How far will we go to ensure our own safety?
JoeUser Forums
Imagine this scenario: You have just arrived at your favorite buffet. Armed with utensils, you proceed to fill up your plate. You finish your meal and go back for seconds. A man from the table next to you approaches you, cuffs you, and arrests you for public gluttony.
This scenario might seem like something that would play out in a bad, unbelievable science fiction novel, but the simple truth is, we're already headed in that direction. When we gave police officers the power to go into strip clubs and "adult movie houses" to arrest people who were, umm, taking certain matters into their own hands, we employed a logic that has never been sensible in a free society: that what you do behind closed doors DOES matter, and that the government has a right to regulate your behaviour to ensure your own safety.
The logic has recently been extended, in the state of Texas at least, to include police officers trolling the bars to arrest people for public intoxication. The logic is that it will stop drinking and driving, but the logic does not hold, because it presumes a behaviour that is not necessarily guaranteed. While I wouldn't argue the RIGHT of Texas law enforcement officials to uphold a law already on the books, I would argue that their actions certainly give us cause to question the validity of such laws in the first place. Baker rightly commented on terpfan's thread on the police issue that government only has as much power as we give it. That is why we must stop giving it so much power.
The long term implications of these actions are terrible. In Texas, if you're a member of a country club, you are in a private club, and there would be no right to enforce such a law. So the wealthy, of course, are immune to these actions. And as an increasing number of employers require background checks, a growing number of Texans stand to become part of a permanent underclass because of their free time activities, regardless of how responsible they are in the exercise of those activities. Certainly noone is going to advance to a boardroom with a number of public intoxication convictions on their "rap sheet".
We need our police force to protect and to serve. They SHOULD be there for domestic assault; they SHOULD be there to answer a rape call. They should not be there to police activities of individuals who are doing no public harm in the course of their actions. To do so wastes the money of taxpayers and leads to greater resentment of the lower class towards a police force that was allegedly designed to protect them, but is increasingly being employed to harass them.
