Talking Out Of Turn

The following is an email response (lightly revised) to a friend who does not live in the USA. He asked whether I thought America was becoming a police state and cited a recent incident as perhaps an indication of this trend.

Oh yeah, yikes, the UCLA taser incident was kinda big news here, too. I’m not sure whether it received national attention, but it was definitely pretty big news here in Southern California.

I noticed you can watch the entire incident on YouTube.

I’ve been to UCLA several times. I believe the incident actually took place in a main campus library where UBF used to “go fishing” right outside. Blech.

But anyway, yeah, I think the UCLA police (who as I understand are not regular police, but do have authority and work with regular police, and do carry weapons like tasers and batons, not sure about guns) overstepped their boundaries. The situation went out of control. And of course there will be lawsuits if they haven’t already been filed. This was a terrible incident.

Of course, college and university campuses, and especially ones like UCLA and UC Berkeley, are known for being hotbeds of political activity and centers of conflict between students and those in authority — the university administration, the police, etc. So while this was a bad situation, it’s not entirely surprising.

Hm, as far as the USA as a police state, well, I’m not quite sure how to put it. It’s definitely not like, say, Communist China (at least from what I’ve heard from friends who live or have lived there) let alone like, say, certain nations in the Mideast or Africa. But it’s perhaps not as “free” as certain European nations. (Although I sometimes wonder whether it’s really worth the cost for, say, Sweden or the Netherlands to be “free” in the way they think they are “free.”)

Although there are certain laws I would vehemently disagree with, speaking as objectively as I can, I would say laws are generally not unfair. The Bush Administration has tried to do things like wire tap into personal phone calls of American citizens and take other similar measures. But as far as I’m aware, Congress has not passed any of these laws.

Also, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have made sure the rights of citizens are protected. I believe it’s the ACLU who is also helping the UCLA student who was tasered. That said, the ACLU has its own agenda as well. For e.g., they would never help a Christian teacher kicked out of a public school for teaching creationism. But there are other groups in addition to the ACLU which try to help protect citizens from abuse by the government and others.

As far as national security goes, it’s definitely become stricter since 9/11 (as you noted). The Dept. of Homeland Security is something the Bush Administration formed to better protect Americans. But as a friend pointed out to me yesterday, it’s hard not to think of Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety whenever the Dept. of Homeland Security is mentioned. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately depending on your perspective, there has been a lot of criticism about the Dept. of Homeland Security. It apparently hasn’t been doing a good job. At best, it’s been pretty much useless and ineffective. At least that’s the news I keep hearing here in California. But at worst, although thankfully we are nowhere close to being there yet, it could arguably turn into an agency which spies on its own citizens like the KGB spied on fellow Russians.

On the other hand, it is obviously important to fight against terrorism — not only outside our borders, but also inside the USA itself. We know there are terrorist groups in the USA. They are a sort of “fifth column” within our nation. But the question is, how can we disrupt and even destroy these terrorist groups without also destroying American liberties and rights, viz. the Bill of Rights in our Constitution?

To be honest, I’m not sure the Democrats have any better plans than do the Republicans.

I should add, personally speaking, I’m becoming more and more fed up with both parties, as are many Americans. In the last several years, there has been a rise in support of third parties as alternatives. But still, the overwhelmingly dominant players in the American political arena are the Republicans and Democrats. Yet it’s becoming increasingly hard to tell the two apart from one another. The only significant difference is the name on the ballot, so to speak. And perhaps the only way a Christian can distinguish what is good from what is bad is that one party or person at least is more known for not supporting issues like abortion and homosexual marriage while another is more known for supporting abortion and homosexual marriage. Otherwise, they might as well be the exact same party. But even these distinctions seem to be more and more blurred with every passing day; it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell “the good guys” apart from “the bad guys.” For e.g., our lovely Austrian bodybuilder and Hollywood megastar turned state governor is technically a conservative Republican, but he supports abortion and homosexuality. In fact, he recently refused to provide public, tax-supported funding for California schools and businesses which do not support homosexuality, bisexuality, and transexuality.

So I don’t know what to think. In some ways, America is far from becoming a police state. But in other ways, I can see the seeds already planted which will produce a police state if they are not weeded out.

In my opinion, though, I believe “the police state” (if there is such a thing or if such a thing does come to pass) is more effect than cause. The cause or root or source is unbelief in God and idolatry. Even if most Americans are still not atheist in name, they are atheist in practice. Practical atheists. They live as if no God exists. And they worship money, pleasure, status, etc. Compared to our grandparents’ generation, which suffered through the Great Depression and World War II, for example, we are so much more spoiled, so much more ungrateful, so much more unwilling to make sacrifices for the good of future generations. We want immediate satisfaction now and we don’t care what happens in the future as long as we have pleasure in the present. We live for the now. We don’t think ahead. Many Americans live from paycheck to paycheck without a significant savings account. We love to indulge in movies and TV and music rather than taking time to appreciate the beauty of nature or simply spending time with our families. That’s why families in America are becoming more and more dysfunctional, I suppose. We worship values like tolerance, which is actually a good, but we have become so “tolerant” that if anyone says something like homosexuality is a sin, then suddenly we are no longer tolerant towards that person. We have become so “tolerant” that we cannot tolerate dissent from the mainstream public opinion on any given topic. Hence the effect is we are gradually losing our rights and liberties and the things which we value most and which make life truly worth living because we have lost God. And in His place, we have substituted the false gods of self and self-indulgence, of wealth and pleasure, etc.

I would suspect that the places in the USA which have the least reverence for God have the most proclivity to move towards a police state. I would suspect places like Los Angeles and New York City are more prone to stricter control and abuses of liberties and freedoms than places in the Bible Belt. I’m not ignoring the fact that they are populous, metropolitan centers with diversities of cultures and peoples, but as a Christian I would also think it’s because there is little or no fear of God in these places. Perhaps America’s urban cities should be the Christian’s most urgent mission field.

Also, I don’t mean to imply there should be no separation of church and state, per se. But I mean there shouldn’t be a separation of God and state (as my pastor put it). I think it’s generally a good idea to keep the state (government) out of the church and the church out of the state (government). As someone once said, when the state and the church join together, it’s almost always the church that loses. However, this doesn’t mean we should keep God out of the state. I’m of course not talking about a Christian theocracy, which again does not seem at all right to me as far as I can tell, since I fear it could turn into something no different than a modern day Muslim theocracy or perhaps become like the Catholic Church in the Medieval Ages. But I just mean a belief in the Creator and gratitude for all that He has provided for us — from “rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17) to the very breath of life — all people everywhere, and not just Christians, should thank God. Giving thanks to God is an obligation and duty, not something we do only when we feel like it. Our Founding Fathers, who were by no means Christians, except for a few exceptions, but were primarily deists, nevertheless invoked and gave thanks to the God of the Bible during political speeches and other related events. More importantly, God was still feared and respected amongst Americans in days past. But today, it sadly seems that more and more Americans instead better fit the description given by the Apostle Paul in Rom. 1:21: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

Anyway, my real concern is that those values which find their origin in the Bible and a Biblical worldview — such as love for God, love for creation, love for human life, love for other people even if they are different from you, love for the truly valuable things in life, love for justice, beauty, mercy, hatred of sins like murder, adultery, stealing, etc. — are becoming more and more marginalized in our society. Something like this is more worrisome to me than even a police state. I don’t mean I am unconcerned about the decline of Christianity, but whereas Christianity can survive and even thrive in the most hostile environment (like during the persecutions of the Roman Empire or during the persecutions of the Roman Catholic Church in the Reformation), I would argue America cannot survive without Christianity and Judeo-Christian or Biblical values. That’s what’s truly troubling.

(By the way, these have little relevance to what I said above, but I just love Hugh Laurie!)