The Demand for Law and Order​—Where Can It Lead?

“WE’RE going strongly towards the right and perhaps into our own kind of fascism.”

“It’s the small liberties that are slipping away first. And as always, the slippage is justified on the grounds of ‘national security.’”

“Less than a generation ago, the tapped wire, the bugged room, the secret informer evoked contempt and ridicule . . . These were the marks of police states . . . It is happening here now.”

Fascism? Liberties slipping away? Marks of a police state? From what country’s press were the three quotations above taken? Did they come from Germany after Hitler rose to power? Perhaps from a country taken over by a Communist revolution?

It may come as a surprise to many, but the above quotations were taken from prominent news sources in America.a They were reporting on a situation that is now developing in the United States.

What is this all about? How could responsible persons make such statements about a nation where freedom has been championed for nearly two centuries?

To understand just what has provoked these comments, we need some background information. It has to do with the situation that exists in the United States regarding law and order.

Breakdown in Law and Order

Authorities agree that law and order have been breaking down in the United States in recent years.

The chance of an American’s being the victim of a crime is much greater now than ten years ago​—more than twice as great. In fact, during the 1960’s crime rose about eleven times as fast as the population.

Police forces have been hard pressed to keep up with this avalanche of crime. This can be seen in the following statistics: for every 100 crimes committed in 1960, 31 were solved; but in 1968 out of every 100 crimes only 21 were solved. The average citizen feels that his security has surely lessened. Thus in a poll 71 percent of the people questioned considered crime the leading problem.

Other types of disorders also bother people deeply. Drug traffic increases every year. So have terror bombings by radical elements, as buildings in more than a dozen cities were bombed in just three months of 1970. Student riots and disturbances are becoming commonplace throughout the country. Demonstrations that can turn violent are becoming frequent.

More and more people are now demanding that something be done to combat this growing trend toward lawlessness and disorder. Some government officials feel that harsh measures must now be taken, but what measures?

Recent Proposals

Few would question the need for taking measures that would help stem the rising tide of crime and disorder. But what kind of measures are among those that have been advanced?

At least one house of Congress has passed a bill that would give police the right to break into a person’s home without warning. It is suggested that this method can be effective where a person is suspected of having drugs, but where a warning might give him time to get rid of the evidence.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would make it a crime to give a “provocative speech.” At present it is thought that this could silence radical elements who may advocate violence or who provoke riots.

Then a crime bill is being promoted that would suspend certain constitutional guarantees of persons accused of crimes. What is being proposed is called “preventive detention‘’ where persons suspected of committing crimes can be imprisoned without trial or bail for a period of time. Indeed, a House subcommittee has already approved a proposal that permits judges in Washington, D.C., to jail those they regard as dangerous criminal suspects up to sixty days without a trial.

The New York Post noted other measures taken recently: “The Post Office is again opening mail that should not be opened. An Army captain has filed suit in Washington to stop the Army from making unwarranted ‘generalized searches.’ Electronic eavesdropping . . . ‘bugging’ on private lives​—has been alarmingly increased.”

U.S. News & World Report stated: “The steady build-up by government agencies of detailed information on private affairs of citizens is heading for a system of lifetime official surveillance over everyone in America. Along with the extensive growth in collection of intimate facts about individuals by federal, State and local governments, computerized ‘data banks’ enable revelation of just about anybody’s secrets at the touch of a button.”

To some, these types of proposals and actions are welcome. Indeed, a recent poll found that the majority of Americans would be willing to suspend at least seven of the basic guarantees in the Bill of Rights to get law and order. New York’s Mayor John Lindsay said that many people are now accepting the idea “that crime will stop if we erase the Bill of Rights, that unity will come if we suppress dissent, that racial conflict will end if we ignore racial justice, and that protest will cease if we intimidate the people who report it.”

But where can all such measures lead? Will they really help stem the tide of the kind of crime that worries most people?

Where Can It Lead?

Where can the proposal lead that gives police the authority to break into a person’s home without warning? True, right now this can be used against drug addicts and pushers.

However, in the New York Times of February 1, 1970, editorial writer Tom Wicker asks: “How long will it be, as a result, before agents come bursting without warning into the house of political dissidents, contending under this law that any other procedure would have resulted in the destruction of pamphlets, documents, and the like, needed by society to convict?”

What about the proposed bill that would make a “provocative speech” illegal? In the New York Post of April 27, 1970, columnist Harriet Van Horne noted that this law would have made illegal the speech Patrick Henry gave in defense of early American freedom. She added: “Such a law might temporarily silence a Rap Brown or a Jerry Rubin. But it would also produce a generation of obedient little fascists, saluting the flag at mass rallies and snitching on their elders.”

Then there is the proposal for “preventive detention.” This may now be used against persons who are recognized as dangerous criminals. But who can guarantee that it will stop there? In time a person who disagreed with an official or a political party in power might be regarded as a “dangerous criminal” seeking to overthrow the government. So he could be imprisoned without bail or quick trial. Even those with different religious beliefs could be imprisoned, as they are today in dictatorial lands. Without a doubt many innocent persons could be sent to jail for months under such a proposal.

It is no wonder that many freedom-loving persons are alarmed. Mayor Lindsay said that the recent legislative proposals by the United States government “constitute the most significant threat to freedom from our own Government in a generation.”

Representative Richard Ottinger of New York charged that members of the government, “by playing upon fear and prejudice, have begun to ram through measures which would wipe out basic constitutional freedoms while failing to halt the spread of crime in our society.”

The New York Times stated: “Think about some of the methods now described as vital to law enforcement wiretapping, breaking into homes without knocking, limiting the right of defendants at trial to know the sources of prosecution evidence. What will they do, what can they do, to reduce the volume of street crimes that rightly disturb Americans most of all? How can wiretapping stop a rapist or mugger?”

When such measures do not stop crime, then what might happen? The editorial adds: “It could be to demand ever harsher police measures . . . with tens of thousands of suspects held in detention without trial, say, and the Supreme Court swept aside if it found preventive detention unconstitutional.”

In its issue of April 26, the New York Times made this sobering assessment of the situation:

“Each morning in schools throughout this land, millions of children pledge their allegiance to a nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. This daily ritual is beginning to lose all meaning as America’s fundamental principles of freedom are being undermined. . . .

“Group appeals, sectional politics, harsh and divisive statements and, most important of all, repressive administrative actions and retrogressive proposals and laws are directed from the very highest sources of Government against dissenters and nonconformists. . . .

“Amid talk of the maintenance of law and order, an epidemic of electronic eavesdropping creates conditions approaching governmental lawlessness and moral disorder.

“To suggest that the Bill of Rights can be temporarily ignored in times of discord and anger would be to turn the Constitution into an impotent, bloodless document.

“It is not in harmonious times that liberties require protection. It is in days of doubt that the rights of the unpopular few must be upheld, if the liberties of the many are to remain safe.”

Could It Happen?

Many persons find it difficult to believe that such a trend could continue in the United States until basic freedoms are eroded. But it has happened before in many countries throughout the earth.

For instance, in Germany between 1918 and 1933 the people experienced difficult times. There was much lawlessness and disorder. Added to that were the hard times that began with the worldwide economic depression of 1929. The German people came to the point where they were willing to accept a dictator to restore and preserve law and order.

But their acceptance of Adolf Hitler did just the opposite. In his book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich William L. Shirer said of Hitler’s regime: “It caused an eruption of this earth more violent and shattering than any previously experienced . . . during which it instituted a reign of terror over the conquered peoples which, in its calculated butchery of human life and the human spirit, outdid all the savage oppressions of the previous ages.”

As reported by the Los Angeles Times of March 13, 1970, Shirer stated of the situation in the United States now: “Hitler never got more than 39% of the vote in a free election, but I think the American people now would vote for almost anything which would put down the so-called peaceniks and the college kids and the blacks. . . . If our affluent society turned into one of hardship, I think you’d get by the consent of the people a very right-wing society and government in which freedom would be greatly restricted.”

Yes, it can happen. Indeed, many responsible persons in the United States warn that the process may have already begun.

[Footnotes]

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A proposed law would give police the right to break into a house without warning

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A Senate committee passed a bill to make it a crime to give a “provocative speech”

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“Preventive detention” of suspects is being proposed