judge

"judge not, lest ye be judged."
-luke 12:57

everyday, and all over los angeles and parts connected, during this celebratory and festive season, you are being asked, (prodded really,) to snitch on your neighbor. that's right. narc, blow the whistle, tattle-tale, rat, sing like a canary, etc.

the signs say, "report drunk drivers. call 911." the radio ad from the office of traffic safety suggests it is your civic responsibility to call 911 and report suspected drunk drivers. the verbiage on their website goes like this:

DUI Crackdown
How often have you seen someone driving down the road that you were pretty sure was drunk, or at least driving dangerously? Haven't you said to yourself, "I wish a police officer was here to see this and pull this guy over!"Now, you can be the one on the spot. Now, as you travel California's streets and highways, you can do something to help get drunk drivers off the road.The Office of Traffic Safety, California Highway Patrol, and local law enforcement want everyone to drive safely and responsibly. Always designate a sober driver, and if you see a drunk driver on the road, call 911. The public can use the emergency number to report and help the CHP identify drunk drivers before it is too late.
(http://www.ots.ca.gov/Media_and_Research/Campaigns/DUI_Crackdown/default.asp)

on how many levels is this a bad idea? oh, let me count the ways...

as citizens, it is not our responsibility to pass judgments on others. this is the primary problem with this idea of having us inform on one another. often we do not see the slippery slope as we step out onto it but it is here and it is real. i liken this to why we should not condone the current administration's circumventing of the fisa court in order to do warrantless wiretapping on americans. most americans think, 'i have nothing to hide-go ahead and listen to me talking to my sister about the church social she missed, if it will help stop terrorists.' similarly, when it comes to reporting drunk drivers, americans may be inclined to think, 'i do not drive after drinking and others should not do that either and so, sure, why not help out law enforcement? like the ad says, i have spotted them before and wished a police officer was around. next time, i'll call 911.'

if one thing about the united states can be pointed at as a single, major contributing factor to our success, it is our constitution. it is not that we stole the precious and valuable land of others when we arrived and throughout expansion. it is not that we enslaved an entire race and built a great deal of wealth on their backs. it is not that we effectually stole land from mexico, or that we have leveraged our wealth around the globe for decades to increase our wealth to the detriment of the societies we involved ourselves with.

those unsavory acts have resulted in a great deal of prosperity for americans but as those behaviors have unfurled, they have been followed by corrections. these corrections came about because we have the best constitution the world has ever known. we cannot go back in time and undo what has been done but because of the constitution, native americans have been given certain lands and certain rights beyond the scope of what the balance of americans can or would expect. because of the constitution african-americans have benefitted from affirmative action and other policies meant to repair in some way the damage of slavery.

the constitution is slow but effective. it does two things that have been most important: it allows for a strong central goverment and it seeks the will of the people and by that i mean, the will of the majority of people, which is to say the lower and middle classes, (without infringing on the rights of the wealthy class.) in fact, in many instances, the constitution has been the protector of the lower and middle classes from the wealthy class. in turn, protecting the constitution should be paramount to the interests of the american middle and lower classes.

just as sanctioning the administration's warrantless wiretapping is akin to contributing to the erosion of the constitution, so is informing on your fellow motorist whom you suspect of driving while intoxicated.

in orwell's 1984, big brother sees everything not because there are cameras everywhere and he is literally seeing everything, (though there are and perhaps he does,) but because the populace has been dumbed and numbed to the point of seeing themselves as unworthy of the rights they might once have otherwise taken for granted. in the totalitarian society orwell imagined, individuals exist in a state of perpetual fear of what the reader recognizes as imaginary wars. the values of questioning authority and employing critical thinking have been cast aside, likely because at some point, big brother told people there was a very dangerous war being waged in eastasia which had to be won there so it would not be fought here.

1984 is fiction but it represents real outcomes and real possibilities. (witness north korea.) how do societies like that come about? well, it starts on a small scale and it starts with the revocation of rights.

in our roots as americans we find groups of people who were on the run from fascism and intolerance. the pilgrims who departed merry old england for the new world were not the wealthy class who were most comfortable with their state of affairs. on the contrary, those who were willing to pick up and leave were those who had nothing to leave behind. they came because they believed they could procure land in the new world and work hard at it in order to better their stations in life. some fled the intolerance they encountered in response to their fundamentalist religious practices and as they all set up shop along our eastern seaboard, they came to value tolerance, the separation of church and state being the ultimate safeguard for said tolerance, and they agreed on ensuring this new country would be run by the people and for the people. it was king george's policy of taxation without representation that finally lead to the revolution nearly 200 years after the settlement of jamestown.

informing on your neighbors is a bad idea. it creates the sort of chaos and confusion that is anathema to a healthy democracy. at the same time, driving while intoxicated is dangerous and public safety must be considered. it is to us as a society to balance public safety with individual rights. we cannot expect to prevent every bad decision a person might make. for this reason, we have a penal system. to prevent drunk driving we have created stiff penalties. we have endorsed advertising campaigns to increase awareness of the problem of drunk driving and to stop it. we employ police forces to patrol our cities and highways and we empower them with the ability to conduct field sobriety tests.

insurance companies would sacrifice individual rights and personal freedoms if it meant lower costs associated with drunk driving but as citizens, we have to make the hard decisions. we can't simply consider the bottom line as our sole determining factor. we weigh all factors. and so, we agree to stiffer penalties and we hope they deter would be drunk drivers. we also value the sanctity and strength of the constitution so we stop short of sacrificing personal freedoms or becoming our brother's keepers.

it is a balancing act and it is difficult. but if and when we agree to snitch on our fellow citizens, just as if and when we agree to allow politicians to circumvent fair procedures put in place to address a similar balancing act, (maintaining our personal freedoms while allowing a court to act quickly and efficiently on solid evidence to overcome normal constraints in authorizing an otherwise unlawful search or seizure,) we do so at our own peril.

another reason it is a bad idea to endorse this policy of asking the citizenry to watchdog itself on drunk driving is because the citizenry is not trained to do the job. police officers are trained to look for the tell-tale signs. who will the would be informers inform on? will they call 911 to give the license plate number and other specifics of the mom who has two small children in the back seat and has swerved some on the road as she shuffled small treats into the backseat area of the car to pacify the restless mob of two? will they call on the sleepy salesman who is pressing on for just a couple of more hours despite his weariness to try to make it home to wife and kids in time to see them and spend a few precious moments with them before they head off to school and work? will they get the person who is slightly off kilter because they are adjusting to a new meidcation to control their epilepsy or diabetes or lupus? what about the girl who is watching a dvd or the guy who is smoking a cigarette and talking on the cell phone, (hands free,) but by distraction, seems to him who would make the call to be a drunk driver?

i want and i trust police officers to be efficient. i do not want them running around pulling over soccer moms and late night drivers. i want them responding to real incidents which require their attention and expertise.

besides, while drunk driving is a sin, in the truest sense of the word, and a mistake, it is not unforgivable. what happened to grace?

it would be great to eliminate virtually any behavior that leads to a loss of human life. it would be even better to admit our nature in all its complexity and frailty and seek to do the best we possibly can do.

drunk drivers have to be punished. drunk drivers who actually injure or kill someone have to suffer far more severe consequences, (as they do.) the former are punished for the behavior which greatly increases the odds on the possibility of loss. the latter pay the consequences of the myriad worst case scenarios.

but because humans make mistakes by nature, our current laws strike a fair balance by having a minimal amount of tolerance for this wrong behavior while intermittently displaying severity for the same.

i think when we hear a proposal like this idea that perhaps we can stop all drunk driving by making a better net, by employing the citizenry as detectives increasing the police force by thousands of percents, it sounds good on the surface. i mean, everyone is opposed to people getting killed in auto accidents by drunk people. however, when considered more thoroughly, this is easily seen as a bad idea.


would we also have the citizenry calling and informing the police departments when they see someone make an illegal u-turn? the turn is illegal because it was deemed dangerous. no one died because a motorist made the turn but this is a similar situation.

it is simply a bad idea. let us let our police forces do their job.