Sign of the times

Sometimes the little things - or at least the not-so-big things - tell you more about where it's all headed than the Major Stories. The Miami Herald for Friday carried an editorial about a new law passed Tuesday by the Florida legislature, soon to be signed by Governor Jeb "I'm the smart one" Bush.

Called the Protection of Persons and Property bill, it

says that a person has a right to stand his ground and meet force with force. Basically, it extends the "Castle Doctrine" - the right to defend your home against intruders - to any place where you have a lawful right to be: grocery store, library, hospital, post office, museum, park, nursery school.

As the Herald notes, there already is legal protection for those who respond in the face of threatened harm: It's called self-defense, and prosecutors say they know of no cases where someone is being taken to court for defending themselves. What this law does is invite the escalation of any confrontation, any argument or barroom brawl, any friction with a neighbor, to the point of deadly force - because even if you could have walked away, even if you should have walked away, you can be held blameless, with the fault on the victim for not having done what you did not do.

The Herald correctly charges that

[t]he new law is based on the macho principle that one mustn't retreat in the face of a threat. It removes the "retreat if it is prudent" principle from Florida law and substitutes the idea of "kill or be killed."

While the Herald calls the legislative vote an act of political cowardice, the bill was not without genuine support. It would be easy to see this support as simply moving the national ethos to the local, the individual, level, as translating "We're #1!" to a bloodier version of "King of the Hill." But I think there's more to it than that, that it's more a desire to feel in control of something as more and more seems out of our control, as we feel less and less secure - in our jobs, in our communities, in our world.

I remember some time ago telling someone that in a confrontation there is a difference between defending your honor and defending your ego and it was important to know that difference; even more so is there a difference between defending your safety and defending your ego. But the more our egos, our sense of having some measure of personal autonomy, take a battering in our everyday life, the less willing we become to absorb another blow when there appears to be an "alternative" - and backing down in the face of a challenge is just such a blow.

That is the real danger here. This law exonerates and therefore encourages the kind of blind rage that seems to be an increasing part of our daily life, a rage driven by our increasing but barely perceived sense of powerlessness.

There's more to say here but I'm going to cut this off for now. I will come back to it because it ties in with my thoughts about our fears and how they're being manipulated in pursuit of power and selfish gain.