A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on the objections of some police chiefs to a Justice Department plan to interview thousands of Middle Eastern men.
The Times says "the plan has prompted a kind of role reversal, with the police now the guardians of civil liberties, instead of being criticized for violating them."
It's not a "role reversal" for the police to be guarding civil liberties. Police are constantly put in the position of protecting demonstrators advocating unpopular causes -- a classic civil liberty. Expand the definition of civil liberties a bit further to include property rights and, as Webster's Second puts it, "acting as one likes without interference or restraint except in the interests of the public welfare," and the police are constantly protecting civil liberties by preventing theft and assault.
It's not even clear that the police who are opposing the Justice Department plan are in fact, as the Times would have it, emerging as "guardians of civil liberties." It's a pretty grave infringement on an innocent person's liberty for that person to be killed in a terrorist attack. If the Justice Department plan helps to prevent such terrorist attacks, it may in the end have a positive effect on civil liberties, and it may be the police who are undermining liberty by opposing the Justice Department plan.
What's going on here is the weighing of some liberties against others, not the police siding with liberty and the Justice Department against it. The Times's claim of a "role reversal" is an oversimplification rooted in negative stereotypes about police and in the Times's own preference for some liberties over others.
Cannabis Cafe: An article in the international section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "English Pot Smokers' Pub May Prove a Model." The article reports that the marijuana outlet is "highly popular with its neighbors," who "much prefer happy, peaceful druggies to aggressive, unpleasant drunks." This seems a rather constricted view of the alternatives. Rather than smoking pot, however happily, or getting drunk, however aggressively, isn't it possible that this joint's customers would be just as happy and peaceful at home reading to their children, or working, or volunteering to help some worthy cause, or even exercising? Smartertimes.com has no objection to the Times airing the argument for decriminalizing marijuana, but it seems like in the interests of fairness and balance the newspaper could at least find one or two sources to voice objections. After all, this is a newspaper that so objects to tobacco use that it refuses to accept advertisements for cigarettes. The Phoenix House web site reports about marijuana that "persistent use will damage lungs and airways and raise the risk of cancer. There is just as much exposure to cancer-causing chemicals from smoking one marijuana joint as smoking five tobacco cigarettes." So why does the Times treat Philip Morris and the other American tobacco firms as villains to be demonized, while it depicts the proprietor of the English cannabis cafe as the creator of some sort of utopia?