Strained Gnats

Freedom is a very expensive thing in every possible way you might define the word "expensive". It’s expensive financially, socially, philosophically, and politically. At least.

But that’s okay because in America, freedom is our thing, our shtick, our raison d’être.

Tragically, confounding and confusing our attempts to actually DO freedom is that it’s very difficult to get a firm grip on what freedom actually IS. Freedom, apparently, is slippery. Which I guess accounts for how anyone could say we were " … conceived in liberty and dedicated the proposition that all men are created equal" while institutionalizing slavery and denying basic citizenship rights to women. Oops.

And wouldn’t you know it, there’s no race memory when it comes to understanding the complexities and nuances of freedom, never mind a clear understanding of exactly what it is you have to do to keep a good, firm grip on it. With the advent of every new generation, everything that we’ve learned about freedom goes right out the window and we have to start over from scratch. Which also means that, with each new generation, we have the opportunity to get it wrong again and to be exposed to the risk of having the definition of freedom co-opted by ideologues seeking to further their own policy agendas. Or simply casually throwing our freedoms away because we didn’t realize how important they were. Oops again.

A particularly onerous lesson which must be constantly relearned are the inherent dangers of becoming overly enamored with efficiency or political expediency or the delightful political fun of social engineering. Such guilty pleasures almost always come at a direct cost in freedom.

Personally, I’d have to say that such subtle notions are lost on our current collective mentality.

I’ll use a personal experience to illustrate my point.

I am one of the lucky winners of the Seattle ticket-in-the-mail anti-lottery for going too fast through a school zone. Apparently, I went shrieking through a school zone at a blistering 26 miles an hour. Counting penalties and processing fees, that’s about a $200 ticket. No warnings for me, evidently.

On the face of it, all seems right with the world. A person should not go speeding through a school zone even if "speeding" is a 6-mph medium jog over the speed limit. (I do have to admit that my perverse, reflexively rebellious side wishes I had gotten more speeding value for my lawbreaking dollar.) Self-righteous people everywhere, rejoice. And, my personal $200 financial tragedy aside, the problem of people speeding through school zones is evidently epidemic because I share my fate with some 6,000 other folk similarly nailed in recent weeks.

So this must be a good thing, right? Scofflaws getting their just desserts, wholesale, and safer kids busting out all over. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Glad you asked.

Firstly, the evidentiary bar has been dropped through the floor.

The "evidence" against me is a photograph with descriptive text indicating the date/time and my speed and a statement from the operating officer declaring that it’s all true. Setting the officers credibility aside for a moment, exactly what sort of evidentiary force did the photograph with descriptive text add to the equation? It’s a still PHOTOGRAPH, not a movie. A picture of my car on a street is not like a picture of me knocking over a bank or a liquor store where the content of the photograph actually depicts the apparent criminal activity. My alleged crime was that of speeding, and a still photograph doesn’t show speeding. The SAME EXACT still picture could also be depicting me stalled at a dead stop in the middle of the street or going 90 miles an hour instead of 26.

The descriptive text accompanying the photograph is only as good as the operating officer’s say so. May as well just settle for the officer’s say so by itself because, essentially, it’s just the officer’s assertions written down and stuck on the picture. It doesn’t add any evidentiary value in and of itself.

Secondly, this entire approach to catching speeders steals the accused’s right to speak in their own defense for all practical purposes. Ordinarily, I would say something like "imagine being accused of a crime and being denied the right to speak on your own behalf" except that you don’t have to imagine it. Just get one of these photographic speeding tickets and you can experience it for yourself.

Think about it. Whenever you have received a traffic infraction in the past, back when you still got personal contact with an actual police officer when you got your ticket, you have always been an active participant in the process. You’re THERE, in the moment, actively paying attention and witnessing all of the facts carefully and remembering them for the future, perhaps even discussing the details of the incident with the citing officer at the time. You’re fully cognitively aware of what’s going on and if there’s anything hinky with what’s happening to you, you’re aware of it at the time and can carefully examine the situation. Was someone driving erratically and you were trying to avoid them at the time? Was there a moving van parked in front of the blinking school zone light so you didn’t see it and didn’t know you were in a school zone? When the red light came on in your rearview mirror, did you check your speed and it showed you weren’t speeding and so you think the officer’s radar is is mis-calibrated or his radar must’ve targeted a different car?

But with a photograph-based speeding ticket, you don’t find out until about 10 days later that you’ve even been accused. You have absolutely no chance to gather evidence to defend yourself at the time the alleged crime was committed. About the only thing YOU can do is appear as a character witness for yourself. You can trust me when I tell you that’s not going to be very effective in court.

I can barely remember being in the citation area at all much less any potentially exculpatory details. Again, while I would pretty clearly remember robbing a bank or knocking over a liquor store, who can remember exactly what they were doing along an arbitrary stretch of road 10 days ago? I’m a very stodgy, safe driver, very prone to obeying traffic laws. But can I honestly say I now remember that specific date, time and arbitrary stretch of road clearly enough to actually swear to the details in a court of law? No way, and the State (aka City of Seattle) knew that very well in coming up with this system. You can practically see the administrative avarice collecting in puddles.

Oh, technically, I can have my day in court if I want. And say what, exactly? "Um....uh...er....I really don’t know if I was speeding or not"? Effectively, and very efficiently, any ability I MIGHT have had to mount an actual defense of myself is gone before I step in the court door. Any right I might have had to speak for myself is reduced to whining about how unfair it all is.

And if you’re someone who thinks that we should all just accept the State’s word on it when citizens are accused of crimes, then you’re a fool and I’d be delighted to tell that to you to your face. The State gets it wrong all the time. They got it wrong in one detail in my actual case. They insisted I had not mailed in my required response and the state employee I was working with got all ramped up to jam extra penalties down my throat when I produced my certified mail receipt. The resentment from the employee for my having successfully defended myself against additional fees was palpable.

And why have courts at all if the State is always to be trusted, if their word is sufficient?

You can believe me when I tell you that these two flaws are not the only flaws I discovered with this ticketing system. I haven’t covered the rest of them because of article size limitations.

So celebrate, law-abiding citizens everywhere. Our children are much safer today. And it has only cost us a lowering of the bar of acceptable evidence and the complete repudiation of the notion of speaking in one’s own defense.

Those with a more subtle political perception will recognize this sort of thing as just an everyday example of how governments work to erode our basic rights and freedoms in favor of administrative expediency. We’re being conditioned to believe that it’s an either/or situation, that to achieve some social benefits we’re simply going to have to give up some of our freedoms and rights. I mean, don’t you WANT to keep children safe? As if such a worthwhile objective could not be achieved WITHOUT having to give up protections and freedoms in the process.

And don’t forget, when we swallow such a poisoned policy pill, we are establishing a "precedent", a weapon far more effective than a bomb, that may be leveraged in other policy situations more politically useful for the government in the future. In America, a relinquished right or freedom is the political/legal gift that just keeps on giving, as far as the government is concerned. It is the essence of the slippery slope.

I am neither angry, resentful, or disappointed in my government for behaving in this shameful way. It’s in its nature, no insult intended. The real fault lies with us, the citizenry, for being insufficiently vigilant. That is our job, honestly.

So the thing that surprises (and disheartens me) most about this whole experience is the type of responses I get from people on this issue:

1. Yeah, it’s a racket.
2. If you don’t want to get a ticket then you shouldn’t speed.
3. I’m glad they’re finally doing something to stop people from speeding through school zones.
4. You’re just mad because you got nailed with a speeding ticket.
5. Got a tinfoil hat to go with that conspiracy theory?

While all of the above may be true, it clearly shows a complete inability to perceive the vastly more important philosophical issues behind the mundane practical elements. Such people would have been technically correct if they pointed out that Rosa Parks would have gotten to her destination just as quickly if she had quietly sat in the back of the bus.

When it comes to American politics and the legalities of rights and freedoms, nothing is EVER what it seems on the surface; the implications and indirect ramifications are always far more critical. Because of this essential truth, there is no such thing as straining at gnats when it comes to our rights and freedoms. Simple things like where you sit on a bus or having the opportunity to sign your traffic citation make all the difference in the world between a country of rights and freedoms ... and something less.

How sad that what we have now is something less.