It's not like we actually
need another reason to look around us and make sure we haven't spontaneously landed in Cold War Russia or late-1930s Germany. The state already can control the very
existence of any business it wants, through a tangle of regulation and licensing that may or may not have anything to do with what the business actually
does. Master has built itself a house of laws that enables it to exert whatever control it wishes on any "legitimate" business.
(Should anyone fancy himself capable of proving otherwise: there are corporate legal departments all over the nation that would be absolutely ecstatic to know that they are
not, in fact, restrained by state controls both relevant to their business and not. You could probably make a
mint selling this information to them.)
And what do you call a system in which title to the means of production is nominally in private hands, but control is exerted by the state? That's right, class, that's the definition of
fascism. And things have been like that here for generations now.
No, we don't need any more reasons to look around at the mess we're in. But we're getting one anyway.
This one, very much indicative of the trend the state is taking toward more direct interference in our
personal lives (perhaps the poor dears have just tapped themselves out on corporate strangulation?), is a new "option" that awaits you if you don't like the idea of taking a Breathalyzer test.
Apologies for any coffee you may have snorted at that. Of couse, the very notion of "options" given by the state is laughable, because the one "option" most people want is
to be left alone to be peaceable, and that is simply not available to you. "What do you think you are, a free man?"
No, we now have the idea that if you don't consent to a Breathalyzer test--or, if the officer just feels like using it as his primary tactic--you'll get a blood draw. From the cop. Right then and there. Forcibly, if you don't cower properly to your fate.</p> <p>Not kidding. Happening
right now,
right here in the Yew-Ess-Ay. From an
AP article at Yahoo news:
The federal program's aim is to determine if blood draws by cops can be an effective tool against drunk drivers and aid in their prosecution.
If the results seem promising after a year or two, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration will encourage police nationwide to undergo similar training.
Wanna take bets on the likelihood that the results will seem even more "promising" than photo-radar was? And how about this zinger:
Starr hopes the new system will cut down on the number of drunken driving trials. Officers can't hold down a suspect and force them to breath into a tube, she noted, but they can forcefully take blood — a practice that's been upheld by Idaho's Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Wow, any questions? Apparently drunk-driving trials are getting so inconvenient that we need to find a way to simply bypass them altogether. And since the state has been told by the state that they can't force an
uppity peasant one way but
can force him another way, then by golly force is back on the menu again! (And the state really should thank the state for clearing that up for us all.)
Because the alternative--the idea that enforcement has become its own
raison d'etre, and is
so corrupt it should probably be abandoned altogether--is simply incomprehensible. Somehow, we
need the same people who are
shooting our pets, sanctimoniously
informing us of our position in the food chain,
sodomizing with Tasers, and generally
holding themselves above the law, to add to their "toolkit" forcible field phlebotomy.
To quote Homer Simpson, "Extended warranty? How can I lose?"
This is going to be a big deal, with unintended consequences (just for a start, the cop impersonators oughta
love this) and "something stupid" episodes forthcoming at a certainty of well over a hundred percent.
Others have begun to weigh in as well:
William Norman Grigg covered it.
David Codrea at War on Guns covered it.
So did
Kent McManigal at Albuquerque Libertarian Examiner.
So did
Wendy McElroy.
Not likely will this be the last of it.
Which brings us right back to the opening observation--about this need to make sure we haven't suddenly been transported into a fully-fledged police state, just because things are starting to look creepily advanced down that road.
This may be a natural human reaction, but it's misplaced. We don't need to be concerned about any of this happening
suddenly. It's much worse if it happens
gradually--both because it's harder to see it coming, and it's harder to persuade
others who can't see it coming, who write you off as a kook just like that wacky tart Cassandra.
The scariest possibility is that what feels like things happening suddenly, may in fact be things that have
already happened.
"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.
Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45