In a prior post, I mentioned the egregious and reprehensible treatment of Jennifer Reisinger, the blogger at Sheboygan Shenanigans. Her encounter with municipal officials occurred in 2007.
Why do municipal officials go wrong this way? I am not from Sheboygan, but I will offer a few guesses about how so-called public servants go astray, and run roughshod over individual rights.
Local officials fixate on their role as community leaders and people of influence. “I’m somebody” (true) becomes “I’m somebody special” (false).
Town politicians assume local ordinances and practices matter more than state or federal law.
Defenders of entrenched power rationalize their behavior as ‘for the good of the community.’ Government stops being instrumental, and becomes a supposedly higher calling. No it’s not; the defendants in the Sheboygan case will find out how far it is from a higher calling.
Police Lieutenants. There’s always one in these matters? What is it about the use of police lieutenants to enforce orthodoxy in the name of an ‘investigation,’ ‘civil discourse,’ or some other asinine excuse? Is this why someone joins a force – to be nothing but a caddy on behalf of third-rate officials?
Many politicians are ignorant of the law. Elect or appoint someone to office, and he suddenly thinks he’s an expert on the law. Someone memorizes a few rules of parliamentary procedure, and he imagines himself an expert on eminent domain, constitutional doctrine, contract law, etc.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a politician pontificate erroneously on the law, all the while a staff lawyer sits in the room, whose opinion is never sought. In most areas, people wouldn’t assume that position confers knowledge and wisdom, but politicians often think that holding local office is the equivalent of reading law at Oxford. Suddenly they’re all-knowing.
If a person sat on a hospital board, it wouldn’t make him think that he could perform surgery; politicians often read a few words from a statute, wholly omitting the decades of judicial interpretation, and think they’ve found a quick, convenient answer.
Sometimes one thinks: “Do you believe what you say, or are you just hoping others believe it?”
Many of these locals bemoan coverage that’s lawful, and constitutionally protected, but actually tame. They think that if the coverage is critical, it’s evil. These are people who don’t understand a real press in cities across America – those accustomed to a compliant weekly paper are ignorant of what a vigorous press is like.
I have remarked before that, in my own situation, “America does not end where the Whitewater city limits begin.”
The same is true is Sheboygan, and across all America.
Bloggers typically love America – I know that I do, and I am certain that Ms. Reisinger does, too. When officials try to intimidate and silence a blogger, they place themselves against the American traditional of liberty. Bloggers – modern day pamphleteers — love and embrace this tradition, and those who try to scare them should and will fail.
America is bigger and better than any self-interested, rationalizing official who puts himself ahead of America’s free way of life.