The Smell of Anschluss in the Morning

The police state never arrives all at once. It creeps up on you.



One of our vendors only accepts C.O.D. Money order, so we sent Brandon, one of our staff members, down to the post office with $3,400 in cash to buy one. The Postal Clerk said, "how much?"

"$3,400."

"Fill this out."

The post office wanted Brandon's full name, date of birth, driver's license number, social security number, address, and the reason he needed a money order. It also stated, clearly, that the information was strictly voluntary. Brandon, sensing that this was all the information someone would need to begin identity theft, responded:

"This is not mandatory."

"It's voluntary," said the postal worker, "but if you don't fill it out, I can't give you the money order."

"What if I ask for two money orders for $1700 each?"

"No can do. Now that I know you need more than $3,000, I need all this information."

Brandon, to his great credit, responded: "Never mind then. I'll get it somewhere else."

Last week, an air traveler, carrying cash in an airport, was harassed, belittled, and intimidated by TSA workers for responding to their questions with the simple inquiry: "Am I legally obliged to give you that information?" The traveler recorded the conversation and you can listen to it here. For more or less the last twenty years, if you want to identify yourself as a radical, a criminal, or a terrorist--carry cash. What used to be seen as a sign of thrifty self-sufficiency is now seen as an indicator of malevolent intent. In the early 1980s, some of my father's east coast manufacturers purchased Italian lace-making machines for cash, as per the demand of the manufacturer. They traveled to Italy with literally tens of thousands of dollars in their carry-on luggage. At the time, they said it made them a little nervous, but only because thieves might steal their money. It never occurred to them that their own government might be their persecutor.

Let's face it: the War on Terror was a huge farce. Our soldiers served honorably, but we trashed the Constitution at home in order to prop it up, and we made our boys die to install a religious state in Iraq. (The Iraqi Constitution specifically and emphatically states that no law can ever contradict Islam, which lays the groundwork for denying religious freedom, which is "guaranteed" a bit further down in the document.)

A time honored principle of English justice is the simple provision that you are not required to testify against yourself, that you are presumed innocent until the state proves its case beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt.

If we give that up, we're little better than the goose-stepping robots who marched into Salzburg and sent the Von Trapp family flying for the hills.