Warrantless Strip Searches... They're Not for Everyone

Ok..  so maybe GERALD is comfortable with the odd strip search...

but the rest of us would as soon do without one.

Well.

Seems like it was just yesterday I was raising concerns over Vic Toews proposed invitation to warrantless invasion of your privacy.  I guess I was in league with the child pornographers.

To quote poster Gerald:

"We need all the protection we can get,and I don't care one iota how our govt. does it."

Yes, Gerald.

Until you are arrested without due cause, detained overnight, bent over, naked, so some stranger can inspect your anal cavity.

Because your child drew a picture of their father as a hero, shooting "bad guys and monsters".

Yes, Gerald.

I'm sure as you would be carted off in front of your children and their friends in handcuffs, as you had your other children apprehended from their mother's care, you would be thinking to yourself, "Hey, if this makes the broader society safer, what's the big deal.  I have nothing up my ass to hide."

Right.

You see, Gerald, the problem is that as we continue to put political pressure on our judges, on our prosecutors and our police to over-react to every wrong in society, to achieve some impossible mythical world where no one, ever, commits a crime - what we do is increase the probability that innocent people will be abused by the system.

Because a Nanny-State created by Conservatives is not less oppressive and offensive than one created by Liberals.

Now.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm no fan of the criminal element.  I have a 9mm semi-automatic kept in my home and, if my family were put at risk of imminent harm, I would have no difficulty using it to protect them.

(He says, only partly in jest wondering if police will be knocking on my door tomorrow to assure that it is properly secured.)

When people commit offenses, we have a system that basically was working just fine until it became polluted with political pressure for police, prosecutors and judges to jump everytime some new political pressure group demanded it.

Crime has been going down.  Thus making us safer, and that safety has an added dividend because it saves us tax dollars in policing, in prosecuting, and in housing criminals in jails.

Problem is - as much as we abhored the gun registry and Ken Dryden's effort at taking over raising all of our children in a national daycare, well, almost the morning after the last federal election, Vic Toews and his friends began to work on a different version of the Nanny State where the strong hand of the state was sought to be put on our shoulder - in this case, however, it's on our right shoulder, not our left.

Feels kinda the same.

The bottom line is that the greatest benefits to the broader society occur in the context of a society which encourages freedom and liberty.

It's not perfect - freedom and liberty creates risk.  It creates risk that not everyone will have the same standard of living, in creates risk that not everyone will be able to have what they want, when they want it - but ultimately, the world has very clearly seen the failure of state-control to deliver that anyway. 

Something to think about.

In the clearest and most consistent example of a police-state in the western hemisphere, Cuba, the rate of murder committed by youths is 15th highest in the world, compared to Canada at 28th.  Our neighbor to the south, by the way, the United States, is 3rd.

Think about that.

A total police state - and 348 youth murders between 1990 and 1999.

Canada - where we "coddle" our criminals - a total of 143 in that same period.

Cuba's population?  About 11.3 million.  Canada's population - 34.1 million.  Three times as many people, less than half as many murders committed by youth.

That's what freedom creates.  Prosperity increases our standard of living and decreases crime.

The impact of an arbitrary and heavy-handed police state on murder rates - relatively negligeable in the face of the impact of the broader influences of society.

So.

Anyway.

The bottom line is that even in Canada we need to be vigilant and on guard against an over-reaching of the state into our lives.

No one should have to endure warrantless and groundless arrest and detention and strip search.

Well...

Except, maybe for Gerald.