My how things have changed.

[MadHound]

This past week we saw just how our civil liberties have been tossed out the window. We saw multiple houses raided, without cause, without warrant. We saw an entire community essentially put under martial law, though it went by the kinder, gentler term of "shelter in place". Now, we are seeing the spectacle of a suspect, who is being arrested for a crime, being denied his Miranda rights due to something new in the past few years, the Public Safety Exception.

Worse than all this is the willing, even cowed acceptance of all of this. People are saying that this was a special circumstance, but the fact of the matter is that if our civil liberties don't apply in the most extreme of circumstance, they simply won't apply in even normal circumstances.

Did we see any of this on display during the OKC bombing, Ruby Ridge, Waco? No, because such concepts were foreign to our conception of law enforcement. Yes, the Public Safety exception was in play, but in very limited form, certainly not we're seeing now, a forty eight hour free pass to grill a suspect about any and everything. Shelter in place was meant as a suggestion that one should follow in the case of bad weather or release of a hazardous material, not as a method to lockdown an entire community so that a house to house set of raids could take place. And those raids themselves are based on a radically expanded definition of the legal concept of "exigent circumstance", a concept that was originally intended to be used when a suspect is being hotly pursued, but now has been morphed into allowing the police to take their time, going door to door, for hours on end.

All of these attacks on our civil liberties have taken place in the last twelve years since 9/11. Our fear, our panic has allowed the state to seize these liberties and so many others. This was exactly what was on display last week, the triumph of the post 9/11 mindset, of what happens when our population tries to make the devil's deal of trading liberty for safety. Worse, with the triumphant rollout of these new concepts, they are going to continue to creep into our lives. How soon before there is a Public Safety exception applied to every crime? How soon before we see houses regularly searched under the Exigent Circumstances exception?

Perhaps, hopefully, with further reflection, the American public will demand that these civil liberties be returned. Sadly though, given our past history, I doubt it. The prevailing mood seems to be that the loss of civil liberties is somehow, someway justified, and if you're not a terrorist, why should you care. Perhaps people will finally start caring when these exceptions become the norm in our land. By then though, of course, it will be too late.