Statism—Super-Sized and Weaponized

Every generation has its Cassandras. We are fortunate that Mark Steyn, certainly one of ours, at least makes the slouch toward Gomorrah a rollicking good time. Then again, if you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.

That is certainly true of Steyn’s most recent National Review Online column, “The Drift toward Despotism,” a deeply troubling reflection on the relationship between citizens and their “rulers” in America, circa 2013:

David Eckert was pulled over by police in Deming, N.M., for failing to come to a complete halt at a stop sign in the Walmart parking lot. He was asked to step out of the vehicle, and waited on the sidewalk. Officers decided that they didn’t like the tight clench of his buttocks, a subject on which New Mexico’s constabulary is apparently expert, and determined that it was because he had illegal drugs secreted therein. So they arrested him, and took him to Gila Regional Medical Center in neighboring Hidalgo County, where Mr. Eckert was forced to undergo two abdominal X-rays, two rectal probes, three enemas, and defecate thrice in front of medical staff and representatives of two law-enforcement agencies, before being sedated and subjected to a colonoscopy — all procedures performed against his will and without a valid warrant. Alas, Mr. Eckert’s body proved to be a drug-free zone, and so, after twelve hours of detention, he was released….Deming police chief Brandon Gigante says his officers did everything “by the book.”

Deming, N.M.:  Safe from drugs—and the United States Constitution.

Steyn also considers Miriam Carey, the unarmed woman gunned down near the White House last month. There were no indications that Carey, who led police on a chase along Pennsylvania Avenue, presented a deadly threat to officers—yet her car, and the young mother, ended up bullet-riddled.

I’ve mentioned previously the “paramilitarization” of American life. That trend becomes even more alarming when those waving the weapons no longer deign to distinguish between fellow citizen and foe. Or as Steyn puts it: “There is a despotic trend in American government. Too many of our rulers and their enforcers reflexively see the citizenry primarily as a threat.”

But it’s not citizens doing the threatening. From sea to shining sea, it’s the average Joe who is most likely to find himself on the uncomfortable end of an M-15.

That’s statism—super-sized and weaponized.