Power vs. Authority (UPDATED, 9/11)

“Power is the ability to force compliance with one’s demands; authority is the ability to command voluntary obedience.” -- Hannah Arendt


Hannah Arendt was a diligent and widely respected student of totalitarianism. It is not necessary to agree with all, or even most, of her assumptions and conclusions to appreciate the critical distinction she draws between power -- "the capacity to transform a living person into a corpse, which is to say, a thing," as Simone Weil put it -- and authority.

In a free society, power is used only to protect the persons, property, and rights of the innocent, and then only as a last resort after an appeal to authority fails.

The aspirational premise of the republic we have lost was that power would be transmuted into authority through the "consent of the governed," and that the authority thus conferred on governing institutions was revocable -- to the extent that the government itself could be altered or even abolished when necessary to protect individual rights.

It didn't work out that way. Given the history of the singular plague called government, this outcome was hardly surprising. The entire project begun by the Founders was based on the right to revoke consent -- a right they exercised in withdrawing from the British Empire. The exercise of that right is also known as "secession," and the entire point of the event commonly called the Civil War was to abolish that right through the exercise of State power in its most elemental sense: More than a half-million human beings were turned into the things called "corpses" not to free slaves from bondage, but rather to reconquer communities that had chosen to leave a supposedly free union.

Since 1865, as historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel has pointed out, there have been no permanent victories for individual liberty over power.

Today, the malign influence of the Regime ruling us contaminates practically every social institution, through “laws” regulating behavior, speech, and even individual attitudes.
And the behavior of the Regime's armed enforcers -- still called "Police," even though their behavior is now indistinguishable from that of an army of occupation -- is increasingly defined by Lenin's totalitarian formula of exercising "power without limit, resting directly on force.


Back in the Good Old Days, many law-and-order conservatives insisted that the chief domestic threat to liberty came from the efforts of Communist and other subversive groups to undermine the police. In the era of the federalized, militarized, monolithic Homeland Security State, the police themselves are the single most potent threat to individual liberty.

This is not necessarily because their ranks have been filled with degenerates, although the decline in recruiting and performance standards certainly plays a role in our predicament. Rather, it is because law enforcement at every level has embraced the power-centered worldview, in which the role of police is to ensure that people submit to the State.

A spectacular example of this has been captured by 20-year-old Brett Darrow. Last Friday, Darrow captured, on video, an arrogant, abusive, foul-mouthed, illiterate, cretinous, power-intoxicated simian by the name of Sgt. Kenline [actually, Kuehnlein -- see update and correction below] threatening to perjure himself to justify arresting the motorist -- simply because Darrow wasn't properly submissive to somebody wearing a State-issued costume.

"Try and talk back ... to me again," snarled Kenline, who took offense when Darrow politely and compliantly asked what violation justified his detention: Merely asking an agent of the State to justify such an action, you see, is grounds for arrest. And Kenline understands that he has the power -- not the authority, mind you, the power -- to commit acts of violence against Darrow to deprive him of his freedom, and then lie about the circumstances afterward.

"I bet I could say you resisted arrest or something," boasted the officer. "You want to come up with something? I come up with nine things.... You already start your f*****g problems with your attitude. Did we have a bad night boy? Huh? Answer me or I'll lock you up for failure to imply [sic] with a police officer's commands.... You want me to show you? You want me to lock you up to show you I'm right and you're wrong?.... You want me to show you the f*****g law."

Kenline's contrived objection was that Darrow failed to use a turn signal. As Darrow's video record documents, this was a lie: The driver had signaled properly. Kenline also claimed that Darrow had been "swerving back and forth within the roadway" -- another documented lie. Without the video record, Kenline's lies would have held up in court, since -- in defiance of Common Law principles and common sense -- the uncorroborated word of a police officer is considered self-ratifying in court.

Darrow behaved with commendable composure during this entire ordeal, and was released after a few minutes -- and following a nauseatingly paternalistic lecture from a uniformed goon who badly needs to get his back dirty. As Darrow comments, "Looking into this guy's eyes, he was crazy. I was really scared he was going to assault me. I just wonder how many other people have been arrested on these charges

In what passes for Sgt. Kenline's mind, he doesn't need the authority of the law, because as someone exercising power, he is the law. (Go here for a video and transcript of the encounter.)

This isn't the first time Darrow (who is a hero in the cause of civil liberties, but who needs to be a bit more judicious if he wants to avoid becoming a martyr) has experienced and documented the totalitarian mindset that increasingly typifies the police.

The power to treat others as objects inevitably gives rise to sadism. Those who work in law enforcement are hardly immune to this tendency; indeed, there's reason to believe that this profession selects for that personality type.

Witness the comments of a Multnomah, Oregon Sheriff's Deputy (brought to my attention by Radley Balko) who described the sensual thrill he experiences when killing a suspect, or subjecting him to electric torture through the use of a Taser: “Seeing someone get Tasered is second only to pulling the trigger. That is money – puts a smile on your face.”

There are other perks to be enjoyed, apart from sending hot lead or 50,000 volts into a human body.

Didn't like your hamburger? If you're wearing a State-issued costume, you can arrest the short-order cook on a fabricated charge of "reckless conduct."

That's what happened to 20-year-old Kendra Bull of Union City, Georgia, who spent a night in jail and was bailed out on $1,000 bond because an officious pr*ck in uniform wasn't smart enough to complain about his hamburger after the first bite.

(Thanks to The Smoking Gun, we know that the soon-to-be-changed home phone number of Wendell Adams, the aforementioned officious pr*ck in a uniform, is 770-964-1333. Why don't you give the guy a call. Be polite, if that suits you.)

Can't keep track of your money or count your change correctly? If you're a cop, you can throw a conniption fit, assault and pepper-spray the young woman working at the register, and drag her away to jail on fraudulent charges:




The assailant in this video, a rented thug from Dayton Ohio named Michael McDonald (no, not that Michael McDonald), "was cleared of all wrongdoing." Although the city touched up the taxpayers to buy off McDonald's victim, the officer apparently behaved according to department policy.

Don't they all?

UPDATE

Sgt. James Kuehnlein, the foul-mouthed bully in uniform whose demented rant was captured on video by Brett Darrow, has been put on unpaid suspension after Police Chief Scott Uhrig received hundreds of outraged phone calls.

After reviewing the video, Chief Uhrig said "the officer acted inappropriately when he threatened to make up charges, and used a disrespectful tone and inappropriate language," reported STLtoday.com.

"We don't do that," Uhrig said. "Someone either violated the law or they didn't. You don't say, I'll lock you up and then come up with why afterward."

Chief Uhrig is describing the proper conduct and demeanor of a peace officer, as understood a generation ago. Sgt. Kuehnlein modeled the tactics and behavior of the contemporary Homeland Security thug. It is Kuehnlein, not Uhrig (who -- despite his criticism of the abusive cop -- still made a point of questioning Darrow's motives) who represents the wave of the future.


Please be sure to follow the unfolding economic Armageddon at The Right Source, and to check out the Liberty Minute archives.

Perverts With Power, Revisited

Doug Melvin: Sexual deviant, former Homeland Security commissar -- or do I repeat myself?

For those frequently sentenced to commercial air travel, few things are less welcome than the following thought:

The taxpayer-fed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at the airport security checkpoint could be a petty thief or a sexual deviant. And the odds are pretty good that the typical batch of TSA chair-moisteners includes at least one or the other. This makes things quite uncomfortable as TSA screeners paw through one's luggage or conduct invasive personal security inspections.

About a year ago, a TSA airport screener in Ketchum, Idaho was arrested for kidnapping a young boy. Although identified as Robert Joe Harrison Jr., the screener was found to possess at least five separate identities. He was eventually acquitted of kidnapping, but found guilty of child enticement.

The Former TSA screener known as "Robert Joe Harrison, Jr."


After Mr. Harrison (as we'll refer to him for the sake of convenience) was arrested, his federal supervisor in Boise made the familiar and expected noises of outraged moral resolution.

“TSA is a large organization with a large workforce, [and] unfortunately we have an individual who does things that are truly inappropriate, things that are intolerable for TSA,” stated Doug Melvin, Federal Security Director for Idaho. Melvin insisted that the TSA had a “zero tolerance” policy for behavior of this type. He didn't explain how a suspected pederast with five aliases and sets of personal ID could pass a federal background check.

Less than a year after Harrison's arrest, Mr. Melvin has been forced to resign as a result of his own public sexual misconduct.

“The now former Director of the Transportation Security Administration in Boise was arrested last wee at an Idaho Falls hotel,” reported Boise's CBS affiliate KBCI last night (February 27). “Doug Melvin was busted after staff and hotel guests say they saw him walking around naked.”

The police report on the incident recorded that “Melvin entered the swimming area and removed his clothing before walking around, exposing himself.... Melvin was also reportedly masturbating while in front of the windows directly in view of the main elevator.”

Frankie "The Fig" Figueroa

This last bit of behavior resembles the conduct of Frank Figueroa, Melvin's former comrade in the Homeland Security Department. Figueroa, a former high-ranking official in the DHS's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, was head of “Operation Predator,” a nation-wide crackdown on child sex offenders. Thus there was some kind of bizarre symmetry at work when Figueroa was arrested by Tampa police in late 2005 after he exposed and, ah, manipulated himself in the presence of a 16-year-old girl.

As I've said before: Once is an anomaly, twice a coincidence, but three or more instances constitute a pattern.

To the cases of Harrison, Melvin, and Figueroa we can add that of J. Brian Doyle, the former fourth-ranking official in DHS's propaganda directorate, who was arrested for conducting sexually explicit cyber-conversations with what he thought was a cancer-stricken 14-year-old girl. And we shouldn't forget the case of Michael Burks, the Homeland Security official snared in NBC Dateline's “To Catch a Predator” sting roughly a year ago.

The problem, of course, is not that there's a small number of perverts scattered through the DHS's personnel pool like a handful of raisins in several gallons of rice pudding. The deeper cause for concern is the culture of impunity that characterizes that elephantine bureaucracy – a sense that those who work therein are made of holier, more refined stuff than the hoi polloi.

One perfectly suitable example of this attitude can be found in the fact that the highest commendation for ethics that TSA can bestow is the “John W. Magaw Values Award.”

“Who was John W. Magaw,” you ask, your brows embracing in puzzled non-recognition?

Magaw was the first director of the TSA, appointed to that gig in late 2001 after a less-than-laudable stint as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). The fact that TSA named an award after a living, recently retired head of the agency is a nauseating bit of Soviet-esque sycophancy. More troubling in this specific case is Magaw's own behavior, which apparently typifies the “values” the TSA is supposed to embrace.

Magaw was head of the Secret Service's presidential detail in 1993 when Bill Clinton appointed him to head the scandal-plagued ATF following the Waco massacre. For six years, until his lateral move to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1999, Magaw did his best to delay, divert, distract, misdirect, and otherwise obstruct efforts to expose the ATF's misbehavior in the events leading up to the atrocities at Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Magaw also successfully dissipated public and congressional outrage over the 1995 revelations of the ATF's annual “Good Old Boys Roundup,” an event that “included racist signs and slogans and skits that included simulated sex acts and torture between white and black-faced participants,” as one account summarizes. Although sponsored by the ATF, this event – sort of an annual dress rehearsal for Abu Ghraib – reportedly included participants from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, the Secret Service, US Marshals Service, and other federal agencies. Apart from one congressional hearing in July 1995, nothing of any consequence was done about the “Roundup” events.

During a 1995 Senate hearing into the slaughter at Ruby Ridge, Magaw adamantly defended the ATF informant who – according to a 1993 court verdict in Idaho – had entrapped Randy Weaver as part of a scheme to blackmail him into becoming a federal informant. Magaw insisted, once again despite vedicts to the contrary -- that the behavior of ATF officials in the Weaver case “was lawful and proper in every respect."

Asked by Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) why he persisted in ignoring the jury's findings to the contrary, Magaw invoked the principle of statist solidarity: "Do you believe Randy Weaver--or do you believe the federal agents who have sworn to tell the truth and are carrying out a career in this government?"

Therein lies the true perversity at the heart of the regime Magaw served so dutifully: The conceit that those in the State's employ are innately superior to, and deserve dominion over, the “mundanes” who are not agents of the Leviathan. As one of Magaw's Soviet soul-mates put it, “To us, everything is permitted....”

This would apparently include public acts of sexual degeneracy and predation by agents of the Homeland Security apparatus, as long as those committing them aren't caught. Doug “Flash” Melvin and his erstwhile TSA comrades insist, his sudden resignation from the agency for “personal” reasons has nothing to do with his sexual exhibitionism.

(If you're interested in the previous three installments in the "Perverts With Power" series, look here, here, and here.)

A quick note: Tomorrow I will be on "Iron Sharpens Iron" with Chris Arnzen on New York City's WNYG.

And be sure to visit The Right Source for freedom-centered news and commentary.

Mike Nifong: Your Time Is Coming....

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs, Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword, The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe, Become them with one half so good a grace as mercy does.

If he had been as you and you as he, You would have slipt like him; but he, like you, Would not have been so stern.... Why, all the souls that were were forfeit once; And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy. How would you be, If He, which is the top of judgment, should
But judge you as you are? O, think on that; And mercy then will breathe within your lips,
Like man new made. ...

O, it is excellent To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

The fair Sister Isabella holds forth on the virtues of mercy to Lord Angelo, who -- preoccupied with "horizontal" thoughts -- isn't listening.

Finally, and not a moment too soon, the North Carolina Bar Association is taking punitive action against the malignant Mike Nifong, the corrupt, mirror-worshiping prosecutor driving the Duke University non-rape case.

Nifong screws his face into a parody of piety while laboring to send innocent young men to prison.

In his lust to bag several specimens of the most elusive of legal prey – the “great white defendant” -- Nifong suppressed exculpatory DNA evidence, misrepresented the fact of the case, and fed a steady diet of misinformation to media flacks eager to join the safari. With malicious calculation he has exploited currents of racial and sexual collectivist grievance in the hope that they could carry him to fame and, perhaps, political fortune.

Needles to say, justice played no role whatsoever, and mercy even less, in Nifong's machinations.

Dr. William Anderson of Frostburg State University, who has diligently cataloged Nifong's offenses against law and decency, points out that the Durham County D.A.'s conduct in this case reflects a maxim cherished by both state and federal prosecutors: “Charges are like spaghetti – throw them against the wall and see what sticks.”

This explains, among other things, why Nifong seeded the media with dark hints that the spoiled, rich white lacrosse players had plied the poor black stripper with the “date rape drug”; why he conspired with corrupt, thuggish cops to arrest a cab driver on a bogus shoplifting charge in an effort to suppress the driver's exculpatory testimony; why, after his “victim”/witness suddenly “couldn't remember” being raped, Nifong dropped the rape charge while keeping the others....

None of this has stuck, but three innocent young men and their families have been put through hell. Which is why Nifong should be thrown against a wall, repeatedly.

I'm not kidding. This is a case in which corporal punishment of some sort is necessary. Professional humiliation and civil penalties are not adequate. Nifong deserves a beating, which – unfortunately – isn't a legal option in our system.

More's the pity, because Nifong is not an anomalous “rogue prosecutor”; he's actually quite representative of his professional caste.

As Dr. Anderson points out, “anyone who has followed the predations of Rudy Giuliani and Elliot Spitzer in their `crusades to clean up Wall Street' knows something about the filing of bogus or questionable charges.” That “something,” of course, is that creative abuse of prosecutorial power offers a fast track to political success.

Just ask Governor Spitzer, or former NYC Mayor and future US President (he hopes) Giuliani.

For decades, Wall Street Journal reporter Dorothy Rabbinowitz has chronicled the legal atrocities wrought by prosecutors who have ripped communities to shreds through bogus child abuse prosecutions.

Like Nifong, this “busy army of prosecutors” has been “uninterested in proofs of innocence, [and] willing to suppress any [that are] found," she writes. "They built case after headline-making case charging the mass molestation of small children, and managed to convict scores of innocent Americans on the basis of testimony no mind could credit. Law officers who routinely violated requirements of due process in their effort to obtain a conviction, they grasped the special advantage that was theirs: that for a prosecutor dealing with molestation, and wearing the mantle of avenger, there was no such thing as excess, no limits to what could be said of the accused. In court, rules could be bent, any charges presented, and nonexistent medical evidence proclaimed as proof positive of the accusation.”

Unduly convinced of their righteousness, unaccountable for all practical purposes, utterly immune to reprisal, the typical crusading prosecutor's attitude toward an innocent defender was akin to that displayed by Lord Angelo, deputy to Duke Vincentio of Vienna, to Isabella in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. Angelo, an official of sterling reputation, was temporarily given plenipotentiary authority by the Duke, and with great generosity of soul he proceeded to bless the city with his own abundant virtue.

Or something like that.

“We must not make a scarecrow of the law, setting it up to fear the birds of prey, and let it keep one shape, till custom make it their perch and not their terror,” he explained. So when he learned of a citizen who had impregnated his inamorata without benefit of clergy, Angelo dusted off a law, long fallen into desuetude, making fornication a capital crime.

Isabella, the condemned man's sister, came to plead on his behalf. A pious and virtuous woman, Isabella was also quite lovely. These attributes weren't lost on Angelo, who offered her a fascinating plea bargain: He would commute the death sentence if Isabella would sleep with him.

When Isabella – who easily overmatched Angelo both in intellect and character – told the corrupt magistrate that she would expose his corruption, Angelo smugly gave voice to thoughts akin to those that must animate prosecutors of Nifong's ilk:

Who will believe thee, Isabel? My unsoil'd name, the austereness of my life, My vouch against you, and my place i' the state, Will so your accusation overweigh, That you shall stifle in your own report And smell of calumny.... As for you, Say what you can, my false o'erweighs your true.

Because of his “place in the state,” Angelo insisted, “my false overweighs your true.”

Every single day – perhaps every single hour – officials in this country act on that assumption, stealing the freedom, property, and the very lives of innocent people.

“Prosecutors are like President Bush,” writes Paul Craig Roberts. “They absolutely refuse to admit that they ever make a mistake and have to be forced to disgorge their innocent victims. Nothing makes a prosecutor more angry than to have to give back a wrongfully convicted person's life.”

Nifong's would-be victims have lived under the threat of spending thirty years in prison for a crime they didn't commit. Were this a sane and just society, they would be given an opportunity to confront Nifong in person, and express to him, in any way they see fit, what they think of his behavior.