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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Today folks proudly bask in a glow of higher status by believing that they have more control over their government. They believe democracy puts them in charge, and that a “rule of law” drastically discourages arbitrary applications of authority power. They are deluded:

Everything (before the delusion bit) in that paragraph is completely true for the majority of Americans. The applications of power you mention are no more arbitrary applications of authority power were the actions that transformed us from the society/government we were in colonial days to the one we are today even though we didn't get from the original meaning of the constitution to where we are today via a rigorous formal process of crossing parlimentary t's and dotting constitutional i's.

Ultimately it's pretty silly to think of constitutional rights as being what protects us from arbitrary applications of power. I mean the men with the guns could always theoretically (as they did under Jackson) simply say "fuck that" to the established legal norms and demand you do what they wanted anyway. In the end analysis legal and constitutional rights are simply one way of ensuring a continuing cultural consensus on acceptable and unacceptable official behavior. When the meaning of the constitution evolves (as empirically it does) it doesn't require enter some period of legal chaos because the real bulwark against arbitrary application of authority, the cultural/traditional norms, are always present even while undergoing change officials don't think they can get away with blatant deviations from this norm and thus don't.

I'm VERY unhappy about it but drug law seizures are unfortunately not in violation of our cultural norms about official behavior. The reason such seizures continue despite the overwhelmingly clear constitutional case against them is preciscely the fact that the people (or at least those middle class and above) tacitly approve or at least don't violently object to such programs.

Indeed, I would say a correct description of the situation is that there is an unwritten societal understanding that says these forfeiture laws shall only be used against certain classes of people. Officials don't get in trouble for violating the letter of the law or constitution but for violating these social norms and in this case the norm says you don't fuck with middle class 'respectable' white people whose kids get caught in the car with weed the way you do with poor blacks and that's the protection people have.

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