Brian Greenspun warns that you get what you vote for; so don’t complain when things don’t go right

Sunday, June 25, 2006 | 7:49 a.m.

Be careful what you wish for.

To that I can add, be careful what you vote for and be careful what you editorialize for. And I can put all of that in a hat and dump it in the lap of the Review-Journal and others similarly disposed.

I know this is an old song of mine, but I am going to keep singing it until people finally hear it or until I can no longer carry this particular tune. And it starts with a familiar refrain - we the people are responsible for what happens to us. So, if we allow ourselves to get carried away by an emotional ideology of a newspaper, a politician or some other social siren poised on the rocks of democratic destruction, then we deserve what we get.

There are numerous examples of voter disgust, discontent, discomfort or a dozen other disses that would illustrate what I am talking about. One that jumps to mind is the effort by the TASC folks to tie the hands of legislators and other elected officials when it comes to raising revenues and force any effort to raise taxes beyond a set amount to a vote of the people.

I am all for the people voting. But not every time the fastest growing state in the union needs money. That is a sure path backwards for a state that has everything to look forward to as it leads the nation in growth and opportunity.

But taking TASC to task has to wait for another day. Right now I want to focus on my friends at the Review-Journal. The folks who never cease to amaze.

We live in an era of personal responsibility. At least that is the place where we are supposed to live. That means we are all responsible, and we all should take responsibility for our actions. If I write a column, I am responsible for what I write. If I encourage a certain course of action, I bear some responsibility for the results of that action when my readers follow my lead. The same holds true in every walk of life and in every family.

That's why I was somewhat perplexed the other day when I read an editorial in the other paper entitled "Police no longer need to knock. Supreme Court majority flushes the Fourth Amendment."

In it, the R-J castigates the five justices who overturned almost a century of case law as well as a clear reading of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable search and seizures. The editorial ends by saying, "This ruling comes courtesy of the court's conservative justices. But this is not conservatism. This borders on totalitarianism."

To which I say, amen. That's right. I am in general agreement with the other newspaper's position that emasculating the Fourth Amendment is neither conservative nor responsible and that those who would do such a thing are following an ideology, not a Constitution.

However, there is a big difference between them and me. I did not do my best in my editorial pages to browbeat, cajole, convince and otherwise force Nevada's senior United States Senator, Harry Reid, to support the nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

I did not encourage the readers of my newspaper to let Harry know that he better not try to stop the appointment for life of those two "conservative" judges to the High Court lest he incur their wrath come the next election. (I think enough of Sen. Reid's intellect, intentions and leadership to let him do what he thinks is right without sending the people in with pitchforks to make him bend to their sometimes uninformed will).

And I did not lead the Sun's readers by the nose towards the conclusion that all would be well when Justices Thomas and Scalia had two like-minded judges at their side so they could reverse most of the good that the Supreme Court has done in the past century or two.

I did none of that. But the Review-Journal did.

So, neither they nor any other Nevadan who allowed himself to be led down some primrose path to political nirvana has the right to complain when the justices ruled exactly the way people who paid attention to their records and writings knew they would. It was no secret that unwinding decades of constitutional law and precedent is part of their mission - regardless of what they told senators in their hearings.

I understand that many people were tired of a bad police search of a person's home leading to the exclusion of evidence that showed wrongdoing. In a vacuum, it is hard - make that impossible - to justify freeing a guilty person. No one, other than the bad guys, is for that.

But ignoring the Fourth Amendment - will it be the First Amendment or the Fifth Amendment that will be eviscerated next - is not the answer to the problem unless you have as a goal the trampling of individual rights and liberties in favor of the prerogatives of the government. That Justices Roberts and Alito were on that particular page along with Scalia and Thomas was no surprise.

So shame on the Review-Journal for complaining. And shame on every other citizen who can't wait to criticize an elected official's every move just because they don't understand or refuse to try to understand why certain actions are taken.

When we abdicate our obligations as citizens, our Bill of Rights starts to disappear and so, unfortunately, will innocent Americans whose only mistake might be to reach for a weapon to defend their homes because they never heard the knock on the door.

It is not enough to complain about the actions of elected and appointed officials when the slightest bit of investigation would have shown us that that is exactly what they would do, once we give them the chance. The Review-Journal was so eager to see "conservative" judges on the Supreme Court that it encouraged Nevadans to support what the newspaper now believes might be totalitarians in black robes. And the people were so eager to do the R-J's bidding that they failed in their responsibility to be informed citizens.

Most of us will survive what may be the loss of the Fourth Amendment protections. We may even survive the chipping away of our other individual rights and liberties as they occur in pursuit of a stronger central government.

I am not sure, though, that we will survive for very long if we allow ourselves to continue to do what ill-informed and ideologically driven newspapers and other "experts" tell us we should do "for our own good."

Democracies are fragile at best and demand that the voters pay attention. Now would be a good time to start, before the "experts" take us to TASC.

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