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September 18, 2007

Student Arrest Shows We've Lost Our Freedom

I think we're toast.

I have just watched this disturbing video and this follow-up video of a student at the University of Florida getting arrested and tasered after running overtime on his question and then asking John Kerry whether he was a member of Skull and Bones. Yes, he resisted arrest, but it was because he knew very well he should not have been arrested. The police overreacted to someone who was being verbally provocative but who posed no threat to anyone. Now he is being charged with a felony for supposedly inciting a riot. Problem is the only riot was by the police. None of the students joined in. And in my opinion, that is a problem. There was a time when they would have, and I think they should have.

See, it's not the arrest and tasering that make me say we're toast. I've seen many occasions first hand where the police exceeded their authority, lied, manipulated, and behaved unethically so I have come to expect it of them. The problem is we're letting them get away with it. Too few are challenging the infringement on our civil rights.

Watch the video again and this time look at the audience reaction. The audience sits by passively, as if they don't recognize or care that Big Brother is stomping all over the civil rights of one of their own. They are like dumb sheep. Are they stunned? Amused? Confused? Beaten down? It is difficult to tell. Imagine the scene if the students had en masse stood up and protested, or even swarmed over the police officers and forced them to stand down. Why wouldn't they do that? Well, of course, because the police are armed and someone might have been hurt or even killed, and certainly there would have been property damage and arrests. And because we've come to believe in this country that life is more important than liberty. Besides, we're supposed to respect the nice policeman because he is our friend. Ahem.

Somewhere along the way we have developed into a culture characterized by learned helplessness. You can even hear it in John Kerry's almost helpless tone. A quietness. A call for calm in the face of gross injustice. Let's not get upset. Let's not stand up for what is right. Let the nice policemen do their jobs and the rest of us will go on as if it never happened. Everybody just stay cool. It will be OK. I must admit, his failure to exercise any sort of authority in the situation surprised me.

This August 2005 story from PBS touches on the problem we're facing with today's youth. It isn't that young people today are not angry, because they are angry. It's that they don't know what they can do about it. They've somehow internalized the notion that they can't really do anything about it. So they just feel angry and hopeless.

We desperately need the youthful passions of today's young people to save our Constitution. We need a few good riots. We need to have the heavy hand of the civil rights-defying police put down. We need angry people surrounding the White House and flooding the halls of Congress. We need the masses to rise up, not just to be angry.

Does that notion bother you? Are you afraid we would be sending our young people into danger to advise them this way? Do memories of the Kent State University riots prevent us from doing what is right? We're so quick to send our young people off to die in wars abroad for causes we don't understand. Why do we teach them not to take risks here at home to fight for causes we do understand? Why do we continue to ignore the man behind the curtain?

Oops, I guess I'd better be careful or I could get arrested for inciting a riot.

Posted by Becky at September 18, 2007 10:25 AM