In Florida and elsewhere throughout the country, home vegetable gardens are being
targeted as illegal. For 17 years, Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll
have tended the vegetable garden in their front yard, relying on it for 80
percent of their food intake, only to be told by city officials that they must
get rid of it or face $50 a day in fines. The reason? The vegetable garden is
"inconsistent with the city's aesthetic character."
In Iowa, a war veteran attempting to wean his family off
expensive corporate farm products, GMOs and pesticides has been charged with
violating a city ordinance and now faces up to 30 days in jail and a $600 fine
for daring to raise chickens in his backyard for
his personal use, despite statements of support from his neighbors.
In Virginia, school officials suspended two boys for the
remainder of the school year and charged them with possession of a firearm
after they were reported to the police for playing with toy airsoft guns in their front
yard, while waiting for the morning school bus. At no time did the
boys attempt to take the toy guns on the bus or to school.
The most obvious disrespect for property rights comes in the
form of the tens of thousands of SWAT team raids that occur across the country
on a yearly basis. Usually undertaken under the pretense of serving a drug
warrant, these raids involve police arriving at a private residence in SWAT
gear, armed to the hilt, kicking down doors, apprehending all persons inside
the home, then determining if a crime has been committed.
That was Judy Sanchez's experience when FBI agents investigating gang activity
used a chainsaw to cut through her
door, then forced Sanchez and her child to the ground. It was only
after invading Sanchez's home and terrorizing her family that agents realized
they had targeted the wrong address.
Unfortunately, we in America get so focused on the Fourth
Amendment's requirement of a warrant before government agents can invade our
property (a requirement that means little in an age of kangaroo courts and
rubberstamped warrant requests) that we fail to properly appreciate the first
part of the statement declaring that we have a right to be
secure in our "persons, houses, papers, and effects." What
this means is that the Fourth Amendment's protections were intended to not only
follow us wherever we go but also apply to all that is ours--whether you're
talking about our physical bodies, our biometric data, our possessions, our
families, or our way of life. However, in an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky
v. King (2011), the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned SWAT teams
smashing down doors of homes or apartments without a warrant if they happen to
"suspect" you might be doing something illegal in your home.
At a time when the government routinely cites national
security as the justification for its endless violations of the Constitution,
the idea that a citizen can actually be "secure" or protected against such
government overreach seems increasingly implausible, while suggesting that a
person take steps to secure his person and property against the government
could have one accused of fomenting anti-government sentiment.
Nevertheless, the reality of our age is this: if the
government chooses to crash through our doors, listen to our phone calls, read
our emails and text messages, fine us for growing vegetables in our front yard,
jail us for raising chickens in our backyard, forcibly take our blood and
saliva, and probe our vaginas and rectums, there's little we can do to stop
them. At least, not at that particular moment. When you're face to face with a
government agent who is not only armed to the hilt and inclined to shoot first
and ask questions later but also woefully ignorant of the fact that he works
for you, if you value your life, you don't talk back.
This sad reality came about as a result of our being asleep
at the wheel. We failed to ask questions and hold our representatives
accountable to abiding by the Constitution, while the government amassed an
amazing amount of power over us, and backed up that power-grab with a
terrifying amount of military might and weaponry, and got the courts to
sanction their actions every step of the way.
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