Of course lots of folks are talking about the events in Louisiana and I have started hearing some a fairly common startling comments…
“How come the military isn’t involved? We should be sending the army in to clean out the looters…”
Folks I didn’t like history class in high school, but I do recall the Posse Comitatus Act and why it is important to our personal freedoms.
If you aren’t aware of it, it is an act put in place to specifically prohibit the use of the US military within our nations borders for civil law enforcement. This is the law that helps prevent our country from becoming a military dictatorship like some small South American country.
Beware of slowly giving up rights and freedoms and protections piece by piece. It may not seem bad at the time or even seem good, but eventually there will not be enough rights, freedoms, and protections to get the rest back and you will not like the place we are then living in. When some organization or group[1] passes laws or ordinances for the public good, it often isn’t for our own good.
Today it may be a law against driving while under the influence with “under the influence” being defined as some certain high value. Tomorrow it will be some smaller value. Later on even smaller value. At some point, you have permanently lost your car and your drivers license, you have several hundred thousands dollars in fines you have to pay, and you are in jail for two years all for taking your last teaspoon of cough medicine and trying to get to Walgreens to get another bottle of cough medicine. It is all a matter of degree until at some point you went from having a right to not having a right. I purposely used this example because it is inflamatory and there are supposedly good arguments for it, just like using the military for civil disobedience.
joe
[1] And this ranges from subdivision committees all the way up to the US Congress.
While I do appreciate and understand the sentiment, the history nitpicker in me feels compelled to point out that Posse Comitatus proscribes the use of the military to execute the law -except when expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress-. (Otherwise the Coast Guard wouldn’t be helping to arrest drug smugglers off the Port of Miami, for example.)
Posse Comitatus itself is Reconstruction-era legislation that was passed to prohibit federal troops from supervising elections in formerly Confederate states. It contains a few exceptions that are pretty relevant to the situation in the Easy, in that it does not apply to:
* National Guard units while under the authority of the governor of a state;
* Troops used pursuant to Federal authority to quell domestic violence, notably during the 1992 Rodney King LA riots. (I’d say this counts, too.)
POTUS can also waive Comitatus entirely in an emergency.
If you’re interested, google 10 USC 371-78, which are additional acts codified in 1981 that further clarify “permissible military assistance to civilian law enforcement agencies.”
As I said, I do agree that there’s an argument to be made for a slippery slope in the case of breathalyzer tests, TSA screenings, and what have you. But I must admit that I don’t see a slippery slope here: if I’m not paying my soldiers to keep people from shooting at me, be it overseas or right in my backyard, then what the heck -am- I paying them for? 🙂
(And yes, in addition to the many…-many-…other ways in which i’m a nerd, I’m also a full-on history geek. :-))
I understand the special loop hole in the act[1]. It is the use of that loop hole that kind of concerns me. We seem to be using it for more and more to slide through (liken that to reducing the requirements for being considered bad in some other laws, only the reverse, reducing the requirements to do something that the act was put into place to prevent).
As I understood it (this goes back to high school history which I will not admit to how many years that is), the launching of the act was directly from the election issues, however it was simply outright stating what had been the de facto position for years and years which was the concept of separation of the federal military and civilian law to avoid militaristic states, dictatorships, and general enforced oppression. This was due to often abused power of the militaries of different parts of the world to enforce the law of the king or some other monarchy.
The coast guard was kind of special all along, I don’t think it ever was a “real” military in that it reports to the DOT instead of the DOD and was specifically for policing US laws, not fighting in foreign wars like the other military branches. The National Guard fits in there somehow too and is for the governer to call in when local authorities do not have the ability to quell the civilian issues or assist in natural disasters. In fact, Louisiana requested Michigan send a portion of its National Guard down, which it did.
Again, as I understand, the whole idea behind a federal militia is to protect the sovereign state from EXTERNAL attackers. Using the militia to attack our own people is a gross misuse of that force IMO.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against using the military to help out in emergencies like this, but for rescue and recovery operations only. Not for law enforcement nor quelling civil unrest. The moment that the US Military starts shooting at US Citizens, the crap pushed out by the various state based crackpot militias all comes true.
The US militaries are in some way shape or form supposed to be fighting for the will of the people, if they are attacking people in the US, which people are they fighting for? Who gets to say which side they fight for? That is the core issue I think because when it comes right down to it, they fight for a very small minority of appointed and elected officials who supposedly have the best interests of their constituents at heart.
Before sending this I did a quick search on Posse Comitatus and ran into an extremely interesting hit from the DHS. They seem to be saying that everyone has it wrong and in fact, the reason for that act was to prevent federal solders from being pressed into service by local authorities and that it was never intended to prevent the president or congress to use the US military as it saw fit. That certainly doesn’t sound like the same thing I was taught nor does it seem to be the same thing that we have in practice, more of an attempt to try and direct our future vector if anything. If they say it enough and enough others start quoting it, it could come true.
In the end I think it all comes down to the idea that a vast majority of people are dumb. Most people will tend to vote for themselves bread and circuses so the government can support them though that is clearly not a supportable theory. And most people tend to believe they know more about what is good for their neighbors than the neighbors themselves know for themselves.
Me personally, I think we have to work hard and support ourselves, the government is quickly collapsing under its own weight and stupidity and mismanagement. I also think that I don’t want to try and tell my neighbors what they can do or wtach or look at or say because I certainly don’t want my neighbors telling me what I can do, say, watch, or look at. Oh yeah, and to end it with a good standard Heinlein statement… TANSTAAFL.
joe
[1] Including the loophole that only the US Army and its derivatives (i.e. the Air Force) are in actually bound by the act. My history instructor was very clear on this and indicated that as we moved forward the act was getting weaker and weaker. In fact, he would say we truly have no rights anymore to overthrow the government if we feel that it is is broken. Just the same, I still don’t want people watering it down even more. Again it comes down to the issue of the difficulty of getting rights back that have been taken away.
In the end I think it all comes down to the idea that a vast majority of people are dumb. Most people will tend to vote for themselves bread and circuses …
Is this the next logical conclusion after “Given the choice between security and dancing pigs, dancing pigs win every time out of the gate?” 🙂
(And that was an evil footnote, man, I was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling saying “Where the hell IS it?!?!?!?!?” :-))