OK, I understand why some people are upset with Arizona’s new law cracking down on illegal immigrants. Let’s say you’ve got a heavy accent and brown skin. The law empowers a rogue cop with a chip on his shoulder to demand, during a lawful stop, that you produce proof of citizenship.
And if you happen to be a citizen, as many people with accents and brown skin of course are, the cop’s demand will rankle and humiliate you. You will feel that your freedom as an American has been undermined — and you will be right.
That’s the main reason the new law leaves me cold, although I’d be surprised if the sort of encounter outlined above occurs on a regular basis. Most police are not interested in courting controversy. They will restrict their inquires about citizenship to situations where there is compelling reason to suspect that the person is here illegally, above and beyond language and national origin.
The Arizona Republic’s Robert Robb, who also opposes the law, offers the following prediction: “In virtually all cases, for people of all races legally in the United States, encounters with the police will not materially change.” Robb overstates his case, but he’s surely closer to the truth than the hysterical predictions of those who conjure up visions of Nazis and police states.
Now here’s what I don’t understand: If the Arizona law is bad because it degrades the freedom of some Americans, why are those now protesting the loudest so often the most active supporters of other measures that also degrade freedom, individual rights and equality before the law in scores of equally intrusive ways?
Why should lawmakers be able to suppress a small non-profit’s film about Hillary Clinton (see the Citizens United case), curtail our ability to give money to political candidates, or pool funds with other citizens to promote a cause dear to our hearts? Yet many of the loudest critics of the Arizona law are also rabid supporters of draconian campaign finance laws — and nodded approvingly in the 1990s, for that matter, while colleges enacted constitutionally dubious speech codes.
If it’s intolerable for a state to demand proof of citizenship, why is it fine for the federal government to force everyone to buy a specific product such as health insurance, and even dictate what kind of insurance they can buy?
If the use of racial criteria in immigration enforcement is terrible, why isn’t it in other arenas? Why isn’t it terrible in college admissions, hiring, and the allocation of government contracts?
It is not intrusive government that unsettles progressives, because they generally support intrusive measures across a broad array of public policy, from gun ownership (dictating how citizens store guns in their own homes, for example), to energy consumption (see Boulder County’s moves to limit the size of homes), to private property (the widespread use of condemnation for “economic development”), to employment. Every year legislatures pass another round of arbitrary occupational licensing laws that limit the right of Americans to earn a living in everything from fortune telling to braiding hair, to arranging and selling flowers. Yet few protest.
The progressive instinct to micromanage lives has become so comprehensive that in Santa Clara County, Calif., last month, supervisors voted to prohibit toys in Happy Meals — actually, any meal containing more than 485 calories or 600 milligrams of sodium. This occurs as the federal government is considering ordering food manufacturers to reduce the amount of salt in their products and many health crusaders want to dictate the amount of sodium in restaurant fare. But fear not: These limits on freedom will be praised as state power at its finest.
To their credit, progressives are usually in the forefront of defending prisoners’ civil liberties — and led the protests against the Bush administration’s unconscionable detainment without charge of U.S. citizens such as Jose Padilla. But on most fronts they’re AWOL or in the rooting section when government curtails our liberty.
So by all means, let’s lament an overreaching law in Arizona. But how about, every now and then, deploring another piece of legislation, too?
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
