She’s actually
completely right about this. We can’t allow a secret police to exist unchallenged. The fact that it doesn’t target us as ordinary citizens doesn’t change the fact that these are masked “police” acting without warrants or identification. This is a real problem, regardless of who is in charge. Let it go now, and imagine how much worse it will be when it’s someone else’s charge.
No, ICE isn't a secret police force and it is ridiculous to call them such. Agents are having to wear masks now due to doxing by journalists and Democrat politicians that have lead to death threats against agents and their family members. Masking is a reasonable response to such actions. The criminal neglect of our Southern border by the previous administration requires vigorous enforcement now to correct the imbalance. That is not authoritarian nor is it dictatorial. In fact, it's what the American people voted for, regardless what Rachel Maddow thinks. Furthermore, warrants are generally not required when there is probable cause to believe the suspect is a flight risk, which is the case with an illegal alien. This has been the case long before Trump became president.
ReplyDeleteJoel, you know that I hold you in the highest respect. But if a masked man came to me and attempted to arrest me, with no warrant and without showing his face or giving his name, I'm sure I wouldn't let him. Immediately we would be at the point of dying, because that isn't a thing you can submit to as a free man. You understand that, surely. How could you not? We aren't the sort of men who roll over and let ourselves be placed in chains by nameless, faceless persons who merely claim to be agents of the state.
DeleteIs it the mask alone that's the problem, or that you know you are innocent? How is that different from any other innocent being arrested? Why should anyone allow themselves to be arrested?
DeleteThat's a very good question, Douglas. Why should a free man accept being placed in chains?
DeleteWe've normalized the practice to an extraordinary degree; just as in England Sherlock Holmes carried a revolver freely about his private detecting, but today you couldn't possibly do so there.
There's no very obvious reason that you should accept it. We could have courts and legal processes without it being normal to handcuff people or put them in cages. Indeed, you know that I have advocated for abolishing prisons even after the fact of a legal finding; more than thinking they aren't necessary, I think they aren't useful. It's amazing to me that we spend so much human capital and monetary capital storing people in cell blocks and guarding over them.
It might be true that some degree of force is necessary for a society. It could be that some people really need killing; others might need whipping; others could pay fines or do acts of labor as service. I don't know that we really need the chains or the bars.
But if we are going to ask people not to resist being arrested and chained, surely at minimum they have to know that the system that they are submitting to has reasonable guardrails for their safety and rights. They can't be asked to submit to masked men, taken to black sites, deported to places they've never been to in their lives. That's not reasonable, and to your point, people may just stop accepting it. If you generate resistance to this by excessive force and unreasonable demands, you'll generate friction that will make the gigantic problem even harder to resolve.
I like the meme that shows Mark Cuban as a fully trans Maddow. That's funny, I don't care who you are.
ReplyDeleteHaven't seen that one.
DeleteI saw it when I scrolled down on the link you provided. Plus I had seen it somewhere else, too.
DeleteI understand the concern but then reflect on Elian Gonzales, Ruby Ridge, the Branch Davidian compound, surveillance and arrests of parents at school board meetings, and a search warrant with shot-to-kill authorization on a former President's residence, and it doesn't seem much like the 'someone else in charge' responds to claims that restraint is being exercised.
ReplyDeleteICE agents are not unidentified/unidentifiable when they're on an arrest operation; they have their badges visible, and they're identifiable with ICE designations on their jackets.
ReplyDeleteThey have warrants where warrants are required.
They're masked not only to protect themselves but to protect their families in the face of Progressive-Democrats'--led by no less a light than Hakeem Jeffries--to dox every single one of them. A couple of ICE agent homes already have been swatted.
Your beef regarding warrants is with the law, not the agents or agency.
Your beef regarding the masks is with an out-of-control, no respect for law Progressive-Democratic Party and their politicians.
You know I hold you in the highest respect. But if you resist an ICE agent in the course of his duties, I'll be all out of sympathy.
Eric Hines
There is a proverb in Latin America: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law."
DeleteThese aren't our friends. They're the law, which is a power that could be pointed at us just as well as at anyone else. Right now Trump is in charge and everyone seems to feel comfortable. These powers aren't going to go away when he does, though. If this agency's remit is changed so that it's pointed at "disloyal" citizens, as it easily could be given a small change in Presidents, these powers are going to look very different.
If I die resisting such an agent, I'll ask mercy from God alone.
Fine, but then let's be honest that the issue is the law writ large, and not this particular mode of enforcement.
DeleteWe understand your stance re: anarchy, and respect it, but it's outside the law as it stands now.
The law is categorically dangerous, yes. But masked agents being able to seize people by force without anyone having visibility on where those people are being taken or what is happening to them is apparently legal now, and it's occurring every day. I don't remember masked police being a thing before. Elliot Ness didn't wear a mask, and he went head on with Al Capone.
DeleteThey have badges and agency clearly ID’ed, but the main reason they conceal their name and face is because of doxxing. Many of those they are arresting have ties to Central American gangs who routinely kill police or their families.
ReplyDeleteGrim, ICE isn't using any new or novel authority to conduct their arrests or operations. Consequently, your concern that these "powers" may be used against you when a less sympathetic administration is in office is unfounded. Warrantless arrests for flight risk suspects have already been around for much longer than the last several administrations. There is nothing new here.
ReplyDeleteThis is all new, my friend. Some of it might even be good; but a year ago the border was wide open. There's been a huge change in the scale of the enforcement, the budget assigned to this agency, and the power they are being allowed to wield. I'm not saying it was better last year when everything was wide open, but it is definitely not the same as it was.
DeleteThe scale is as it is because the task is unfathomably monumental in size, so it is appropriate to the task, therefore it seems in the right in terms of scale.
DeleteOn the question of newness, are plainclothes/undercover cops anything new? Were they wrong before?
I definitely don't approve of undercover cops either, but that's entirely separate. When they did make their arrests, they produced warrants and badges with their names and identifications. Everyone knew who they were.
DeleteThere is a proverb in Latin America....
ReplyDeleteI don't live in Latin America.
Aside from that, your proverb implies an intrinsic disrespect for law on the part of Latin Americans. Without law, though, all we have is a tyranny of men. As we are seeing in Latin America.
With law, we may still devolve into a tyranny of men, via engagement in lawfare, but that's a much slower devolution with lots of opportunities to correct things.
Eric Hines
Perhaps, but you've seen it yourself; we all have. Obama's first Attorney General was his 'wingman,' aiming at making sure the law was never applied to him; Trump came into office with the law being applied to him. The decision to apply the law to someone is the decision to treat them as an enemy. Once in a while it works out fairly and justly, but it is a decision to use the force of the state against someone.
DeleteThat is the single most dangerous enemy that we all have, the state that governs us. I understand the arguments for permitting it to exist. I do not like to see any of the controls and restrictions that bind it loosened, not even to protect her agents. If you're going to ask people to peacefully surrender to being placed in chains, they have to know for sure who you are; they have to know for sure that there's a process they can trust. Faceless agents are a problem for me; they can't be held responsible for the power they are wielding.
Grim you’re being melodramatic now.
ReplyDeleteAlligator lives matter too
They got to eat.
Buzzards got to eat, same as worms. I've seen the movie. It's a good movie.
DeletePerhaps, but you've seen it yourself....
ReplyDeleteThe one is a perhaps, which may be in progress, but not irreversibly so. The other is a certainty. I'll take my chance on the probability and reject the alternative certainty.
Besides, the agents are not faceless; they are easily identified.
The decision to apply the law is not to treat someone as an enemy, it is to protect the rest of us. Including from the government.
Under our construction, the state does not govern us; We the People are sovereign and use government--subordinate to us--to protect our collective sovereignty and individual liberty. That things are drifting from that is--a longstanding beef of mine--is our own fault. I'm seeing early signs, though, that we're taking corrective action, even if too soon to say that corrective action will continue.
Eric Hines
Grim, if the way it's being done now is a problem, how does this Administration remove the millions of illegal aliens in the country?
ReplyDeleteOne could prosecute the people who employ illegal aliens. They’re richer and thus harder to beat in court, but that also means they have greater access to the protections of the law.
DeleteI absolutely think we should do that. Currently I'm down with 1 year of jail time and $100,000 fine for each infraction. One suggestion I liked (and suspect you'll hate) is to begin with the presumption that the employer knew he/she/it was employing illegals and place the burden of proving otherwise on the employer.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'd like to see some numbers on how many illegal aliens that are here are not working. For example, it seems to me that active criminals and gang members are not likely to be employed - at least as I understand employment.
One could prosecute the people who employ illegal aliens. They’re richer and thus harder to beat in court, but that also means they have greater access to the protections of the law.
ReplyDeleteI agree with prosecuting those who hire illegal aliens, and I agree with Elise's view of the level of sanctions. I disagree with her on presumption of guilt--the employers are citizens or legal aliens (I assume for this discussion), and so they're entitled to the same presumption of innocence as the rest of us.
The illegal aliens, though, are a separate matter. They are holding themselves outside our law, and so outside our social compact, and so outside our legal jurisdiction. They have--or should have--no protections of our law. They need to be deported. Full stop.
They've already been given a very generous way out by our government, anyway: leave voluntarily and collect $1,000 on proof of arrival back in their home country, and thus be eligible to come back in if they do so legally on their return.
Eric Hines
Yes, Mr. Hines is right; shifting the burden of proof is another loosening of the bonds. The state is by far the most dangerous thing. We have to keep it chained at all costs.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, the Administration has said they will commence arrests of people employing illegals. That HAS happened already in a few restaurants in AZ and LA (??); the owners were put into jail.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, in this case the powers of the State are being exercised against ILLEGAL ALIENS. We share a concern about Statism--a hallmark of the Obama/Biden administrations--but the difference was that Obama/Biden exercised that power against citizens such as Roman Catholics or school moms. Trump, in contrast, uses the powers of the State against people who not only do not have a legitimate reason to be here, but IN ADDITION, are convicted criminals.
Rachel is playing her melodrama card well!!
On reflection, I'm not sure that focusing on prosecuting employers would make much difference. In order to arrest employers for employing illegals, ICE would still need to find the illegals. It seems that process would look much like what ICE is doing now.
ReplyDeleteI do think the employers should be prosecuted vigorously. This would discourage others from employing illegals which would (should) cause more illegals to leave and fewer to attempt to come in. Plus it just seems wrong to punish the illegal aliens and not those who benefit from their lack of recourse to laws and regulations designed to make workers' lives better and safer.
Yeah, what bothers me more than anything else is that the employers have managed to create a class of workers who have no appeal to legal protections. I worry a lot about how the police powers could be misused; but already many workers are being abused by rich men with no accountability.
DeletePlus it just seems wrong to punish the illegal aliens and not those who benefit from their lack of recourse....
ReplyDeleteI have a rather Locke-ian view of our social compact. That view suggests to me that, since Illegal aliens keep themselves outside our social compact and so outside our laws, they haven't done anything legally wrong, beyond entering our nation illegally, and so they're not very capable of being punished in our sense of the word--only of being deported forthwith and without recourse to our laws, which they disdain in the first instance.
Eric Hines
already many workers are being abused by rich men with no accountability
ReplyDeleteI think this is a point of agreement with those on the Left side of the aisle. I had a discussion with a friend who said he thought Alligator Alcatraz should not be for illegal aliens but for those who encourage them to come, work them hard, and replace them when they wear out. He doesn't want his country to be like Qatar with the FIFA matches.
Eric, the punishment I was referring to for illegal aliens is being deported.
Elise,
DeleteDeporting those who are here illegally and holding themselves outside our compact by their continued presence is only a legitimate result. Punishment in this context seems to me a non sequitur.
Eric Hines
I had to think about this for a while, Eric, and metaphorically tilt my head to one side, but I see your point. It's a whole other framework than mine and one I think is more coherent.
DeletePerhaps I can say that I prefer we enforce immigration laws across the board, both against those who are here illegally and those who benefit from and/or take advantage of, that illegality.
Kant took a similar view of the social contract. I have some problems with the concept of a contract none of us ever had the opportunity to consider and assent to; but people who come to the country as adults are an especially good case for it. They did know what they were getting into and did take acts to affirmatively consent to being in the place where that ‘contract’ holds. If anyone should be accountable to it it is them.
DeleteI share Grim's concern with secret police, but I tend to include the FBI and all the alphabet agencies in that. They all do "intelligence" work that is hidden from us, and how can citizens know what of it is legitimate and what merely serves political or personal purposes? For example, the FBI and CIA seem to have colluded to keep Trump from being elected and then, failing that, to hamstring his first administration. There are also a lot of questions about FBI involvement in the Jan 6 affair. As part of their secrecy, all of the agencies involved in intel gathering use non-police informants whose identity is well-protected. Which is worse, masked ICE agents or this sort of classified op which we aren't allowed to see at all? But, we've allowed that for decades, at least, maybe a century. Who knows what they've gotten away with?
ReplyDeleteAs for uniforms and badges, those can be faked. Which of us could tell the difference between a real ICE badge and a well-made fake? Or, for that matter, any of the badges we might expect to encounter where we live? I routinely pass through 2 county and 6 municipal jurisdictions, as well as OHP and OSBI territory. What I know to ask for is the police ID card with a photo, which I can compare to the face of the officer standing before me.
Where I disagree with Grim is in the assessment that government poses the biggest threat. I think any well-funded, armed, and cohesive group can pose a threat. Governments around the world have failed to stop the cartels. Quite the inverse: With all the money American druggies send them, the cartels have been able to corrupt every government south of our border by bribery and murder. I see no less reason to fear that kind of power than to fear government power.
There are also insurgents, which in the US include genuine anti-government forces like Antifa and similar lefty groups designed to make things dangerous for the police and law-abiding citizens without entirely crossing the line into being terrorist organizations. Again, they are well-funded and trained and armed for what they do and I see no reason to fear them less than government. Being Marxists, their goal is a Marxist revolution, and when Democrats are in power they are protected by the very governments they seek to overthrow. That combination of private and public power is much to be feared. That is an important part of how Hitler rose to power and how the fragile democracy of 1920s Japan was crushed and militarists took over.
I think the two problems are linked. Non-government powers like the cartels and insurrectionists make a good argument for police secrecy. If you really want to solve the problem of police secrecy, you need to destroy the cartels and insurrectionists here. If you are not willing to see done what is necessary to destroy them, or at least to effectively deter them from targeting police, then the price to pay is secret, masked police.
Or, maybe Sowell is right, there are no solutions, only trade-offs, and we all just have to muddle through as best we can. But the problems of well-funded private organized violence and secret police are linked, and if there is a solution, I think it has to address both.
Thank you for that thorough and considered response. You're allowed to disagree with me; I think actually everyone here disagrees with me to a greater or lesser degree. It's a useful environment for healthy and respectful discussion in part because we don't agree.
DeleteLet me point out a few things.
"There are also insurgents, which in the US include genuine anti-government forces like Antifa and similar lefty groups designed to make things dangerous for the police and law-abiding citizens without entirely crossing the line into being terrorist organizations. Again, they are well-funded and trained and armed for what they do and I see no reason to fear them less than government. Being Marxists, their goal is a Marxist revolution, and when Democrats are in power they are protected by the very governments they seek to overthrow."
What you just said is, I think, that Antifa is only dangerous insofar as the government is. It's the alliance between insurgents inside and outside the government that makes a Marxist revolution thinkable; when the government is not controlled by their allies, they are a very manageable consideration.
Thus, in fact, it is the government that is the danger. If it's on their side, it's a grave problem; if it isn't, it's functionally no problem. Thus, the government is in fact the either actually or nearly the whole problem.
That means that our threat matrix has to have government at the very top. Our own government: it's the one that is dangerous to us. The weakness of the Mexican government is dangerous to Mexicans, but those cartels don't try much around here -- not because the government is strong, either, since they've got the tools to deal with government force (as you noted yourself). It's because the American population is heavily armed; they can't simply suborn the police, and in fact the police are protected by the citizenry. They reason they can't do here what they do in Mexico is that the police don't stand alone.
I think that entirely undermines your closing argument, which is that the police need to keep secrets from us in order to deal with insurgents and cartels. In fact, it is the trust between us and our mutual concern for each other that makes them safe enough to contest the cartels. That, then, is also a government problem: it can't be allowed secrets that undermine such trust and faith.
Sure, I kind of assume any two thoughtful people will inevitably disagree about some things. I'm happy you've provided a good place to do that.
DeleteI'll have to think about your counters, but to clarify my positions, I think Antifa and the cartels are threats in and of themselves. I think the tendency of some Democrat DAs to ignore Antifa violence is especially dangerous, but it is the symbiosis that makes it especially dangerous. Antifa is still a threat even with DAs who are willing to prosecute them, though.
Looking at the cartels may clarify my views a bit. To me, the cartels seem more powerful than the Mexican government. They corrupt everyone in government who is corruptible and kill everyone who isn't, at least that they care about. They don't care about, e.g., the officials who handle sanitation, probably, but if they did they would corrupt them too and there seems little the Mexican government can do to stop them. So, it is not the case that the official government is always the greater threat.
In fact, the cartels are privately funded by American drug buyers, privately armed, privately trained, etc. It's a private network that has become more powerful than many governments. It might even be an example of an evil anarchist society, now that I think about it.
Particularly after 9/11, I think we have to see the lines of government / non-government or state / non-state as being fuzzy. What do we call it when a state government like Mexico is controlled by non-state actors like the cartels? Are the cartels then part of the government, but just unofficially? Maybe. It depends on how you define all this stuff.
I maintain that the government always has at least the greatest potential to cause harm; not all of them seek to actually cause harm. But in your thinking about all this, compare and contrast the contents of this list of massacres in Mexican history:
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Mexico
There have been a lot more massacres of a lot more people by agents of the state in Mexico than by the cartels. The cartels are not innocent by any means -- there have been some horrific ones at their hands too -- but they rarely reach the hundreds (though occasionally, as probably at Allende though the low end of the range is 42 for that one).
In fact as I reflect on this list, I wonder if the cartels aren't in part a reaction against Mexican government violence. It looks like the 1970s-1990s involved many massacres of civilians by soldiers, paramilitaries, and agents of the state; it's only since then that the cartels have sprung up, armed, and used their own violence to wrest control from the government. Mexico had a very dirty civil war during the mid-70s, which probably planted some of those seeds.
Which gets at your point that there is a blurring of the lines between state actors and non-state ones, or that the cartels might be kind of an evil attempt to assert anarchism through violence (instead of through voluntaryist rejection of coercive force, as is more usually expressed by anarchist philosophers). The government made itself quite intolerable; the strong decided not to tolerate it.
That's a shocking list. Los Zetas seem to have racked up quite the body count. Various government forces even more, though, as you say.
DeleteI'm not sure it is good support for your point, though. Killing a few people a week for years can add up to a great massacre, but won't make the list unless the bodies end up in a mass grave, it seems.
I think your suggestion that the cartels themselves may have been a reaction against government oppression is intriguing. That seems quite possible.
In any case, I don't see these as proving your point that government always has the greatest potential to cause harm. I think the cartels have destabilized a number of Central and South American nations, and that destabilization isn't necessarily measurable in easily available metrics. How do we count the number of politicians and government employees they've corrupted to do what they want instead of what their government jobs are?
In any case, this also runs into the problems of potential. It's only meaningful if you can make it actual.
To take a different tack, successful revolutions seem to indicate the people had more potential than the government. Unsuccessful ones the opposite. It may take a revolution to know whether government has the greatest potential for destruction.
DeleteI am not trying to contradict your argument, by the way. Even if I am right, your suspicion of government power is still justified. My view just complicates the situation. Instead of focusing mainly on government power, it makes us cautious of all power, including private power as well as government power.
When we see actual genocides and democides worldwide, it is not criminal organizations but governments that carry them out. As I've said before, in the bloody 20th century your own government was more likely to kill you than its enemies. The Nazis killed more Germans (and German nationals who didn't qualify as 'German enough') than even the Soviets did; the Soviets starved more of their own citizens than even the Nazis killed. The Japanese militarist government did horrible things to the Chinese people, but not nearly so many Chinese died in all of the horrors of the Japanese occupation as died in Mao's "Great Leap Forward."
DeleteThere are some limit cases where we can debate whether the organization is a sort-of government, as you noted before. The Rwandan militias were sort of government, sort of a riot that the government allowed to go on rampages. Hamas is a currently relevant example; they are in some sense both a government and a terrorist organization that engages in criminal activity (but, to be honest, so does everyone's government -- the United States was tied up in some of those Mexican military murders, and even in some of the cartel ones; the CIA exists for the purpose of breaking the laws of other nations against espionage and theft and many other things).
Potentiality is first actuality. There's already something actual in potency: you can't make a saw out of wool, but you can out of steel. (I borrow that metaphor, of course, from Aristotle.) A criminal organization is organized for the purpose of crime, which is to say money and power; a government is organized for the same purpose, except that they also claim the power to define what counts as crime. Sometimes they might slip one into the other, but government has by its nature more potential to harm, which is why the worst actual harms come from them.
It's a fair point that revolutions sometimes succeed, and governments sometimes fail. I'm very glad about that fact, because it gives hope for when we find a government turning its unmatched capacity for violence against the people it is supposed to be, and usually claims to be, serving and protecting.
And yes, I'm not trying to convince you either; I'm comfortable with disagreements. Mutual respect and discussion may not resolve them, but they allow people to sort out how to exist in peace with each other.
DeleteBy the way, not on the list of Mexican massacres is the largest massacre in American history: the Goliad massacre by Santa Anna's forces. More than four hundred prisoners were executed by what claimed, at that time, to be their government; it shows up on our list instead because of one of those successful revolutions you were mentioning.
DeleteYour point about the 20th century democides and genocides is well-taken, but let me point out the private violence that brought much of that about. The Soviet Union and China were both the result of successful Marxist revolutions. The Nazis and Italian fascists had their private armies, the SA & SS and the Blackshirts, who helped them attain political power. The Japanese militarists were assisted by young men who assassinated successful businessmen for promoting capitalism and any politician who openly advocated for democracy. In all of these cases, these nations were pushed toward totalitarianism and militarism by private violence.
DeleteIn addition, the new governments of the USSR, China, and Nazi Germany came about in part as political movements focused on internal enemies by private powers, which, once they could, took on the mantle of government to continue their pursuit of their internal enemies. It is no wonder such governments killed so many of their own. Given the strong-man totalitarianism, these governments acted much like the private organizations of individual men: Stalin, Mao, Hitler. I don't know if their examples can be generalized to all governments.
Likewise, your point about the private armies striving for control of the government -- the Nazis versus the Communists in Germany is a good example -- demonstrates that they themselves understood the value of coming to control it instead of being a private army. Coupled with the further proof of the additional harm such forces were able to accomplish after winning control of the government, I think it is a compelling argument for my position.
DeleteHowever, let's table that until next week. This has quite a few comments now and is becoming unwieldy; I'll post something new about it early next week that we can re-engage.
Perhaps I can say that I prefer we enforce immigration laws across the board, both against....
ReplyDeleteElise, to paraphrase an American philosopher Pat Sajak, this is America, you can say whatever you want. [\smartass]
Seriously, I agree with you, and I think that's what's happening when we deport illegal aliens, most of whom are benefiting from/taking advantage of their illegality. That does include, as you and Grim have suggested, punishing their employers where government actually can prove they knowingly hired illegals--employment documents, for instance are easily enough forged.
So far, though, the laws are only spottily enforced, from interference from the Left and from uneven enforcement by law enforcement and those on the Right.
Eric Hines
It's not just doxxing and swatting. ICE, et al., are sweeping up high level MS-13 and Mexican drug cartel members. Their associates have no compunction about killing women (wives) and children of those officers, and usually in gruesome ways.
ReplyDeleteThe old school mafia rules no longer apply.
I have some problems with the concept of a contract none of us ever had the opportunity to consider and assent to....
ReplyDeleteParents have spoken for their children since forever (neglecting a vanishingly small set of individualized exceptions). As such parents have given assent to our government structure and set of authorities for their children, and the children as grown adults for their children sequentially through the generations through today. We children, become adults, give our own consent by participating in the political process, including efforts to change our government personnel or structure, or by passively accepting the interests that politics has in us.
The consent always is present absent any move actively to reclaim or to withhold it.
Eric Hines