There are some few libertarians who still believe that the Republican Party is their natural political home, a dwindling band of crusty, bearded GOP reenactor types pitching their canvas field tents around the fire with the grand ole elephants and decrying the "danged federals" and their big government assault on civil liberties. Like polite dementia patients, they manage to overlook the mundane day-to-day actions of this government - dominated by a huge and arrogant Republican Party machine and intent on centralizing civil power and political patronage in one convenient sippy cup.
You've seen these chaps, who occasionally appear to be dapper elderly gentlemen in full possession of their faculities, all pip-pipping and well met. Still burstin' with pride over Ronnie's fabulous destruction of the air traffic controllers and the welfare cheats. Remember the revolution, sonny? To these coots, talk of Democrats linked to the defense of basic civil liberties is like the moonshiners teaming with the revenuers....it just ain't natural. We're conservatives, son. Not Stalinists.
But these guys are living in a political old-age home. The modern Republican Party has no place for them; oh, they're expected to vote for Republicans and hiss at Democratic nominees, but otherwise they have no use whatsoever. The assault on civil rights from the Vice-President's office marches on, the latest revelation - a revelation rated treasonous by the snarling veep - of open-ended warrants allowing government agents unimpeded access to the financial records of Americans. Jason provides the history lesson:
Since 1603 English common law and court precedent required that any search of a man's home or seizure of his property be made pursuant to a sworn warrant, and that the warrant be specific as to what rooms were to be searched and what articles were to be seized. (The requirement that warrants be specific was a reaction to sweeps of the homes of political rivals by the king's men in which desks and locked drawers were broken into and documents, maps, and the like were seized indiscriminately.)
But in the fight against smuggling out on the wild frontier of the new world it was easy to do an end-run around the such niceties as the 100-year old civil rights of Englishmen, especially in the name of tax collection. So revenuers began issuing not warrants but "Writs of Assistance." These writs were, in effect, general, open-ended warrants, authorizing the bearer to enter any house or location and to seize any property the bearer deemed "prohibited and uncustomed." The writs were to remain in effect for the lifetime of the king and six months thereafter.
When James Madison drafted the Fourth Amendment--prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure and requiring warrants obtained by showing cause for a search in advance--these writs were very much his inspiration and target.
But the Fourth Amendment matters not to the modern GOP. Indeed, they now attack the First to protect their assault on the Fourth. All this is lost on the vestigial Republical Libertarian wing, which utters not a word. Nor did it when the so-called champion of true conservatism occupied a key seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Silence reigned when Justice Alito joined the "conservatives" in Hudson v. Michigan which ruled that a violation of the "knock and announce" rule by police does not require the suppression of the evidence found during a search, as well as Samson v. California which ruled that evidence obtained in a suspionless search of parolees is admissible, and not prohibited under the Fourth Amendment.
Now perhaps the latest government outrage, this last intrusion into individual privacy by a central power run amok, will finally shake these superannuated libertarians from their stupor and provoke them to outrage.
I speak of poor Rush, of course.
The jack-booted thugs who arrested Mr. Limbaugh clearly crossed a line unforeseen by the Founding Fathers (except perhaps for Franklin). So what if the prescription on the jar didn't specifically refer to Rush - where was the probable cause? As James Wolcott righteously noted: "Now there is no shame in requiring wood enhancement. Men have needs, and if Viagra enables the little fella to jut proudly from the folds of the dragon kimono bequeathed to Rush by the late Allan Bloom, it is not for us to cast judgement."
Limbaugh tried to talk the Customs officers out of their over-the-top search, saying on his radio show that they didn't believe him when he said he got the pills at the Clinton Library and he was told they were blue M&Ms. "I had a great time in the Dominican Republic. Wish I could tell you about it." Heh-heh. Heh-heh. Oh I'll bet he did.
Maybe the libertarians can let this latest intrusion into a man's privacy go. After all, there hasn't been much libertarianism on tap in Limbaughland of late, or Fox, or any number of conservative outlets. It all changed on 9/11 - or so they say. I think it changed on a different date: January 20, 2001 - the day Bill Clinton left office, and the day when the cry of liberty fell silent all up and down the Republican lines, replaced by the march of power.
