The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

A reviewer of The Conscience of Abe’s Turn called it “a fairly overblown story that my mind could not completely wrap around… I can’t understand why a group of professionals who are supposed to be so brilliant are holding protests and playing hippy saboteurs rather than just contacting the Feds and getting their problems solved.” Here’s the real-life analogue, and the real-life reason: because the Feds create problems, not solve them. Just ask Yolanda Madden’s father, interviewed in this new civil-rights video from KopBusters.

A quote from the video:

The police for months, for several months, two to three months, told the prosecutor— We kept trying to get the video. They said there wasn’t one, there wasn’t one. Finally, we got through a back-door deal at the police department— Actually, the assistant chief of police went and found this video. When we got that video, that video absolutely proved that those officers lied about her telling— confessing that there was drugs in the truck when they stopped her… They all said in unison in their reports that “We heard her when she got out of the vehicle, she said, ’Oh yes, the drugs are in the front seat,’” and they went in and found them. “She broke down crying,” is what they said. The video shows she didn’t break down crying. In fact, the video shows that she refused them permission to search her vehicle. [A snippet from the video is included.] …

This is America! I grew up, and I believed in the system. I mean, I’m an optimist, and I said, “You know, we can beat this.” I didn’t understand the federal system. You don’t have a chance, because that judge is god. When we walked out of the courtroom— Now we walked out of the courtroom; I met with laughing, mocking officers. And one of them I overheard, saying, you know, we shouldn’t be doing this, we were lucky to get off with our skins.

Not an Isolated Case

I don’t know what was going through the mind of the reviewer above, that she couldn’t wrap it around the story of Abe’s Turn. But here’s a possible explanation: maybe she still believes in the system. That’s not a disparagement of her, because it just makes her like many Americans. Like many Americans, maybe she’s been brainwashed by our government schools (preaching that America is “free” and that “the people” rule American government), by our popular entertainment (almost always portraying the cops as the good guys, never making mistakes, even when they break the rules in order to get the so-called “criminals”), and even by our popular news media (which drool over freak instances of citizens behaving badly, but play down the more common cases of powerful government behaving badly)—

But fortunately not always, because sometimes even police misbehavior makes the news. The following videos are cases in point, and they represents the sort of behavior you expect to come from power and the men and women attracted to it. The following videos are graphic and are not for the squeamish, especially the second, which you will not want to watch. The first video is about inappropriate (but consensual) behavior in a police station, which resulted in firings. But the second is about a woman, Hope Steffey, who called the cops for help after being assaulted, and the cops apparently decided to finish the job. Apparently, “no” doesn’t mean no if you have a badge and a gun. Unlike the first video (in which no one was actually harmed), their department is reportedly sticking up for them, even while victims are now crawling out of the woodwork to file suit. On top of that, in return for calling the cops to report an assault, Hope Steffey is now charged with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

How can this be? Because government and its enforcers are there to use force, and government apologists just can’t accept that we the citizenry might be in the right when we complain about the abuse of this force. If no one is harmed, that can be a scandal, if it looks bad politically, because no force was used. But if the enforcers are being blamed for “just doing their jobs,” then it can’t be their fault, even if they disregarded proper procedure. If the cops in the first video below had wanted to assure they would not be fired, they should have grabbed the woman in the video and dragged her to a back room first.

If you do not understand the passion for justice that inspired Abe’s Turn—and inspires the real-life Conscience of America—and if watching these videos does not cause you to understand, please turn in your membership card to the human race.

The thing to remember here is that the police department of Odessa, Texas (which was responsible for the Yolanda Madden tragedy) or of Stark, Ohio (responsible for Hope Steffey’s inexcusable ordeal) is not an isolated incident. It is not an exception to the rule. The rule is that unchecked power will be abused, wherever it exists, because cops are not saints. They are merely humans, like us, except that they have guns and uniforms and power. And that’s why we must always watch our government carefully. The framers of the U.S. understood this truth acutely.

No History Lesson, Just a Simple Thought

I could launch into a history lesson here, but I won’t. I’ll merely sum up with one thought.

Before we had a strong federal government, when the Constitution was being debated, there were the Federalists, who were in favor of having a federal government, and there were the Anti-federalists, who were against having a federal government. As you know, the winner writes the history. And today, in a government-school history class, you’ll hear that the Federalists wrote the Federalist Papers, a series of editorials which laid out the reasons why our system of federal government works. A little-known fact, not usually taught in government schools, is that the Anti-federalists also wrote a series of editorials, now known as the Anti-federalist Papers. You can find copies of The Federalist almost everywhere, in numerous bookstores, published in numerous editions; but you have to search for The Anti-federalist. It seems the Anti-federalists got the short end of the stick.

This is a blight on us. We should always remember the wisdom of the Anti-federalists and never just trust that our government will always work. Because the Federalist Papers were written by men who gave us the Constitution. But the Anti-federalist Papers were written by men who gave us the Bill of Rights.

Always watching!
-TimK