House of Eratosthenes

I got this weird thing going on with my attitude toward the Constitution. I see it as a document built for the purpose of being cited; it’s got all them articles and sections and clauses and what-not, y’know? And so people say something shouldn’t be done because it creates problems with the Constitution — more often than not, I end up either watching this argument pass neatly over my little empty head, or else some kind of conflict ensues. Because I want to see the citation.

I see the document as dealing with a boundary…much like the boundary you draw around a baseball diamond or a tennis court. Those lines are just barely wide enough to be seen. Two or three inches wide, or so. That is how I see the Constitution. Its purpose is for knuckle-rapping. This is in-bounds…that is not in-bounds. If something is done that cannot be reconciled with the rules, then it ought to at least be possible to define where, in the rules, the transgression has occurred.

Is this asking too much?

In the last few years since you-know-what (hint: two odd numbers, the first number just below ten, the second number just above), it does seem to be asking way too much. And that is a great pity, because I’ll bet I’ve heard the word “Constitution” used ten or twenty times as numerously in the six years since that event, as I did in all the years before. If I were entirely unfamiliar with the document, judging it only by the jibber-jabber I’ve heard about it, I would imagine it to be a simple one-liner that could easily be printed on a small chewing-gum wrapper. Something to the effect that if you have to gather some facts in order to prosecute a crime, the crime shouldn’t count.

And even worse, listening to the mumbling in this handful of years, has left me with the impression that we have a lot of folks going through exactly that thought process. This guy on the radio…that friend at work…Keith Olbermann…they all seem so concerned about the “Constitution,” so surely they must have our interests at heart right? So you want to agree with them — and it takes so much effort to, y’know, actually open up the document and see what it says. So let’s just assume it says exactly that. Therefore, if this thing over here is against the Constitution, that thing over there must also be against it.

And so our prevailing sensibility ends up being that if you do something against the law, you have to do it right in front of a cop or else everyone is honor-bound to pretend you didn’t do it.

That seems awfully silly, so much so that nobody’s said it out loud just yet, and nobody is likely to say it out loud. But I think my specification is as good a predictor that someone is bound to jump up and say “that’s against the Constitution” as anything else. It certainly is more accurate than…say…the stuff that is actually written into the Constitution.

I was given cause to think about this when Jodi at Webloggin handed out the Mother of the Year award.

Jane Hambleton was snooping in her 19 year old son’s car when she found a bottle of booze under the front seat, promptly took the keys away, and put his car up for sale. Sounds great, right? That isn’t the best part. When she put the car up for sale she made a conscience decision to tell the potential buyers why they were selling the car; here is what the ad said:

OLDS 1999 Intrigue. Totally uncool parents who obviously don’t love teenage son, selling his car. Only driven for three weeks before snoopy mom who needs to get a life found booze under front seat. $3,700/offer. Call meanest mom on the planet.”

She not only received phone calls from people who were interested in the car but also from people who wanted to congratulate her. According to Hambleton, she has received over 70 phone calls from people saying what a super mom she is.

Unfortunately, in today’s world snooping parents are hard to come by. I have found that many parents have the “we can’t snoop” philosophy; citing that snooping “is an invasion of their children’s privacy”. I find it very refreshing to read about a mother who does have that attitude and has the attitude that she will do whatever it takes to keep her son safe.

Hats off to Jane Hambleton!

The article linked goes on to say the son is unhappy with the ad, partly because he’s got an alibi…the booze was left behind by a passenger. This doesn’t hold any sway with Mom, since two of the rules laid down when the car was first purchased were that there was to be no booze, and the car should always be locked.

I’m taking notes because these little episodes are ahead of me, beginning in about five years. I’ve been putting some serious thought into “no passengers.” Right now, I don’t see the social fabric as contributory to my son’s future car accidents…although, it should be noted, I imagine that is how those episodes start (oooh, now that li’l bubbins has a car, he can finally make some friends). Instead, I am most worried about his lack of comprehension of moving objects in the space around him.

Kids-n-kars is the one problem in our society that we have not been able to solve, or to even make any incremental effort at solving. The time comes for that first learner’s permit and then, God forbid, an actual driver’s license, and the parents and society must endure about two or three years of real danger. Curious that so little mitigation takes place over the generations, in an overly-pasteurized culture incandescently intolerant of the slightest residual danger from anything else.

We chalk it up to the need for the kids to learn responsibility. Simply upping the driving age would atrophy our youngest in their abilities to take on responsibility. That’s a pretty good argument, and I agree; my beef is that we seldom follow-up on it.

One car is used by a little tyke to learn responsibility, nine more cars are used by little tykes to turbocharge their social engines.

Which means — a bunch of things, none of ’em good. A passenger plus two or three in the back seat, nobody over age seventeen. Booze. Cell phones. Parties.

But getting back to the subject at hand…this complaint among “normal” parents, that snooping is an “invasion of privacy.” Let’s just leave alone the discussion over whether that’s a sensible opinion to have, or not, and simply accept the fact that it’s there. You know, there are a lot more parents practicing this, than not…which means there are a lot of crumb-crunchers growing up accustomed to the idea that they have this “privacy” and that it is — of course — unconditional. Our grown-ups, most of them by a large margin, think crimes must take place within eyesight of an actual cop, or else, said crimes must never have happened. Otherwise, it would be an invasion of this “privacy.”

So in childhood we think we can do anything we want, as long as nobody sees. We grow up with this expectation, we hang out with LOUD grown-ups who have the same expectation.

Does this sound to you like a society getting ready to come undone? Let’s postpone the argument about what privacy is, because I concede we should have some and I do think that’s a worthy discussion to have. But just concentrate on the matter at hand: What is the law, exactly? We’ve got this definition going where it doesn’t count for anything except in razor-thin circumstances. Crimes can’t be reconstructed from available evidence, they can’t be recorded, they can’t be intercepted electronically, they can’t be witnessed by anybody but a cop.

And even then, if the cop goes looking for X and he sees Y, both X and Y are illegal…if it isn’t X, again, it doesn’t count.

I’m actually glad we’re somewhat concerned about snooping. It just seems to me that our thinking about it is so sloppy and disorganized, what we’re actually engaged in here is a campaign to jettison laws of any kind — while pretending to be doing something else. Let’s face it, our definition of “privacy” has become so incredibly cockeyed that only complete anarchy will fulfill the expectations that truly prevail over the angriest and loudest of “privacy defenders.”

Is that not at least a worthy concern? I think so.

And if one accepts that it is, and wonders aloud what remedy we have for it, it’s a very simple one. Stop using “The Constitution” as a figure of speech. If something is supposed to have intruded into it, then let’s have a rational discussion about it — after someone has taken the time to cite book, chapter and verse. Otherwise, it’s just so much anarchist twaddle. And sorry, simply saying so doesn’t make me an advocate for Orwellian totalitarianism. Knowing your Constitution is a good thing.

… the booze was left behind by a passenger.

Yeah, and the cigarettes we used to find hidden in my step-son’s room weren’t his, either. “Well, Keith left them in my car.” Bzzzzzzzzzzzt!!!! Try again. We never bought it.

I like the hidden GPS idea, with tracking turned on and wired in to the car’s electrical system so that its batteries never wear out. Never tell the kid it’s there, either. Just occasionally get it out and observe where the car has gone… and when, if it can be discerned. Then of course you appear to know things you couldn’t possibly know. Making you some sort of deity to be respected. Mwahahahahaha!!!!

our definition of “privacy” has become so incredibly cockeyed that only complete anarchy will fulfill the expectations that truly prevail over the angriest and loudest of “privacy defenders.”

Astute observation there. And another well-distilled observation:

… in an overly-pasteurized culture incandescently intolerant of the slightest residual danger from anything else.

I’m going to have to file that one away for future use.
- philmon | 01/10/2008 @ 11:44
AFAIK, the action taken by the mother is completely allowed under the Constitution. The document itself only restrains the Federal government, not private citizens. The Tenth Amendment make it abundantly clear that any powers not explicitly assigned to the federal gov’t belong to the people and states. Since there’s no rule saying the citizenry can’t spy on each other, the Feds aren’t allowed to do anything about it.

To your final point, yes, technically if nobody sees you do it, and there’s no evidence after the fact connecting you to a crime, you have successfully broken the law and got away with it. That said, while I am adamantly against “protecting” people from unpleasant truths, it’s necessary to impress upcoming citizens with the idea that it’s still wrong to break the law.

As a final aside, the goal with such a restrictive system is to prevent abuse by the government. Adams said, “I would rather a hundred guilty men go free than see one innocent wrongly convicted.”
- dcshiderly | 01/10/2008 @ 16:29
Good points, dc.

It was Blackstone, FWIW. Very often attributed to Jefferson & others.
- mkfreeberg | 01/10/2008 @ 18:16
Excellent article!
- JohnJ | 01/10/2008 @ 18:35

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On SnoopingThursday, January 10th, 2008

On Snooping
Thursday, January 10th, 2008