WEEKLY COLUMN:
JDM vs the WORLD

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FINE PRINT

Earlier this month, an 80-year-old man named Lester Campbell was mugged while riding the elevator to his Bronx apartment. The struggle went down like a bad transaction, with Mr. Campbell buying a bruised cheek and a bloodshot eye for the low, low price of $262 in cashed out Social Security. The thief might’ve made off with more, however, were it not for the fact Mr. Campbell was packing. Thrown to the ground, he fired a shot that bounced off the ceiling and sent the thief running like the coward his mother gave birth to.

According to the local ABC news affiliate, Mr. Campbell now faces two misdemeanor charges: (1) For criminal—i.e., unlicensed—possession of the .38 caliber handgun he used to scare off his assailant; and (2) For the spare pistol cops found scouring his apartment later that day.

Punished, in other words, for doing the authorities’ job.

Also earlier this month, the principal of Stratford High School in Goose Creek, South Carolina, teamed up with police to unleash more than a dozen gun-toting officers on 107 unsuspecting students walking down the hall. The cops, according to 14-year-old Jared Weeks, as quoted by CNN, “kind of pushed us against the wall and started searching us.” Indeed, they forced kids to their knees, even placed some in handcuffs, while a canine unit sniffed backpacks for drugs. Here’s the kicker, though: There were no drugs.

Oops.

So why is it the cops can come in guns a-blazin’ for a bunch of 14-year-olds, but when it’s an 80-year-old in an elevator, he’s supposed to just lay down and die? Why does one unlicensed gun give cops the right to rummage through Mr. Campbell’s junk drawers for another? The guy’s 80-years-old. God bless him. He’s probably got enough trouble getting in and out of bed every day. Do we honestly think he’ll go postal?

And as for Stratford High, what gives state workers the right to throw kids against lockers and scar their fragile minds? Why, because they might have drugs on them? Well, they might have boxes of Wheat Thins, too, but you don’t beat the bejeezus out of them just because you’re hungry.

Half the kids I went to school with did drugs, and plenty screwed their lives up. Want to guess who’s problem that was? Let me give you a hint: Not mine.

I mean, I hate to sound callous here, but while my ill-fated peers were off doing God-knows-what in the boy’s room, I was busy learning about natural selection in the science class next-door. Know what I mean? And it’s not that I don’t feel bad for burnouts. I do. But why are our tax dollars being used to bust pre-pubescent potheads? Isn’t that what their parents are for?

(I’d be remiss if I failed to note teens use Noxzema about as often as drugs. Yet deep cleansing pads aren’t big on the black market. Draw your own conclusions.)

Stories like those of Mr. Campbell and Stratford High don’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a very real pattern here. There are forces at work in this country trying to “protect” us from things. If it’s not guns, it’s drugs. If it’s not drugs, it’s bad choices. But whatever it is, it always ends up costing us a fortune.

Our better welfare is a billion-dollar industry. From concealed carry statutes straight on down to seatbelt and helmet laws, we’re consistently told our welfare depends on new rules, police powers, and legal settlements. We buy into this bait-and-switch every time. Which is great if you’re a congressman—since you can vote yourself a pay raise, collect a nice pension, and gerrymander your way to absolute power—but not if you’re anyone else.

When politicians try to protect us from ourselves, they often only protect themselves from us. That’s a problem.

After September 11th, Attorney General John Ashcroft begged of Americans “vigilance.” The guys who beat the shoebomber into submission were roundly and rightly regarded as just that: Vigilant. Mr. Campbell was nothing if not the same thing—yet he’s facing two misdemeanor charges now, and his is just one story of many.

The day before Halloween, for example, Capitol Hill shut down on account of a toy gun belonging to some girl’s costume. It was an understandable error, in and of itself. No question there. But it wasn’t long before Rep. Edolphus Towns of Brooklyn was saying, “That a toy gun shut down the Hill for two hours shows this is a serious matter. This toy gun stuff is no trick-or-treat.” Statements like these prompted Illinois Rep. John Shimkus—for whom the girl with the gun was a staffer—to issue an apology and put the whole thing in perspective. “This was an unfortunate misunderstanding,” Shimkus said. No, sir, the Bay of Pigs was an unfortunate misunderstanding. This was a toy.

Similarly, two days earlier, a 9-year-old boy was arrested in Lorain, Ohio, for brandishing a toy gun while waiting outside a salon. When his mom came running out in curlers, they booked her, too. God forbid, in this day and age, a mother protects her child. What’s next, a dad who shoots at thieves in his living room without fear of trial? Unprecedented!

There’s a phrase in this country, “power to the people,” but how much power it entails is a little unclear. A .38 caliber, maybe? Or is that too much? If anything’s certain, it’s the message they’re sending: Whether it’s you, your kid, your country, or your home, call the cops whenever there’s danger. Don’t take the law into your hands.

Which is fine in theory, but it isn’t self-rule.

And that’s America’s biggest crisis right now. Not terrorism. Not the economy. But rather the long, hard slog away from self-rule. Restore it, and everything falls into place. Discard it, and everything falls apart.

Earlier this month, the FBI used the anti-terror Patriot Act to bust Michael Galardi, a Las Vegas strip club owner, on charges of bribery. This shouldn’t bother disaffected liberals and the ACLU alone. If conservatives are serious about small government, they, too, should find these developments alarming. We are failing, as a nation, to make distinctions between backroom deals and terror networks, little kids and criminals, lethal weapons and toys. Indeed, we’re conceding self-rule because we’ve convinced ourselves we can’t handle it.

We give up guns and property rights so as to “protect” ourselves. We ban the Founders from classrooms so as not to “offend” folks from other countries. Out of sight, out of mind, I guess.

A generation from now, we’ll be none the wiser for it.

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