Fox News Uses Royal Wedding To Promote the Police State

by J.H. Huebert, LRC Blog
Apr. 25, 2011

Leave it to Fox News to use the occasion of the royal wedding to advocate the police state.

This article informs us that for the royal wedding, the U.K. will be using security measures — including random stops and searches, warrantless arrests, and a ban on uploading iPhone photos — that would “never fly” in the U.S.

You see, former CIA agent and current security firm owner Mike Baker explains, “there's a more mature acceptance in the U.K. of the tradeoff between civil liberties and security.” They’re not like those whiny Americans, who think they can do as they please with their own property: “You're going to tell them what they can and can't do with their iPhone? That would drive people nuts.” Some Americans even have the nerve to complain “about having to take their shoes off at the airport.” Such children!

But Fox News is nothing if not fair and balanced, so they brought in a second expert, former NYPD detective and current security firm owner Pat Brosnan — who also says Americans need to grow up and accept the total state: “There's a number of different measures that should be implemented [in the U.S.] in the face of the reality that we now have. Our biggest threat is homegrown extremism. How do you get control of that? It's tough, very tough, and people have forgotten.”

In all of this, there’s no mention of any past conflicts between Brits and Americans over issues of search and seizure, nor is there any suggestion that any constitutional provisions might stand in the way of imposing these things in the U.S.

Brosnan does say that he doesn’t think Americans would go for the U.K. measures “in a million years.” But given Americans’ willingness to surrender their rights at the airports and their steady diet of propaganda like this, I’m not at all sure he’s right.