Why You Should Hug A Lawyer on Independence Day

Today is July 4th. Happy Birthday, America! Because America is one of the  most militaristic countries on the planet, if you pay attention to the media at all today, you will no doubt see that America will be celebrated for our freedoms (rightly so), and the military will be given credit for those freedoms (wrongly so). The United States does have some truly unique freedoms, particularly the First Amendment protections for freedom of expression and our criminal procedure protections. However, does it really make any sense to give credit for "freedom" to the military? Not really. Here's why. 

The reason why people constantly thank the military for our freedom is because most Americans have this G.I. Joe view of the armed forces. They seem to imagine that there is constantly an evil force in the world (Cobra?) that is just a moment away from invading our shores and crushing our freedoms. If it were not for the American military standing vigilant guard and fighting them off, we'd all be speaking another language and working in slave labor camps (or something like that). 

The idea that America is in danger of foreign occupation is nonsense. The closest the United States of America ever came to being conquered by a foreign power was in the War of 1812. The British whooped our asses, burned our capitol, and then signed a truce and went home. Why? Because you can't occupy the United States. The most powerful military of the day couldn't do it when America was a military midget (alliteration trumps political correctness on this blog). It's too big. Period. 

Those who advocate the military hero worship will usually point to World War Two as the defining freedom fight. Certainly, the Second World War seems like the most justifiable and noble of America's many military conflicts, but did it have anything to do with America's freedoms? No. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, which at the time was not part of America, and had no intention or capability of invading the United States. The Japanese wanted to cripple our Navy so that they could secure there interests in Asia unmolested and mitigate the oil embargo we were enforcing against them. The Nazis did not seem to have any interest in us until we declared war on their ally, Japan, but even if they had wanted to conquer the world, Germany couldn't get across the English Channel. How exactly were they going to get across the Atlantic Ocean and conquer us? 

Now, it's true that many Americans' rights were severely infringed upon during World War Two, but those Americans were the people of Japanese and German descent who were imprisoned without Due Process in violation of basically every freedom we claim to hold dear. Who violated those freedoms? The military. One of the most amusing arguments made for the military-as-liberty-defenders side of the debate is that our men and women are fighting overseas to protect our liberty at home. Yea, I that's probably true, but let's assume we get hit by a big terrorist attack (which statistically speaking is inevitable regardless of how many Pakistani peasants we bomb). Whose freedom does that take away? Nobody's. We can all continue to live our lives the same way we did before the attack. Terrorists aren't trying to conquer the government and enslave us. They can't. The only threat that terrorists pose to our liberties is that they will succeed in an attack, and OUR government will respond by taking away OUR freedoms. And rest assured, the military will do nothing to stop that when it happens. So the military is fighting overseas in a futile effort to protect us from our own government's overreaction? That's interesting logic. 

And this brings me to my most important point. Whenever American freedoms have been threatened, it has been because our own government wanted to take them away from us. No foreign power violated the dignity and liberty of Japanese Americans in World War Two. We did that. No foreign power enslaved black people in America. We did that. No foreign power forces us to take off all our clothes and get groped just to fly on an airplane. We do that. America has a higher percentage of its citizens in prison than any other country on Earth (more bitching about that here). We do that. No foreign power is depriving our citizens of their liberty on such a massive scale. Our government is doing it to us, and the military is either actively helping or doing nothing to oppose it. 

The fact is, if you are an American citizen and your freedoms have been taken away, there is almost no chance that any man or woman in a military uniform has done anything to help you. The military is the enforcement arm of the State, and the State has the most power to deprive people of their freedom. Military men and women aren't bad people. They are just doing their jobs. But the job of the military is not to protect freedom. Their job is to be the instruments of government policy. Sometimes that policy might promote the liberty interests of American citizens, but most of the time it will not.  

So who do you owe for all of your freedoms? Lawyers. Yes. The people you make jokes about murdering on a genocidal scale and whose vilification has become a meme in our popular culture  are the only people standing between you and losing your freedoms. 

First, there is the literal defense of liberty. If you are ever suspected of a crime, the agents of the State will try to lock you up whether you are guilty or not. The ONLY person who will be fighting to keep that from happening will be your lawyer. The supposedly liberty-loving American public will always assume you are guilty and will clamor for your incarceration or death (assuming your suspected offense is high profile). No member of the US military will lift a finger to preserve your freedom. In fact, if you are suspected of being a terrorist, the military will want to torture you and imprison you without a trial in lovely Guantanamo Bay (or they may just predator drone you). Your lawyer will be the only person trying to help you. If you are a murdering scumbag trying to take the life and liberty away from others, the person who will see you brought to justice is, you guessed it, a lawyer. 

Second, there's the preservation of liberties for everyone. Yes, we have a First Amendment that protects our freedoms to associate and express ourselves, but the people who insist that the government actually abide by the First Amendment are lawyers. When the government has passed and enforced laws criminalizing certain political speech, how many American military members stepped in to defend liberty? None. Why are those laws now unconstitutional and off the books? Why does the First Amendment now apply to every state in the Union? Lawyers. If you try to assemble and protest a government policy, who will be locking you up or spraying you with gas? The military (or their domestic arm, the police). Who will fight for your rights to peaceably assemble? Lawyers. 

You have the right not to be beaten until you confess and then have that confession used in court against you. Now. But for most of American history, such behavior was practiced in many states throughout the country. Did a Marine ever do anything to stop it? No. Lawyers stopped it and continue to do so. 

My point in making this post is not to demean the military. It's to uplift the people who really do defend and define the liberties that we all enjoy. The men and women who fight in the armed services are not to be blamed for not helping out people whose liberty is threatened. That is not their job. There are enough holidays where we worship the military. Let's give this holiday to the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence and defend liberty every day. To the lawyers! Enjoy your Independence Day.