Ain't America No More

Once upon a time, the ordinary people of America framed their Constitution on a principled, if still incomplete, understanding of individual rights.

Welcome to 2009.

Last month, a Harvard University professor was arrested for "disturbing the peace" with public criticism of a government official. Conservatives on the Web cheered for the arresting officer. The idea, that under the First Amendment it is unconstitutional to arrest a person, just because that person's public speech, criticizing a government official, irritates a police officer, never crossed the Conservatives' alleged minds.

Now, a month later, another police officer threatened to arrest - but did not actually arrest, making the incident somewhat less outrageous - another critic whose take on a government official irritated the police officer. And now, everyone who was on the side of the arresting officer in the Gates-Crowley case is outraged, outraged, that a demonstrator can be threatened by a police officer with arrest, merely for public criticism that outrages the officer.

Unfortunately, as the police officer in the linked video says, this "ain't America no more." The America where people - never mind police officers - had principles in their brains, rather than merely on their tongues and then only when pragmatically convenient, has been deliquescing for half a century now. After decades of "education" by the Comprachicos running the schools, ordinary Americans - the full range from Socialists to Conservatives - are no longer capable of inducing a principle, even when the concretes from which to induce the principle are staring them in the face. In the form of high-profile news stories.

Ominous Parallels, anyone?