texas flag as well (or forced to sit in embarrassed silence while others do). Should I wish to participate in any extracurricular activity, I'm required to undergo periodic drug testing.

My teacher can no longer present the material the way she wishes but must enact a script so that I may pass many standardized tests on an East Asian memorize-and-regurgitate model. If the subject is sex education, she cannot encourage me to use a condom and must tell me not to have sex outside of marriage. My principal must offer courses in the Bible as literature, even if it takes resources away from other purposes and even if there's no student interest.

If I were six months above the age of consent, and had sexual contact of any kind with another teen just under the age of consent, I can be branded a sex offender and forced to register with the authorities for the rest of my life. I might also have to notify my neighbors I'm a sex offender and, in some jurisdictions, I'd be forbidden to live anywhere except under a bridge.

If I violate copyright, I'm now subject not only to civil but criminal penalties. And copyright terms have been extended so ridiculously that, as a composer, I can forget about using any text from the 20th century without permission, even if it's impossible to figure out who owns the copyright.

In many businesses, I'm subject to mandatory random drug testing and in most others I can be forced to be tested if my boss suspects drug use. I can be fired for using an illegal drug even not at the workplace. For some drugs (e.g. crack) the penalty is far higher than in 1981 and others (e.g. ecstasy) are now illegal.

At an airport I am subject to intrusive searches and interrogation at any time, or to having my naked body viewed via x-ray cameras. If I even make a joke about a bomb it's mandatory federal prison time. I cannot fly without ID.

I cannot cross the Mexican or Canadian border without a passport, and obtaining a passport has become a slow and expensive ordeal.

I cannot buy a firearm without a background check, and if I have a drug conviction or if I've ever been mentally ill, I can't buy one at all.

Here in the Fourth Circuit (unless that case got overturned on appeal) the police can enter and search my residence without a warrant on mere probable cause.

If I disagree with the president's policies and choose to protest them, I will only be allowed to do so from half a mile away. Were I a college student and chose to stage a protest, I'd be confined to an Orwellian-named "free-speech zone." If it's, say, the G-20 summit, I am subject to beatings and jail even though the police know that no charges will stick. I'll be confined long enough to prevent protest, even peaceful protest, then released without charges.

Of course, I cannot engage in a financial transaction involving more than $10K in cash without the feds knowing about it.

Three different credit agencies track every bill I pay. If I have bad credit I can be denied a job or car insurance.

If I live in an area controlled by a homeowners' association, I can be fined for painting my house a color other than beige. I cannot build a treehouse for my kid or, in some places, fly Old Glory.

******

I could go on like this for pages, but you get the idea. I can think of hardly any ways that Americans are freer than in 1981, and an almost unlimited number of ways our behavior is now monitored, controlled, surveilled, and coerced. The nasty truth is that Americans like the word "freedom," but what they really want is a big, mean daddy figure watching them and telling them what to do and think at all times.

[Duke2Earl]

This is the second time for me to try to post as well, having lost my initial response into the electrons. I don't disagree with LPE's position in most part but I do have a few caveats. First, some of it has nothing to do with the government... such as the credit bureaus and the homeowners associations. Second, much of it seems based on the thought that the government is a bunch of evil aliens that came down from space and imposed their sadistic will on us unsuspecting helpless saps. The truth is that Walt Kelly was right "We have met the enemy and he is us." We are the government. All of us. The reason that we are under surveilance is that we, as a society, have demanded that the government keep us safe from terrorism. The reason why our schools have zero tolerance polices is that we have demanded that drugs and weapons be kept out of the schools. The reason why you lose your car if you lend it to a friend and he sells drugs is we have demanded that our streets be free of drugs. The reason why our teachers must "teach to the test" is because we demand that every kid must be taught the same stuff so that we can grade our schools and teachers and "no child be left behind." And so on and so on. All of this stuff was not the evil invention of some shape shifting lizards. We, as a society, DEMANDED that our government do these things. And the government, which is us, after all, acceeded to our wishes.