In the news:
“The nation’s highest court ruled in 1966 that police could have blood tests forcibly done on a drunk driving suspect without a warrant, as long as the draw was based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner. The practice of cops drawing blood, implemented first in 1995 in Arizona, has also raised concerns about safety and the credibility of the evidence….”
More here at AP on another symptom of a system out of whack.
“….based on a reasonable suspicion that a suspect was intoxicated, that it was done after an arrest and carried out in a medically approved manner.”
Haha…With countless media reports and video evidence of cops run amok with tasers, they will now embark upon vampiric assaults based on their interpretation of reasonable suspicion.
I’ve seen registered nurses with decades of experience have trouble drawing blood for routine lab work in clinical settings; missing veins, causing wounds, pushing needles through veins into muscles, multiple attempts, etc. And now we have badge wearing agents of the state on the prowl to suck blood out of suspected drivers…This will no doubt be a trouble free endeavor, resulting in millions of lives saved, protecting the citizenry, and demonstrating once again the benevolent protection of our always concerned government.
I wonder how long it will take to read about someone being tased for the purpose of obtaining a blood sample?
What is out of whack is that drunk drivers are repeatedly allowed full access to the roads. How is it libertarian that someone like me who follows the law is forced to stay home on weekend evenings or risk being killed by someone who doesn’t believe he or she has to follow the law? I live in a rural area. The roads are narrow. Many have no shoulders. Head on collisions are a fact of life. More often than not, a drunk is involved. Usually, it is a drunk that has refused a breathalizer in the past, even though he or she consented to such a test when they were licensed. In my state, the only people who get blood drawn are people who refuse to submit to a breathalizer. The sad truth is that when it comes to DUI, it is not law enforcement running roughshod over my rights and liberty. It is the drunk driver who thinks he or she is entitled to kill and main others. Sorry, I couldn’t disagree more.
Hi Bob –
I sympathize.
But there are other ways to deal with driving under the influence.
If someone refuses to take a breathalyzer, they can be penalized or have their insurance suspended or even canceled.
But having the police perform minor medical procedures on the road doesn’t seem like the best idea.
I don’t drink at all and I detest careless drivers. You won’t hear any “libertarian” arguments from me about seat-belt laws either.
Think about it..
I know reckless drivers are a menace, but that’s because we don’t refuse them insurance.
This does not have anything to do with driving while intoxicated and everything to do with control. It’s not drunk drivers Bob (and people like Bob) fears, it’s bad drivers, or dumb drivers who happen to be drunk and wish to avoid a ticket and jail. [Not to mention poorly designed and maintained roads the people are too cheap to build right or otherwise spending their money on other things like bailing out banks and building bike paths and bombs.] Does he also wish to ban those who wear glasses as they could easily take them off and be just as bad a driver as any woman applying makeup, or a dumb drunk driver? And on it goes…
Where it stops nobody knows. I thought the libertarian position was about property rights, e.g. if there’s damage, there’s a crime, if there’s no damage, there’s no crime. Mark R. Crovelli over at LRC recently wrote a nice piece about how drunk driving laws actually motivates and encourages drunk people to drive when they otherwise wouldn’t which in turn helps to create accidents. http://www.lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli33.1.html
More to the point, it’s what Jim said, every cop with a grudge, every cop wanting to feel up a pretty girl, and every bad cop with bad intentions now has a reason to strap you down and suck a small amount of life out of you and put you in danger while getting a cheap thrill, sexual, or control wise. Looks like you were swerving Bob, awful red eyes Bob, kind of slurry speech Bob, nevermind Bob’s excuse he swerved to avoid a huge pothole he saw while rubbing his allergy irritated eyes after being shot up with Novacaine at the dentist office, Officer Cop: has a quota to fill, didn’t like Bob’s kind of car, the way Bob looked, and while he’s at he thinks Bob’s wife/daughter/mom is pretty and she/they must be intoxicated too as they are all together, or maybe it’s Bob that Officer Cop desires. It’s just like Officer Cop has his very own toy helot doll to with as he pleases, cause you know, the boys in blue stick together and rarely rat each other out, just ask Serpico how far they’ll go.
And, the majority in this country seems to love administering pain before a trial – electrical, or mechanical – what’s next, chemical? Where’s the limit? Where’s the boundary and why does it always seem to be moving outward?
Not to pick on you Bob, you’re every-man, but you, and millions like you are like Dr. Frankenstein, you’ve created a monster with your intellect and set it loose upon the villagers to assuage your fears. The story wasn’t wasn’t about science, it was a metaphor for government gone mad and set upon the people, terrorizing them, killing them and destroying their sense of well being. The drunk drivers Bob and people like Bob fear are a natural creation of humanity, the blood drawing, people tazering, road blocking, ID checking, life destroying, papers checkers Dr. Frankenstein has created are an un-natural creation being prepared to be set upon the entire countryside and eventually the people will figure out this monster needs to be defeated and destroyed. With the equivalent of a revolution or uprising, with pitchforks and torches in hand, the people may eventually drive the monster out and away, but this is no sure thing, thus the suspense. I don’t know if that picture in the article of the cop welding a needle and vile was a blurring of the Dr., the monster and Igor all rolled into one, but it is terror.
Dr. Franken didn’t see his creation as a terrible monster, he thought it was a misunderstood creation with enormous potential, and that’s how Bob and millions like him, even the heroine, see the strong arm of the government. I wont call it the strong arm of the law because the law supposedly respects certain boundaries, the monster doesn’t. Many people like me are upset because the monster does not respect the boundaries imposed on it by custom and tradition. The monster bursts into our homes, ravages our effects, goes through our papers and our possessions seeking something, not always seeking the same thing, sometimes becoming transfixed and focused on a particular person or type of person or activity contrary to the traditions men, of what is supposed to be the American way of life. A man’s house is no longer his castle.
There are millions of monsters out there, policing, bombing, and all around destroying without any boundaries, possessing warped morals, and enforcing strict un-natural norms based not upon law but emotion, as if a child, and that’s why the monster in the story was portrayed as such. At some point Dr. Frankenstein realizes what he’s done, but by then it’s too late, the monster is too powerful to control wherein it once listened to it’s master, it will no longer do so and come after the Dr. and the millions of other Dr.’s out there who helped to create it. The monster becomes the master.
You make good points..but I do get where Bob is coming from.
I think it’s public culture and irresponsibility which in turn creates incentives for people to be reckless, because they don’t have to pay damages.
But I also think if you repeatedly cause damage to other people, you’re ability to drive should be circumscribed. Just as if I repeatedly break into a house, others have a right to put me in confinement..
I didn’t think this was about causing damage, I thought this was about the potential to cause damage. The failure to separate the two is the biggest problem of this issue. If I walk past your house with a crowbar should I have my walking privileges circumscribed?
If you leave your doors wide open to your house and let the leaves blow in, is it entirely the fault of a poverty stricken teenager that they walk in a take your stuff? Much like a car wreck, you have to at least close your doors to your house, you do have to make some effort to avoid being a part of the cause of the damage by hitting the brakes.
In my area, after twenty years of people dying from crashes mostly involving drunk drivers on a narrow stretch of road, once the State divided the hyway and widened the lanes crashes have become almost non existent. Rather than the inconvenience and cost of making improvements to the roads, the liberty and freedom of individuals who cause no damages are curtailed to the point penalties and punishment are metered out without trial by the executive. How is that libertarian or even humanitarian?
The State doesn’t need to stick a person with a needle to determine they are driving while revoked.
Hi –
I agree with some of that. I agree that you don’t circumscribe behavior when it only has the potential to cause trouble – because anything has the potential to cause trouble.
But you then made an assertion I can’t agree with.
You say, if someone left their house door open, it’s their “fault” that someone walked in and robbed the house.
Sorry, that doesn’t fly.
If you let your 5 year old kid out of your sight for ten minutes, is it your fault that someone kidnapped him?
Theft is wrong, no matter if the other person was being careless. It was only 20 years ago when you could leave your house door open in the US. And no one would walk in and rob you. You could let a workman into the house and he wouldn’t take anything. You could baby sit a kid and not be afraid of being accused of molesting it or abusing it.
Libertarians can’t evade the issue of public culture and morality, especially since they want to reduce external constraints. If people don’t have internal constraints, then it is a matter of certainty that their society will turn to greater external intervention. Which is precisely what’s happened in the US.
The cry for greater intervention by the state has arisen precisely with the decline of internal constraints. Whether one caused the other or whether the relationship is more complex and interactive, we can’t ignore the nexus.
Libertarians do far too little in the way of critiquing bad personal behavior. That needs to go hand in hand with blaming the state.
The state ultimately is a shadow we throw off…
The door open was a bad example I know, and I agree with what you said to a point. I used the example to highlight the, using the brakes to avoid a wreck idea. If you don’t use your brakes at all in certain accidents, you can be charged with partially causing the wreck.
However, I’d bet that in certain neighborhoods, a cop would tell someone it was partly their fault if they left their doors open. Not to say that personal responsibility shouldn’t be observed by all.
Even if there is damage, why the breath test and blood test for alcohol and such in the first place? Do old people get vision tests after a wreck? Do teenagers get paying-attention tests after wrecks? Does everyone get an IQ test after a wreck? I and others I know have seen the State pass old people who failed their vision tests while getting drivers licenses, is the State an enabler, where is the punishment for the State in this case? [Or is there some validity to those who say they really got retina scans?]
What difference does it make that a person is intoxicated or not when they get into or cause an accident? A wreck is a wreck and multiple wrecks are just that. The argument trotted out is that reaction times are lowered while intoxicated. So is there a level of required reaction time, one not applied to old people? Why is there no equality? The teenager or old person is not singled out and persecuted. If getting into or causing multiple wrecks is the problem, then deal with that by increasing the penalty for being in or causing multiple wrecks, not by doing away with privacy, liberty, and increasingly more intrusive methods of pre-trial punishment. Revoking driving privileges and increasing insurance requirements certainly is not a huge barrier. And, improve the roads to avoid the potential for wrecks in the first place. Love those clover-leafs.
But that’s all too costly, too time consuming, and contrary to the ever expanding power of the State. In fact, this type of thinking is a major foundation of the all powerful centralized State, one that people everywhere look to and use to apply to the larger issues of the day.
Clark –
to me it’s simple.
You cause a wreck, you pay for it.
If you don’t pay for it, and others do, then the others – whoever they are – have a right to impose standards on you.
The reason we have expanding state power is because we expanding state beneficiaries. People should be principled and not work for the government or receive government aid. Then they wouldn’t be subject to government laws.
But, I am not sure this is so much a government problem, as it’s a large group problems.
All the libertarians who get upset over government controls and government abuse of power suddenly go awol when it’s corporations doing the exact same thing
They’ll argue that corporations don’t have the power the governments do and they’re quite right to a point. But it’s also true that corporations and governments work hand in hand and the government is no more than a proxy for the corporations in the first place.
And corporations abuse their power and strength as well.
Finally, corporations aren’t just “natural” organic associations created out of soil and spittle. Their created by laws..the same fiat laws that libertarians decry when the governments benefit from them…or impose them.
Let’s not be naive about language.
It appears that my earlier posted curiosity about blood sampling and tasering has already been borne out:
http://freedominourtime.blogspot.com/2009/09/helot-on-wheels.html
“You cause a wreck, you pay for it.
If you don’t pay for it, and others do, then the others – whoever they are – have a right to impose standards on you.”
That is just fine, I agree, but it’s not the issue, it’s not the heart of the monster unleashed, the one called preventative executive action, a.k.a. blood draws, breath tests, road blocks and more.
I am pretty much against this whole corporation idea the more I learn about it. Corporations are like giant privileged government people, absurd.