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C-dub wrote:I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now since finishing this book. One of the arguments the author makes is that illegal drugs are a victim-less crime. I would mostly agree with this were it not for the other crimes drug users commit to pay for their habit and the numbers of kids that get drawn into drug use and become addicted and or die, but that sure doesn't warrant the use of force described in this book that escalated over the past four decades in the "war" on drugs.

The author also links the jargon and sentiment to the "war" on terror today. After the attacks yesterday on London the talk is again all about what LE needs to do to prevent these types of attacks. I now hesitate when I think about what that will mean and what new power or authority LE will be given to attempt to do that.

There's a program series running right now on one of the channels like NatGeo, or Discovery (I don't remember which), which chronicles the War on Drugs up to the present, and its effect on various people. For instance, there's an episode on the rise and fall of El Chapo. The series even touches on Fast & Furious......not in any great detail, but as a corollary to the War on Drugs, which I will call "WOD" from now on for typing's sake. The problem is that, in an effort to eradicate a societal scourge, gov't is serially violating the Constitution in a number of areas. Examples: Asset Forfeiture is a specific product of the WOD which robs people of their property rights without due process; Fast & Furious tried to use the WOT as a thinly veiled attempt to attack the 2nd Amendment rights of people who had nothing to do with the WOD.....in fact, directly causing the deaths of innocent people who had nothing to do with the WOD; the WOD has been serially used (as pointed out by the book which is the topic of this thread) to abuse the 4th Amendment in other ways besides Asset Forfeiture, to the point where it resulted in the deaths of innocent homeowners with total lack of accountability on the part of their murderers. These gov'tal attitudes have carried over into the WOT, where people are spied on by NSA and other agencies, without their being "persons of interest", let alone under specific suspicion of anything. People are placed on the "no-fly' list, without any explanation for why, without a shred of due process, and without any legal recourse to rectify the situation which is within the financial means of most citizens. I could go on.

What generally gets left undiscussed in any detail by conservatives, liberals, and the Democrat Steno Pool (AKA "the media"), is what will happen if the WOD were somehow ended. The demand isn't instantly going to go away. We have a WOD because there was first a demand for drugs, and in the strictest sense, El Chapo (I'm told that's Spanish for "the Chapo" ) and his ilk are merely being good capitalists and fulfilling the demand. This speaks to two things, what is so all-fired bad about the real world that people can't deal with it and need that chemical vacation, and what happens to all those people who are currently poisoning themselves? They are not going to go away. They are going to continue using, and in the cases of those who are more completely addicted, they are going to continue committing robberies, prostitution, and other criminal violations of the law in order to obtain the money necessary to support their addictions. Do we throw ALL of them in prison? Do we agree to spend a portion of our annual enforcement/prosecution/incarceration budget on detox and addiction treatment instead? Are there structural issues with our society and culture which need to be examined and addressed in order to eradicate the demand? And over and above all of that, are we willing to abandon the constitutional principles on which the nation is founded, if that is what it would take to accomplish a transition from "war" to "peacetime" status with regard to drugs?

I don't think it is possible. In the same way that a single comet strike might have been a global dinosaur killer, it may turn out that the WOD was a bullet in the heart of the Constitution, and the WOT is the "el presidente" between it's eyes.

This is a separate discussion, but it seems painfully obvious to me that the gov't is out of control. If the voters won't or can't rein it in at the polls, and if politicians campaign promises don't extend past Election Day, then sooner or later The People are going to get out of control, and it is going to be really, REALLY ugly. And as has been pointed out elsewhere in other threads and articles, the current effort by the left to nullify the election is a de-facto challenge to the voters whose votes won that election. When you tell half the country that their votes don't count when they legally won, according to constitutional guidelines, then you've also told them that they have no other recourse but violence. As it happens, the side that is being disenfranchised by the nullification efforts is also the side that owns most of the guns - FAR more guns than are owned by LEO agencies or the military, or any other source of federal force that the left mistakenly thinks that it can count on to enforce that disenfranchisement and make it stick.

So far, the violations of rights documented in this book are largely unopposed by the citizenry. Oh sure, the individuals affected and their friends protest mightily.......on Facebook and other Internet forums.....but so far the great body of The People has been unwilling to do much more than shout words. What is really needed are some "Battles of Athens" breaking out all over, which would either signal to gov't that it is time to back down, OR signal to The People that it is time to resist......with violence if necessary. So far, I don't know that the American citizenry has what it takes to do that. BUT..... if the left (or the right, for that matter) succeeds in nullifying elections that have been won fair and square by constitutional means, then Katy bar the door.

I've had to learn to find my optimism in other things, because I have no confidence that either the WOD or the WOT end with more freedom for Americans.

Abraham wrote:I'm almost finished with the book.

Over the years, I've read a lot of horror from H.G.Wells to Stephen King to Clive Baxter and on and on...

Of all of those books, this is the MOST horrifying!

I had no idea...

Me neither. I mean, I knew that there have been a few botched raids over the years, but nowhere near the shear volume that actually happened. And the extreme disconnect from reality of the politicians who back these policies is stunning.......as is the top down unapologetic refusal to accept accountability for the murders of innocent private citizens in their own homes. It's insane.

Abraham wrote:Plus, I do a lot of my reading downloaded on a Nook, electronic book, as small print and I don't get along anymore.

Abraham, I'm reading this book using the Kindle app on my iPad. You can set your preferred font display size in the Kindle app. I don't know if/how it would work for a Nook.

Sport Coach, I'll check out hoopladigital. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm currently about a quarter of the way through a book which I am enjoying very much, and thought I would recommend it to anyone interested - "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces", by Radley Balco (Amazon.com). It was published in July of 2013, so it is already a little bit dated, but it covers events recent enough to still be relevant. Basically, it is a history of the increasing militarization of police forces, with very detailed descriptions of the political and legal decisions which drove that process. The book is completely apolitical, in the sense that it doesn't seem to favor one political party over another. We find scoundrels and ne'er do wells in both parties. It delves fairly deeply into how so many "crime bills" with egregiously unconstitutional components within were a response to the exigencies of political campaigning and/or personal failings. We have conservatives pushing these bills in response to public perceptions of root causes of crime - which were inaccurate - and liberal politicians cosponsoring them to offset (and bury) personal peccadillos in the headlines..........and visa versa. When studied dispassionately from a distance, it is ludicrous. The author also gives a fairly detailed look at the historical development of police forces, going back to the Roman Empire and earlier, and also at what happened to those societies as policing became more formally and tightly integrated into the cultures. It's quite fascinating.

It is important for the reader to understand that the author is NOT "anti-cop". Early on in the book, he says the following:

Before we begin, a few organizational notes are in order. First, this is not an “anti-cop” book. Although it includes plenty of anecdotes about bad cops, there are plenty of good cops. Some of them are interviewed in this book. The fact is that we need cops, and there are limited situations in which we need SWAT teams. If anything, this is an anti-politician book. Bad cops are the product of bad policy. And policy is ultimately made by politicians. A bad system loaded with bad incentives will unfailingly produce bad cops. The good ones will never enter the field in the first place, or they will become frustrated and leave police work, or they’ll simply turn bad. At best, they’ll have unrewarding, unfulfilling jobs. This book explores the consequences of having cops who are too angry and too eager to kick down doors and who approach their jobs with entirely the wrong mind-set, but with an eye toward identifying and changing the policies that allow such people to become cops in the first place—and that allow them to flourish in police work.

Rather, it is a book about bad policy-making by intellectually dishonest politicians, including iconic figures from both major parties, and the literally deadly impact that sometimes has on the lives of Americans of all stripes, who have literally done no wrong. Cops are depicted for the most part as merely the (often unenthusiastic) enforcers of these bad policies, who sometimes find themselves in the untenable position of enforcing laws which violate the individual citizen's innate cultural and historical understanding of common law and human rights.

If anything, I would say that this book helps me to better understand what a difficult line officers have, the history behind their directives; and also to be more demanding of their leadership for better hiring and training practices; and to be WAY more demanding of the politicians who rely on police to enforce the means of getting them re-elected, to demand that they begin to repeal and redirect their efforts into directions more consistent with the Constitution. It has driven the nail into the coffin of any regard I might have had for allegedly "conservative" SCOTUS justices. It also makes me more proud of my decision to become a political independent and not swear my fealty to any party ever again.......3rd parties included......by registering as a party voter. It also reminds of me a favorite quote from H.L. Mencken: "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under".

If the book has any political "slant" at all, I would describe it as mildly libertarian, although as far as I've read to this point, the author has not mentioned libertarianism, the Libertarian Party, or libertarian politicians. He does address certain favorite libertarian themes, such as the futility of the "war on drugs".......and most other "war on [place name here]" policies. He also spends a fair amount of time describing how "no-knock" raids became lawful through the political process. But he is also honest about, and supports with tons of documentation, exactly why and how public perception of crime - often inaccurate - is both drives and is informed by legislative "wars on whatever", which in turn are usually about the aggregation of power, at the expense of the Constitution. He equally distributes both blame and praise among both parties. My impression so far is that the author's primary allegiance is to the Constitution, and parties be hanged.

How far we have strayed. Anyway, I highly recommend this book to anyone who cares about these matters.