The price of government shouldn’t be paid in our liberties

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

For starters, the primary point of contention in my initial letter was that the speed traps I encountered on June 19 were hardly used to combat existing traffic maladies — say, an inordinate amount of car accidents and the like — so much as an easy way to generate revenue. Indeed, it was part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s ‘‘Smooth Operator” program, an initiative funded via gross misuse of federal tax dollars to enforce speeding and seat belt violations. If nothing else, if the state of Maryland wishes to engage in such programs, it can pay for them itself; taxpayers in Idaho shouldn’t have to help foot the bill too. And almost every commuter knows that local accidents are more often the result of clogged transportation arteries (e.g., the Gov. Thomas Johnson Bridge) than lead-foot drivers.

But that aside, allow me to respond to what I consider a much more pressing issue: the apparent ambivalence of so many citizens to the encroaching power of government. To be sure, I am not condemning police officers, as Frank Marquart implies in a retort, but our seeming obsession to increasingly cede our liberties to the state, of which our officers are simply an arm of enforcement.

Case in point: Mr. Marquart writes, ‘‘Law-abiding citizens aren’t caught in speed enforcement zones, DUI checkpoints or by red-light cameras.” Technically he is correct. However, I don’t often contest the definition of a lawbreaker so much as the regulation that has rendered him unlawful. In short, some laws are unjust. From mandating the wearing of seat belts and motorcycle helmets to banning smoking in private bars and restaurants, the state has no right to seize our private property rights — inherent privileges that allow us to govern our property as we see fit so long as it does no harm to others.

It is ignorance on stilts to extrapolate from my arguments that I advocate an anarchic environment where drunk and reckless driving should be legal, as yet another respondent implied. Because enforcement of speed limits is arbitrary at best, it might be smarter to focus on drivers who gratuitously abuse speed limits when the roads are less populated and turn, say, Route 235 into a racetrack after 11 p.m. Of course, that might not yield quite as many citations as rush hour commuters who clip along at 10 mph over the limit.

Few things, however, are as liberty-abusive as sobriety checkpoints, which have been ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court and used by lawmakers to enforce drunk driving laws. Amazingly, citizens are robbed of the presumption of innocence — safeguards (rightly) afforded even violent criminals — as well as protections against unreasonable searches and the right to a jury trial. Given that the legal threshold for a DUI in Maryland is .08 and sure to fall before rising, this will only get worse.

Mr. Marquart prefers to offer a non sequitur as argument, however, suggesting that perhaps if only I’d have lost a loved one to a drunk driver that I’d more willingly denounce the protections guaranteed by the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments (as if deaths by other means are any easier to bear).

The ‘‘if you’re not guilty, you have nothing to worry about” canard is a favorite catchphrase of those who either endorse the usurpation of private property rights or are gullible enough not to realize superfluous regulations increasingly punish the innocent in addition to the guilty.

Sorry. I don’t buy it. We can be sure government will work diligently to further erode more of the liberties we currently enjoy, so I think I’ll stick to the side of freedom.

Trevor Bothwell, Dowell