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At twelve or thirteen I read an abridged version of Lés Miserables,
which gave me my earliest impressions of Napoleonic France. Of all the brutality
in that novel, I was most disturbed by the discovery that citizens of that nation
and era had to carry passports just to travel between cities or provinces. For
a boy who had, on several occasions, already traversed fifteen states with his
parents, without benefit of passports or interference by authorities, the restrictions
placed on the movement of nineteenth-century Frenchmen somehow seemed even more
oppressive than the Draconian justice system.
World War II movies depicting suspicious, sneering German officers augmented
my distaste for uniformed officials who stop unoffending citizens with a demand
for their "papers," and Cold War images of similarly intrusive Soviet
soldiers cemented that aversion. Only after I started touring my own country,
by thumb and by rattletrap station wagon, did I learn that American police tried
to imitate their totalitarian counterparts by stopping people whose looks they
didn’t like for "routine checks." The U.S. Supreme Court later
declared such arbitrary conduct unconstitutional, ruling that police have no
right to demand identification without probable cause. However, that authoritarian
practice is now sneaking back into service under the excuse of protecting the
public from terrorism.
While in Vermont early this month I learned that the U.S. Border Patrol has
established a "temporary" checkpoint on Interstate 91, at White River
Junction. It might seem strange for the Border Patrol to begin monitoring the
nation’s interior, but a legal loophole extends its jurisdiction a hundred
miles from any international boundary, and the agency that cannot even control
the Mexican border is using that technicality to dilute its effectiveness even
further. Like all such governmental impositions, this one was supposed to be
temporary, but now—predictably—the feds want to make it permanent.
Senator Patrick Leahy, of Vermont, opposes the measure for an assortment of
reasons, including the considerable inconvenience and impediment to intrastate
and interstate transportation. Vermont’s governor, meanwhile, has expressed
support for the checkpoint on the absurd grounds that it provides stimulus for
the local economy through the score-or-so of federal agents who will presumably
live nearby. By His Excellency’s reasoning, all of Vermont’s highways
should be encumbered with permanent roadblocks for the federal paychecks they
would draw.
Apparently the latest governor of Vermont is willing to subject his constituents
to Soviet-style interference in return for a few bucks: so much for the tradition
of Ethan Allen. Let us hope, at least, that the White River Junction checkpoint
is not manned from the Island Pond garrison. For the past three decades that
crossing has continuously hosted at least one unnecessarily nasty guard, as
though to remind returning Americans how unpleasant United States officials
can be in comparison to their Canadian counterparts.
In an interview with Vermont Public Radio a Border Patrol spokesman recently
justified his agency’s invasion of the American interior by citing the
figure of 650 people who have been "detained" since the White River
Junction roadblock was established. He mentioned the arrest of no terrorist
suspects, which he would certainly have boasted loudly, and the absence of such
boasts suggests that the preponderance of those detentions involved innocent
travelers victimized by the minions of a paranoid government. It would be easy
to imagine some independent-minded citizen being held indefinitely for expressing
his outrage at the imposition of a border-style interrogation as he tried to
make his way from Hanover to Claremont in time for a meeting.
Already the "land of the free" has stripped its citizens of the right
to travel freely to and from Canada without a passport. Before the logic of
a mid-state border checkpoint is taken very far, we will be expected to carry
passports at all times, like Napoleonic subjects. Here in Carroll County, New
Hampshire, every town falls within the Border Patrol’s hundred-mile Canadian
buffer, and at any time our tourist community could be completely encircled
by such obnoxious disincentives to the traveling public.
William Marvel is a free-lance writer and U.S. Army veteran living in northern
New Hampshire. His books include Andersonville: The Last Depot and Lee's Last
Retreat and The Flight to Appomattox. You can sent your comments to William
at Bill@interventionmag.com.
The White River Junction checkpoint certainly has little to do with terrorist
prevention, for there are simply too many routes around that section of Interstate
91. Instead, this extraordinary precedent may have no greater object that to
immerse the public gradually into authoritarianism. Once enough people have
passed submissively through our own version of the Brandenburg Gate, an accustomed
public will more readily accept the shadow of a police state from border to
border.
