From the "if you build it, they will use it files": Warrior Cops
by digby
For more than 40 years, we've been spending excessive amounts of money on a "war" that makes no sense. And we've not only engaged the military to fight it overseas, we've turned out own police forces into para-military forces so we can "fight" it on our own soil. I'm talking about the War on Drugs, of course. Lately, we've merged this war with an equally amorphous concept called the the War on Terror. And the result is an endless build-up of a massive police apparatus.
If there's ever been a bigger boondoggle, I don't know what it is. And even if things go well with comprehensive immigration reform we're going to expand this militarization on our border a hundred fold, with billions and billions of dollars being spent on new toys and police personnel. That has become the price of even the slightest expansion of a positive function of government.
I have to wonder though if there isn't a huge irony here. I've always thought that when you see government as having few legitimate functions beyond a military to protect the nation from foreign threat and a justice system to enforce contracts and police the citizens, all the state's power and money would logically flow to those functions. In other words, a pure libertarian system is highly likely to lead to a police state.
This is not because libertarians want such a thing, of course. It's because human nature dictates that if you build it, they will use it. And when you have created an environment, as Republicans have over the past 40 years, in which the only unquestionable responsibility of government is police and military --- and the money spent toward those functions is deemed to be sacred --- well, it stands to reason those institutions will grow exponentially as the rest of the government shrinks. That's what's happening right now. While Head Start and Meals on Wheels are starved of funds, the security state grows by leaps and bounds.
Hardcore conservatives are fine with that. They are authoritarians by choice. But the last thing libertarians want is a police state. And yet their philosophy may inevitably leads the nation to create one.
BTW: None of that is meant to be a criticism of Balko, a libertarian who has written a very important book and is a staunch critic of this regime. It's a little bit unseemly of me to even muse as I did above in the same breath as I am complimenting his work. But that's blogging ...
Buy the book. You won't be sorry. Well, you'll be sorry about what's happening to our society. But you'll be better off knowing about it.
