On Being "Taken into Custody"

My family has a history of getting nabbed at the border.

My Dad was, back in the early 1970s.  The border in question was the Ugandan border.  To be more specific, it was the international airport at Entebbe, as he arrived to report on a story.  When he landed, there were a half dozen soldiers waiting for the plane as it arrived at the gate.  "I wondered who they might be waiting for," Dad would recall.

They were waiting for him.  As he walked from the plane with the other passengers, the soldiers approached.  One of them pointed at Dad, and signaled him to leave the group.  "Me?" Dad mouthed, incredulous.  "You," said the soldier, grinning.  It was not a nice smile, as Dad recounted it.

My mom, who was back in Nairobi with three year old me and my infant brother, got the news that he had been taken into custody.  The US had been recently and publicly critical of the regime of Ugandan dictator General Idi Amin, and as a reprisal, the soldiers had been instructed to detain the first American journalist to enter the country.

So Dad just...disappeared.  Ugandan authorities weren't responsive to queries about his location or the reason for his detention.  

Eventually, Dad was deported, and the next word from him came after he was dumped off at a US consulate in Sudan.

Dad would tell this story on regular occasion, and it was always one of those things that I understood to be a marker of the difference between the United States of America and the authoritarian regimes of African strongmen.

That changed a little bit when I had the pleasure of being taken into custody at the American border.  

This was a couple of years after 9/11, after the creation of the Department for Homeland Security.  I, my wife, and my two sons were coming back from a visit with my brother in Montreal.  

When we arrived at American customs, we handed over our identification.  The agent scanned my wife's first.  Then he scanned mine.  Mine set off an audible klaxon at his station.  He looked at me, and stepped back and away from his computer.  As he did so, four more customs agents showed up in a hurry.  All had their guns out.  

I was told to exit our minivan, which I did.  I was then cuffed and frogmarched to a holding cell, where I was cuffed to a table.  I was told nothing about the reason for my arrest.  I was also not read my rights, or permitted any contact with my wife or with counsel. 

I mean sure, I was handcuffed and forcibly detained by agents with guns drawn, but it wasn't an "arrest."  I was just being "taken into custody."  Totally different thing.

After about fifteen minutes, I was released, with apologies.  Following review by an officer in charge, there'd been a misidentification, as the system they were using had incorrectly informed them that I was an armed and dangerous felon.  Oopsie doopsie.

After the agents who were tearing apart our van searching for contraband were stopped midway through their task were stopped, we were sent on our way. 

Impersonal and imperfect systems make mistakes.

As they can make mistakes now.  DHS and ICE aren't constrained to attend to your rights.  Maybe you're a citizen.  Maybe you're in the country legally.  Maybe not.  Not their problem.  They follow orders, and if sometimes innocent people are swept up, well, so what?  What does it matter if there's some collateral damage or bycatch?

ICE agents are already making mistakes, and acting on incorrect information.  Citizens in my area have been stopped and forcibly detained, and ICE agents are completely unaccountable for their actions towards those citizens. 

If you happen to have left your wallet at home that day, what happens?  If you don't always carry your papers with you, how could you prove anything, particularly if the agents in question are either overzealous or, you know, actually a little malicious?

As a soul with anarcholibertarian inclinations, I'm viscerally distrustful of systems of power and control.  The point of a Republic is to check those systems, to force those systems to be accountable for their behavior towards persons, to govern them round about with restraints that prevent them from becoming a tool for repression.  This is the dark paradox of the police state: In a police state, the law provides no protection.

ICE agents are already arresting people who have broken no laws, and whose only crime was to speak in ways the regime finds unacceptable.  For them, the law has become shifting sand.  You were here legally, but we've decided to revoke your legal status, so now you're breaking the law.   

It's as brazen as the corrupt and unaccountable cop in a dismal hollow of a town, the one who smashes your taillight, then tickets you for driving with a broken taillight, and should you be fool enough to protest, will arrest you for resisting arrest.

In such a system, all of our rights are in jeopardy.

Of Trump and My Anarcholibertarian Predilections

Last year, I sat in front of a class of undergraduates and talked about my postapocalyptic Amish novel.  At one point, in response to a question from one of them about separatist/quietist movements, I described myself as having "anarcholibertarian predilections," which got a laugh from a couple of bearded young men at the back of the class.  

It's such a silly, self-absorbed, overwrought way to think of yourself, which makes anarcholibertarianism a perfect match for silly, self-absorbed, overwrought me.

I've dabbled with the idea that I might politically self-identify as libertarian over the years, but if I am, I'd have to be of that peculiar variety.  Every time I think I'm there, when my frustration with the rigidities of bureaucratic folderol and the clucking propaganda of twitter pharisees and apparatchiks have me considering going full Ron Swanson, libertarians disabuse me of the notion that I could ever possibly fit within that "movement."  

Not that it's a movement, not really.  It's as incoherent as the language on the AI generated image I prompted for this post.

The news about Libertarianism recently, insofar as there is ever any meaningful news about libertarianism in America, is that the Libertarian Party has invited Donald J. Trump to speak at their convention.

It's yet another reason why any libertarian worthy of the name would steer away from the American party, and a reminder of how neofascist, corporatist, and "strong man" ideologies have devoured the concept of libertarianism in America.  If your libertarianism ends up justifying the power of a despot, an oligarch, or a charlatan, it ain't libertarianism.  

It's monarchism, and honeychild, there is a difference.

My libertarianism doesn't bend the knee to anyone, including myself.  Perhaps that's because it's less a political philosophy and more a question of my theology, which seems a better place for libertarianism to hang its hat.  That is, let it be clear, not me saying it is less relevant.  It's me saying it's more central to my identity as a person, my understanding of how human beings are to live together, and our relationship with our Creator.

There's probably some pre-existing definition of the word anarcholibertarian, one that was argued and fretted over by earnest folks with Germanic surnames a century ago.  I mean, surely there is.  I don't care.  I mean, being anarcholibertarian, why would I?

My libertarianism is "anarcho" because I don't trust human beings with power.  Put the prefix "an" in front of "arch," and that's really all you're saying:  "no power."  Whatever the power structure may be, there is within it moral hazard.  The concentrations of power that manifest in political systems become self-perpetuating, as power seeks to reinforce itself.   There is no form of political system that is immune to this, because political systems are human social constructs, and humans love love love power over one another.  

Which means...because no human community can function without power...that I prefer systems that check and balance the powerful.  Oligarchies and despotisms, being the self-serving things that they are, are the enemy.  Social democracies and liberal republics are invariably frustrating, but they do a far better job of preserving the average soul's liberty than any other system.  This is precisely because they put the brakes on power, because they make the concentration of authority in a single person or group more difficult.  We've forgotten this, we Americans, as we posture and bellow at one another from our position of privilege.

Preserving the liberty of the powerful is and has always been unnecessary.  The wealthy and the social elite have their armies of lawyers...or their actual armies...to ensure that they are free to do as they please.  Rules, like the covenant of marriage or the Constitutional process for the peaceful transfer of power?  These things do not apply to them.

The more someone loves power, revels in it, glories in it?  The less one should trust them with it.

Yet so many of us, once again, howl for a king. 

The Embers of the Republic

My wife and I recently went out to lunch.  Times are tighter for us, after the new CEO of her former organization used a thicket of empty PR jargon-speak to excuse firing her along with a full third of the organization, all but one of whom just happened to be over forty.

Leave vengeance to the Lord, I remind myself, while surreptitiously looking through my Doctor of Ministry course catalog for the class that teaches "Summon Lightning."

Anyhoo, it's important for us to maintain connection with each other, and so our dates are now often in the day.  We recently went to lunch (cheaper) at a restaurant in a nearby office park.  Twenty Nine Forty One is seriously swanky, the kind of place that serves small artsy portions on big drizzled plates.  It's generally out of our price range, and is doubly so now.  But there was a special event, and the price was low, and so we went.  It was delicious, and a nice outing.

On the way out, I stopped and took this picture.  The building the restaurant inhabited is the headquarters for General Dynamics.  General Dynamics is the corporate behemoth that builds, among other things, the M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank.

The sign for the headquarters rests on a familiar spot.  

You see, I've grown up in these parts my whole life.  Years ago, when I was a teen, the office park inhabited by General Dynamics was a partially developed construction site.  It was being developed during the Reagan years, which were a huge boom time for Washington.   Those billions upon billions of dollars we borrowed to spend the Soviet Union into collapse went right to DC, where corporations slurped 'em up.  

Office park high-rises surged up everywhere.  But in 1987, this particular development was not complete.  There was little traffic through it, and it made a great place to drive, park, and...um...do the things teenagers do.

In the last week of senior year, my high school was clearing out junk in preparation for the next year.  Wandering around the halls after school, a friend and I encountered a huge pile of ratty books.  Some were in a trash can.  Some were piled on the floor.  They were all the same book, hundreds upon hundreds of old dog-eared copies of Plato's Republic, finally being replaced after several decades of serving government classes.

So of course, we had to have them.   

We asked the janitor, who said, sure, why the hell not?   That official permission received, we wheeled two huge garbage cans full of Plato out to my Plymouth Valiant, and filled the trunk and the back seat with them, until the rear suspension sagged and wallowed.

That night, we motored over to the construction site.   I pulled the Valiant into an entrance that went nowhere, a driveway built in anticipation of a building that did not yet exist.  We unloaded the car, building a great pyre of spent books on the pavement.  

It didn't take much to get it burning, and for about twenty minutes, the flames soared high, our faces red and bright with the heat as the Republic burned.

As the fire died down, we jumped and leapt through it, the heat of the embers fading but still hot through the soles of the romper-stomper steel-toed boots I wore.

That sign sprouted up on exactly that spot, that very place, where one night the Republic burned to embers.

Memory creates such funny connections.

A Reasonable Decision in Our National Interest

There's been a tension here in D.C. lately that troubles me. Well, there've been many tensions, but this one bugs me more than about 74.375% of other issues. On the surface, it's a little budget thing, but it feels to my admittedly overtuned sensibilities like a harbinger of a potential future. Let me elucidate, and you can tell me if I'm being paranoid. I do tend to be that way, you know.

There is a disagreement rumbling around the community here in DC between the Department of Defense and the Congress. The Secretary of Defense is deeply aware of the major crisis that our national debt will eventually cause. Defense Secretary Gates is particularly concerned that the military will be impacted by this debt, and is pressing for some reductions in military spending. In particular, he wants pay increases and benefits for our troops to be limited to a level that's rationally sustainable. There are also several weapons systems that both he and top military brass want discontinued as cost-savings measures, like the development of an unnecessary new engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or building unneeded transport aircraft.

Arrayed against Gates and top military brass are our elected representatives in Congress. Congressmen and women want to be seen as Supporting Our Troops (tm), and have passed numerous laws increasing the mandated benefits for troops and vets and their families. That's a surefire way to get votes, kids. Surefire vote-getting way number two is to make sure that the defense contractors who have positioned factories and offices in their districts continue to produce the weapons systems that produce jobs for folks who vote.

They haven't raised revenue to pay for those expenses, of course. That would mean breaking their promise to Never Raise Your Taxes (tm). It's not one or two members of Congress who do this. It's the nature of the critter. This is just how our representative democracy works. It may also be how representative democracy finally fails.

I'm pretty progressive, and would unabashedly accept the label "liberal." But when I see this disagreement between our unelected military leaders and our elected representatives, I find myself thinking the military is willing to act in the national interest, and Congress is not. By focusing on their own electability and narrowly drawn local interests, our representatives are making decisions that will cripple us as a nation. This seems obvious. They only do this because we make them do it, of course, but we'd rather forget that. Top brass, well, they're making the hard decisions that need to get made. It's the way the military works. That I should have that response is telling.

What worries me, seeing this, is that eventually the debt will hit the fan. We might see massive cutbacks in spending coupled with an increase in taxes. This would be painful, but would preserve the integrity of our republic. Being the pessimist that I am, I doubt this will happen. We would never, ever, ever elect anyone who would do this. If someone slipped through and started making the changes necessary to turn our debt around, we'd run 'em out on a rail.

More likely, we'll eventually see some form of default. When that happens, things will get bad in a way that makes the market seizure of 2008-2009 look like salad days. In that atmosphere of genuine crisis, I can see...and to a certain extent, feel...the temptation to set aside a clearly broken system of governance for one that gets the job done. If it's an emergency, then emergency measures would need to be taken for the security and well-being of the nation. Would we trust Congress to do this?

Or would we, perhaps, see how patriotic and hard-nosed and well-organized the decisions made by our military leaders can be in a time of crisis? Why not turn things over to them for a while, you know, until things have improved?

I can see how people might think this was a reasonable decision in our national interest.