Bluntly, the blanket house-to-house search in Watertown was a first-class disaster for rule of law or adherence to any sort of code of rights, both from authorities who should know better and from those ignorant Americans who don’t know any better.
Back in the Clinton days, people who lived in crime-ridden apartment complexes in Chicago and other places wanted the police to conduct warrantless sweeps or searches. This kind of ignorance like that from those who applaud the Watertown search is a compelling argument against being forced into a society whose rules one must obey or whose guns one must obey when its people decide to tear up the rules.
The authorities are supposed to know the rules and follow them and to protect against intrusions against them, because the rules are the laws and they are sworn to uphold the laws and defend against those who break them. Of course, this is a pipe dream when fewer and fewer people, in and out of office, either know their rights or feel them in their hearts. And so we have the mass irony that to catch a murderer who has broken the law the authorities break law after law after law themselves. The appalling massacre has been followed by an appalling dereliction of duty, failure of common sense, ignorance and law-breaking by authorities.
6:40 pm on April 23, 2013
