Americans and your ****ing "rights". Even the most liberal amongst you are completely authoritarian by the rest of the worlds standards. A British journalist sent to your country to find out if it was really as bad as people claim once wrote "each layer of employed Americans exists soley to keep the layers above from getting sued," and as such you always feel the necessity to obey the law to the letter.
For the record, our rights and representative government set the standard for many of the other world's nations, and it is because of those rights, and our great experiment, that we have become a superpower. Which, by the way, is a fact.
We feel the need to obey the law because it is the law and there are punishments for breaking the laws, and the laws you break generally are laws that infringe on others rights. At least we do not fear breaking the law for fear that it shall be caught on camera, like many people in the UK worry about with your exceedingly socialist government.
Just to lighten the mood :p
Because insulting people is never a good way to get a debate going, being aggressive makes the other person argumentative and defensive, meaning they will not respond to your posts with the same thoughtfulness as the normally would and will not understand your points, if you have any :p (again, to lighten the mood)
[Once you start insulting people and being agressive it becomes a rage fest rather than a debate]
What is a "right". It is supposed to be something that benefits you; something that will ensure at least a bare minimum quality of life. One of your "rights" is the right to waive any of your own rights whenever you want to, ie. whenever it's beneficial to you. I can think of almost no situation when it is more clear cut that the best thing to do for all parties involved was to allow the infringement of his rights. There was no way in the world that what he did could be for the best from anyone's point of view, and yet he does it anyway, simply because he has been indoctrinated since birth that he has certain "inalienable rights" and he is unwilling to let go of that belief.
Being indoctrinated to believe you have the right to speak freely of your thoughts, to worship freely, and to pursue things that give you contentment in your life isn't indoctrination. It is basic human rights, and things that allow the proletariat to keep facists, dictators, and monarchies at bay. Without these rights the government could censor anything critical to the government, force people worship a deity they do not believe in, and force people to do certain jobs, regardless of their abilities. Like in communist countries. These are not rights you are 'indoctrinated' to believe in, like the right to kill a virgin and drink her blood in a cult, these are rights that citizens have a right to as basic human rights and to keep their government in check.
This guy might have been a stubborn asshole, and yes, he should have gotten out of the car, but that does not make what the police did any better. You don't need to beat someone's head into the side of a car window to get them out of it, even if they refuse.
--I understand that police are people, and people are prone to fits of rage and violence, especially when under stress or unfavorable situations. But a mad gunmen cracking under stress still has to answer for his actions, why don't the police?
-- Also, just because this person is a stubborn police hater confronter person bad person, doesn't reflect on American society as a whole. Generalizing an entire country because of a singular incident, or person, or thing that appears rampant, when it isn't, is just as silly as me saying that the UK is nothing but a camera-ridden, socialist dictatorship, just because there are some high security areas and questionable laws.
Next point. What do you do when your rights obstruct someone elses? Are one persons rights more important than someone elses? Not intrinsically, but it is usually going to be obvious which party should be willing to say "You know what? This time, it would actually be better for all of us if I don't act like a moron." You claim a right to freedom of speech, but what happens when this will automatically cause huge destruction. Does the air-traffic controller have an undeniable right to direct eight aeroplanes to the same runway at once? No, of course he doesn't! "I have a right to liberty and the pursuit of hapiness do I? Well, I'm afraid that in this instance it might affect your right to life a little, but at least I'm getting what I'm due!"
A person is allowed three inalienable rights by the constitution, freedom to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Other rights such as freedom of speech are specified in the ammendments. And, I would like to think, that even to outsiders like you, our promise of rights does not allow you to infringe on the rights of others. A person possesses these inalienable rights as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. This is not flexibility in terms of interperation of primary documents, this is law and word. It is not an inalienable right to harm others, and by obstructing other's right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (some might say the government is already doing this :p) you have become an oppressor, or tyrant.
This whole paragraph is silly. Like, slightly excessively. Police are just citizens who serve the people. They have the same rights as other people do and the same laws. A police officer does not have the right to beat someone without first being assaulted, or a direct threat made against his life. He needs to answer for his rage and inability to control it. In my country you are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, not proven guilty-treated like a criminal, until proven innocent because you are under suspect.
You act as though infelxibility is in some way a good thing. I know how you've argued in other threads, to whit it is ok to shoot a person dead if they are trying to kill you and there is no alternative. This is flexibility in itself. An absolute law like the one you are trying to enforce here would say that it is always wrong to kill because the murderer has a right to life. You cannot argue that rights are mutable in some situations and maleable as a zircon crystal in another. It is hypocrasy. I'm not trying to pretend that self defence is bad but by your logic it seems it must be.
In terms of the constitution that person is obstructing your right to life, he has become a tyrant and the constitution does not protect tyrants. By threatening another's inalienable rights he has forfeited his own. This is not hypocrisy but common sense.
And, to respond to this, you may say that 'Since he has given up his rights, does that mean we should murder a minor thief? Since he no longer has a right to life by your logic' And I would say that there are extra laws and regulations to determine the severity of punishments for breaches of contract (analogy for citizenship).
Finally, the use of the word "right" implies that when you have a right it is a moral obligation that it be fulfilled. By what moral measure is it ok to cause a group of people to waste about six hours of their valuble time (during which a large number of genuine drug-trafickers could easily have just driven by) and get another inocent man beaten half to death? I could list a dozen differing moral theories and I can tell you that not one of them would imply that what this man did was in any way good.
The man should have gotten out of the car, but it was the police officers duty to provide probably cause and proof of possible wrong doing. He could have presented the dog, and shown how it smelled drugs in the car. Failing this, he has no warrant to remove the man from his car. And even had he done this, he had no right to beat the man without him first showing outward aggression. The police are not above the law, or even above normal citizens, as part of the government they are below it. (At least in my country, where the people control their leaders)
I also think that I could make a good case for him having broken the law anyway. The police said the dog did something. Do they have any reason to lie about this? Do American police make a habit of framing innocent citizens just so that it looks like they're doing something in the same way as a stickpaigan might spam to get his post count up? For all the hate I can unleash upon your pathetic excuse for a country I cannot believe that a society so intent on justice is over-run with police who arrest guys for the hell of it. You might get one or two sadists but there were loads of police at this example. They therefore had probable cause and this surpasses his right not to be searched. The police were under no obligation to bring the dog back, any more than the man would have been legaly obliged to open his car if there had been no probable cause.
Again, there you go with the insults. Jerk face. Police get payed on quotas. There are numerous stories of police planting evidence, or randomly beating 'relatively' innocent civilians (the bike video comes to mind). Point is, police are people, generally not very bright people (you don't need a PhD to be on the police force), people are corrupt and stupid people in a position of power even more so. Things happen, and whether you want to admit or not things like this happen all the time. Daily basis.
The police serve the people, not the other way around. This man had no obligation to allow the police to search his car without being proven, by the civil servant, that he was a suspect of drug trafficking. He does not have to prove he is innocent, he has to be proven to be suspect of guilt. Innocent until proven guilty. Master, not the servant. The police are not masters, they are civil servants who serve the people.
If I told you to stop on the street and said, I suspect your shoes are untied, can you please remove them, allow me to peruse them, stop you why you are on your way and then give them back to you. Without even looking at your shoes, or proving to you that your shoes are untied, would you stop?
Probably not. Unless you were gay, which is understandable because I am extremely attractive.
Is it really that difficult to see how a minor infringement of your rights can be good for you? And society as a whole? You don't have to think solely in terms of yourself the entire time.
While logically it would have made more sense for him to leave his car, he had no obligation to. And the police officer has no right to do what he did. It's a matter of law not logic. Also, hind sight is 20/20, in hindsight you can see why and how and where everything went wrong and could have gone better, but at the time you cannot. Meaning, your arguments about morality and such and such, are null and void. One because this is a matter of law and rights, not logic, and two, because you can only see these things looking back.
Now then, seeing as I previewed my post and saw the last few you made listed below I'll start replying now.
Lies.
You say that we misinterpret your country. This may be true. We can only go on what we are told by outside sources (note my journalists quote earlier). It's not made any easier by the fact that America is big. Really, really big. I have on at least three ocaisions mentioned US law, only to be told I was bullshitting. You have fifty states and laws vary between them and then there's the federal laws that may or may not apply depending on who's watching and it is next to impossible for us to get our heads around without a lifetime's experience. As far as I know, what I have been told about the US legal system, and what I go on to mention in various attacks on your nation, is true. I have no means of going up to a federal judge and checking my facts. I'm not helped by the hundreds of conflicting stories. One day my American relative (who I despise by the way) is arrested for carrying a deadly weapon - a baseball bat. He plays baseball. This seems reasonable to me. There are other uses for a baseball bat then killing people. The next time something of this style comes up I learn from you about concealed carry laws. To me this seems imbecilic. How can a gun be deemed less dangerous than a baseball bat on any level?
Just because there are flaws in the system that need to be worked out does not make the system broken or ridiculous in their entirety. I bring to the case your country's ridiculous ASBO's. And the reason for this is that to get a concealed weapons permit you have to go through training and testing. You have to be mentally sound (at least not visibly unsound to the point of being likely to harm another person, loving shooting deer may be silly but it is not mentally unsound). You have to register your weapons. So if you do something unsavory with them you are very, very likely to be caught.
To beat someone to death with a bat you just need a bat.
Gun; controlled. Baseballbat; uncontrolled.
Again, officer's are people. In this case the arrest is ridiculous, and more than likely the officer should be investigated, or sued for obstruction of justice (wasting his own time) and wrongful persecution. Does this mean the law is broken, hypocritical, or ridiculous? No, it doesn't.
One of the outside sources I make regular use of is statistics. They do not lie. They come from a reliable source; always government, usually American, sometimes British. On occaision these conflict with the superior knowledge that you have gained by living in the country. You know more about your specific area than I do. That is granted. What I object to here is your generalisations from your neigbourhood to the rest of your country. Yes, maybe you see very little crime where you live, but the statistics show that over the course of a lifetime you have an 80% chance of being a victim of a crime. Maybe not you specifically, crime will be concentrated in certain areas, but I can only go on what the statistics tell me so don't flame me when this goes against your personal experience. (The crime thing is just an example that I have brought up before - it isn't relevant to this topic but I needed to make a point. I could have done the same for obesity or average intelligence. Do not take this as an insult or troll, it is FACT)
I am at a loss how your use of statistics, that I have an 80% chance to be a victim of a crime, have any relevance in light of the corruption of a police officer and the hypocrisy of modern police men.
