Distrusting the State

The plight of Jessie Sansone -- the Kitchener, ON, father who was stripped searched and detained and charged with possession of a firearm by local police, and whose house was searched without a warrant on there mere suspicion that a firearm might be present in the home, because his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a man fighting "monsters" and "bad guys" with a gun -- sends chills up and down my spine.

Like Charles Adler and hosts of other conservatives, I am generally pro-police. I have friends who are RCMP officers. I believe every province should have a police force that enforces and upholds the law. They are a critical component of the justice system. Like most other law-abiding parents, I presume, I teach my kids that the police are good guys; in the battle between good and evil they are for us; they are here to serve the public and, as much as possible, protect the citizenry from the bad guys.

But....

When I hear stories like that of Jessie Sansone, my trust in the police is eroded. When I hear of the nonsensical, reflexive, blinkered reaction of police to the mere mention of a firearm in the hands of a law-abiding citizen, I question whether or not the police and the state are really on my side, that of a law-abiding citizen who may or may not own a firearm. When I hear about the plight of the late Shafia girls, for whom police did little to nothing out of cultural sensitivity, and juxtapose that against the plight of Mr. Sansone, a white male who -GASP!- might own a firearm, I find myself doubting the objectivity and judgment of police and the wider state apparatuses. When I reflect on other gross injustices, such as the two-tier injustice we know as Caledonia, I wonder if I am teaching my kids the honest truth about the relationship between police, the wider state, and the law-abiding non-minority Canadian citizens.

Each time a law-abiding citizen is presumed by the state to be guilty and compelled to prove their innocence I lose a little more trust in the relationship between the law-abiding the the state. In the case of Mr. Sansone, the education system, the family and community services system and the police -- all arms of the state -- let him down. With a few simple questions via phone or in person at any juncture along the way this entire episode could have been avoided. But, no. Instead the state when into reflex mode, shut off all brain activity, stopped thinking, stopped asking questions, stopped presuming innocence, and just ran roughshod over the rights of a law-abiding citizen.  

Because it could.

It's the last part that I see as the big problem exposed by Mr. Sansone's story. The state did not have to get a warrant, did not have to demonstrate just cause, did not have to presume anyone's innocence, did not have to question, did not have to call, did not have to discuss. They had full authority to enter the man's home, search his belongings, remove his children, put them in custody of the state, compel his wife to answer questions, detain and strip search him. All based on presumptions stemming from an asinine, politically-correct, myopic interpretation of a childhood drawing.

That, my friends, is wrong. From start to finish, it is wrong.

Yet nobody from the state is apologizing. Because they don't think any wrong has been done.

Therein lies the disconnect between Canadian common sense and the politically-correct over-empowered State apparatchiks, whose distrust of the law-abiding is palpable and complete.

And to think that I am moving to Ontario and will probably put my kids in public school. Ye gods.

Die, GR! Die!

At long last, the CPC will kill the long-gun registry.

The Conservative government will introduce legislation in the fall to scrap the long-gun registry, this time using its parliamentary majority to back it up.

In other news, many Quebeckers remain as deluded about the GR as ever.

Bruce Hicks, a political scientist at the University of Montreal, said the NDP’s large Quebec base is pushing the party to be firmer in its support for gun control.

He said support for gun control is higher in Quebec than in any other province, in part because two massacres — the Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson College shootings — occurred there.

“Now that their caucus is so overwhelmingly populated by Quebec members, I tend to think this will decide the issue for them,” Hicks said. “They have too much to lose by not being strong on the long-gun registry.”

More sanity in Wisconsin

Not only do the cheeseheads have courage to oppose and overcome thuggish, spoiled unionists, they have legalized conceal carry.

The Wisconsin Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would allow concealed weapons in the state Capitol and other public places, but not in police stations, courthouse and other specifically exempted locations. [...]

Wisconsin would become the 49th state to legalize carrying hidden guns. Those who want to carry the weapons would have to obtain a permit. [...]

"This is about allowing law-abiding citizens to protect themselves," said Rich Zipperer, R-Pewaukee.

Indeed. Meanwhile in Canada.....

Dangerous ideas

By now everyone with any exposure to media has heard about the tragic shooting of Arizona's Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

In the ensuing search for answers, left-leaning pundits and politicos have all ten fingers and toes pointed toward the "evil" political right, as they usually do, this time particularly on the Tea Party and the Evil Alaskan, Sarah Palin. Fervent the neo-liberal statists are. Thoughtful and grounded in reality and history they are not.

Here in Canada, Globe and Mail columnists are busy indirectly casting aspersions a spotlight on American conservatism too, blaming Fox News for the state of political discourse in America and lamenting America's "gun problem." Indeed, how fortunate are we Canadians to not have Fox News, which might actually break through the incessant neo-liberal subterfuge filter every now and then and bring some counterpoints to the op-ed-masquerading-as-news "reporting" of the Neil MacDonald types! How blessed we are to be free of the danger of diverse thought and raucous political opinion! And guns?! Thank God for the RCMP, who pull more long guns out of the homes of hunters, sportsmen and farmers each year than they do handguns out of the hands of gangbangers, criminals and organized crime persons. Ah Canada, the great white coddled.

I digress. In the aftermath of this tragedy more than a few are seizing the moment to paint individual liberty and anything close to it as "dangerous." The right to arm oneself, the right to free speech, the corollary of open political discourse, the right to free assembly, and so on. In the wake of the Giffords shooting, inalienable freedoms are today being tagged either directly or indirectly as dangerous.

More dangerous than the bullets fired by mentally unstable men or women, however -- the real danger, if you will -- are the arguments and thoughts of those who would capitalize on tragic events to lay groundwork for the removal of rights and liberties from free men and women.

Enter William Galston at The New Republic, via Frum Forum, making the case for involuntary treatment and commitment of the "mentally disturbed," which early reports indicate accused shooter Jared Loughner certainly is. Galston's motive is security and he argues for these two changes to law.

First, those who acquire credible evidence of an individual’s mental disturbance should be required to report it to both law enforcement authorities and the courts, and the legal jeopardy for failing to do so should be tough enough to ensure compliance. [...]

Second, the law should no longer require, as a condition of involuntary incarceration, that seriously disturbed individuals constitute a danger to themselves or others, let alone a “substantial” or “imminent” danger, as many states do. A delusional loss of contact with reality should be enough to trigger a process that starts with multiple offers of voluntary assistance and ends with involuntary treatment, including commitment if necessary.

Galston's argument is without doubt the most dangerous idea yet to float to the surface in the wake of the Giffords shooting. Readers should note that the proposed amendments have the greatest potential for harm when used in concert: coercion to report mental disturbance + forcible incarceration based on delusion alone.

If this equation does not illustrate the danger of Galston's preferences, here are some explicit reasons why Galston's amendments need to be flushed.

1. Mandatory disclosure overrides patient-doctor confidentiality, which upends privacy law. There is no need to inform the armed branches of the state about the mental state of citizens who pose no imminent threat to themselves or anyone else. The deal on the table is to exchange privacy all the time for the off chance that the state may be able to protect you from a delusional individual at some point in the future. Run away now.
   
   
2. Even if armed with knowledge about who's less than stable mentally, there is no guarantee whatsoever that police are going to be able to stop a mentally disturbed person from committing a crime. We all know that when seconds count the police are only minutes away. So what are police going to do? Monitor mental cases 24/7/365? Put tracking ankle bracelets on them or implant tracking devices under their skin? Or would they simply incarcerate each and every person reported to them via psychologists and psychiatrists? My bet is on the easiest route with potentially lower overall cost and the least risk to officers: confinement. Hence the nefarious power of Gaston's forcible incarceration.
   
   
3. Definitions are powerful. He who gets to decide the scope of the terms decides, by Galston's terms, who gets drugged and committed. So, who defines concepts such as "mental illness" or "delusional" or "credible evidence of mental disturbance?" Richard Dawkins, for example, like all totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century, considers religious belief patently delusional. His New Athiest comrade, Sam Harris, considers religious teaching to children a form of child abuse. Zealots on either side of the political spectrum sometimes seriously consider their opponents to mentally disturbed, delusional, even evil. Totalitarians regard political dissenters to be a threat to the public good. Some neo-liberals consider watching Fox News or believing in Creation to be evidence of being a few fries short of a happy meal. The Trojan horse of Galston's argument is terminology. With very slight tweaks in the scope of the relevant terms there can then be violations of religious and political freedom the ramifications of which Americans have seen only on foreign soil, but which Galston seems to have either forgotten or is willing to risk bringing to America.

So it is that tomorrow, under Galston's law, the very same people pointing fingers and toes at Sarah Palin and conservatives today would have the tools at their disposal to institutionalize those they consider mentally disturbed and make Fox News illegal. I'm sure that sounds fantastic to some but history tells us these sort of ideas are the most dangerous of all, for they lay a foundation that evil men leverage to crush political dissent, religious freedom and general liberty.

I hope and pray the Giffords tragedy will not go down in history as a turning point in the freedoms and rights of Americans. I suspect if you could ask Ms. Giffords today, she'd say much the same.

Update: ElRushbo strikes again. A teaser:

It was interesting on Good Morning America today, and it was interesting what wasn't in the New York Times today that they no doubt heard, that they edited out. [...]

This morning on Good Morning America a portion of an interview Ashleigh Banfield did with Zach Osler, who is a high school friend of the shooter Jared Loughner.  Ashleigh Banfield: "What was his motive in Saturday's attack and what about the speculation that he may have been fueled by partisan politics and rhetoric in the media?"

OSLER: He did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn't listen to political radio. He didn't take sides. He wasn't on the left; he wasn't on the right.

RUSH: Doesn't that kind of debunk virtually all speculation that we have heard since 30 minutes after the shooting on Saturday in the media?