Throughout modern history it seems that the first thing a society does as it is being formed is to establish a central, compulsory (through taxes) "Monopoly of Defense". In other words, the first thing Dodge City did was hire a Town Marshall.
The business of policing the growing country was very much a local and State affair. Only with the establishment of the FBI were federal agents granted police power (except for very narrowly defined jurisdictions like border control and customs).
In the 100 years or so since then, the federal government has grown into a many-tentacled beast, running roughshod over state and local laws and jurisdictions, and ruthlessly militarizing, training and bribing local law enforcement until they are for all practical purposes, accountable not to those they are hired to protect and serve, but to the national agenda.
The result? We now incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other country in the world, we have ruthlessly created a permanent underclass of people branded as felons for life, and our families and communities bear the dual burdens of both paying for it in taxes and having to fear their own police every time they leave their homes.
If you want to see what getting the federal government involved in making and enforcing criminal law, look at this graph. When the feds began to lobby and force new laws into existence and mold local law enforcement policies during the expansion of the "War on Drugs", everything changed. Just look at this graph:
The business of policing the growing country was very much a local and State affair. Only with the establishment of the FBI were federal agents granted police power (except for very narrowly defined jurisdictions like border control and customs).
In the 100 years or so since then, the federal government has grown into a many-tentacled beast, running roughshod over state and local laws and jurisdictions, and ruthlessly militarizing, training and bribing local law enforcement until they are for all practical purposes, accountable not to those they are hired to protect and serve, but to the national agenda.
The result? We now incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other country in the world, we have ruthlessly created a permanent underclass of people branded as felons for life, and our families and communities bear the dual burdens of both paying for it in taxes and having to fear their own police every time they leave their homes.
If you want to see what getting the federal government involved in making and enforcing criminal law, look at this graph. When the feds began to lobby and force new laws into existence and mold local law enforcement policies during the expansion of the "War on Drugs", everything changed. Just look at this graph:
It becomes painfully clear that the problem isn't the war on drugs, it isn't the war on terror or any other specific policy that has caused this terrible rise and made America into the world's leading nation in terms of incarceration and punishment - it is the rise of federal influence in law enforcement.
Do you want justice? Do you want to secure a future of freedom and liberty for the generations that follow? We have to get the federal government out of the business of writing and forcing into place state and local laws, enforcing the law except under very tightly controlled circumstances, and manipulating law enforcement at the local and state level.
Haven't we suffered enough to make this obvious?
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