A Nation of Sheep- an editorial
by David Gordon


Edited and written by David Gordon, senior fellow of the Mises Institute and author of four books and thousands of essays.




[A Nation of Sheep. By Andrew P. Napolitano. Thomas Nelson, 2007. Xiii + 240 pages.]

Judge Napolitano has organized his excellent book around a central metaphor. He contrasts sheep, who follow their shepherd with unquestioning devotion, and wolves, who are alert to protect themselves:

There are two kinds of people who stand out in the United States today: sheep and wolves. Sheep stay in their herd and follow their shepherd without questioning where he is leading them. Sheep trust that the shepherd looks out for their safety… Wolves, on the other hand, do not aimlessly follow a shepherd… Wolves question the shepherd and act in a way that forces the shepherd also to question his decisions. Wolves challenge government regulations, reject government assistance, and demand that the government recognize and protect their natural rights. They are rugged individualists (p. 10).

America, Napolitano thinks, consists largely of sheep: we acquiesce in gross violations of our civil liberties, including but by no means confined to, those inflicted on us by the Bush administration, in the course of its "War on Terror." Too often, even those concerned about the current violations of civil liberties will think in this way.

True enough, the Patriot Act gives the government the power to pry into our correspondence, telephone calls, and personal records; and if I were unfortunate enough to be suspected of being an "enemy combatant," I might suffer a dire fate indeed. Why, though, should I care about that? The Administration is concerned only with blocking terrorists. There is only the remotest chance any of these civil liberties violations will have any direct effect on me.

Napolitano makes clear that this is an unduly narrow way to view matters, and not only because of the familiar argument that a government that targets one group may later target others as well. ("First they came for the…, etc.") Quite, the contrary, violations of rights affect the ordinary person as well.

As a prime example, commuters who enter the New York subway must submit to random searches of their bags.

The New York Police Department, along with many other police departments across the country, now conducts random bag searches in the subway, without suspicion or warrant, in order to prevent terrorist attacks. These random searches clearly violate the Fourth Amendment, which is meant to protect all persons from warrantless searches and seizures. If you are unlucky enough to be selected "randomly," the officers will stop you as you hurry to catch your morning train. As the doors slide closed on the platform below and your train departs, you stand helplessly as the bored cops search your bag. (p. 14)

A federal appeals judge ruled that these searches were constitutional.

In August 2006, Judge Chester Straub of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the NYPD acted within the law because the subway bag searches fell within the "special needs exception" to the Fourth Amendment due to imminent terrorist threats. (p. 15)

Napolitano mordantly comments, "There is no 'special needs' exception in the Fourth Amendment. The court simply made it up" (p. 15).

Napolitano's point is expressed with characteristic force, but I wish that he had addressed in this connection an important issue. Does the Fourth Amendment apply to the states? The claim that it does rests on the "incorporation" doctrine, i.e., the view that the 14th Amendment makes the states subject to the Bill of Rights.

Critics of incorporation such as Raoul Berger have persuasively argued that the doctrine has scant basis; additionally, it strikes at the states as independent sources of authority to the federal government. Is it not likely that more is lost to individual liberty by the increased subordination of the states to federal courts than is gained by decisions that on occasion strike down bad state laws?

The same issue applies to what Napolitano says about the Kelo decision. He remarks

The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides that the government can seize private property for public use, as long as it fairly compensates the owner… Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the case is that the City [of New London, Connecticut] seized property from one private citizen and sold it to another. There was no public use. (p. 137, emphasis in original)

Of course, the city grossly violated property rights. But does the 5th Amendment apply to the states? It would be most valuable to have Napolitano's reflections on this topic.

All airline travelers will have encountered another way in which the Bush administration has interfered with our right to privacy. But, faced with silly demands that, e.g., we remove our shoes for inspection before our federal masters permit us to board, we act as sheep. "But how does confiscating water bottles, snow globes, and 'toy transformer robots' while waving deadly weapons and diseases through the gates, protect our security?" (p. 123). We do not protest but meekly do as we are told.

The measures that I have so far mentioned form part of the "War on Terror," but not all violations of our right to privacy have this battle as their ostensible justification. In a section that will be of interest to all drivers, Napolitano indicts the use of cameras to check speeders. Relying on these cameras denies due process to the accused:

The tickets are practically indisputable, since the images of the vehicle are not close enough to capture the driver of the vehicle. If the license plate recorded is registered to you, you're guilty. Period. These cameras are so profitable that in Britain they are referred to as "yellow vultures" and are the most lucrative cameras in the country. (p. 118)

Napolitano notes that using these cameras increases accidents, since drivers speed up at intersections in an effort to avoid detection; nevertheless, the cameras are increasingly part of the local scene in various sections of America. Again, people act as sheep and fail adequately to protest.

Those who dismiss the measures just described as mere annoyances and, reverting to a style of argument mentioned earlier, ask what the War on Terror has to do with them, should be careful. They may find that the draconian laws they imagined could not affect them hit very close to home:

If you're a member of an activist organization or have ever blogged about how betrayed you feel by your government, or how you really wish they would end this futile war and bring your kid home from Iraq, your name might be on the terrorist watch list along with thousands of other innocent people. Your phone might be tapped, your computer might be monitored, and thousands of surveillance cameras may be focused on you as you trip over that crack in the sidewalk. Today more than ever, Big Brother may be watching. (p. 66)

If he is watching, then, Napolitano reminds us, the Patriot Act allows him to enlist involuntarily the services of members of the public to assist in spying. Further, a citizen thus drafted into service is forbidden, under criminal penalties, to disclose that he has received a National Security Letter.

The Patriot Act places a gag order on any person served with a self-written search warrant … for information, barring them from disclosing that the FBI has either sought or obtained information from them. If a town librarian tells a neighbor … that the government has taken her Internet browsing records, the innocent librarian can end up in a federal prison for five years because of her truthful speech." (pp. 69–70)

Is this not an outrageous interference with our right of free speech?

Assaults on liberty, today as in the past, are supported on the grounds that security must be protected. But the defenders of these measures fail to show that they in any way do improve our security. In what way, e.g., did the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II aid the American war effort? Napolitano remarks that it took more than thirty years for the American government to apologize for this outrageous policy. One wonders whether thirty years from now the government will issue a new apology for the manifold invidious actions of the Bush administration. We must thank Judge Napolitano for alerting us to our peril in this excellent book.

9/30/2008 2:48:00 PM

Unfortunatly it's not just a nation of sheep, it's a world of sheep!

In a nation of sheep, I'm the cat who doesn't care much about things that don't affect me, and glare things, and sleep about 95% of the day

I feel, sometimes, like that character from a Bugs Life, he knows he and his ant friends outnumber the evil grasshoppers, but his ant friends are so consumed by the false paradign of "we must gather or the grasshoppers will destroy us all" that they miss out on the fact that they outnumbered the evil tyrannical grasshoppers some 100-1...

I don't know, some days, I feel just like that, like the people who should be the most upset by all of this, have their heads shoved so far up the rectal cavity we call a T.V., that they just can't seem to or maybe just don't want to identify that sick feeling that so many of us have had in our stomachs for awhile.

I know alot of people who are concerned with the way things are and the way they are headed, and i'm concerned as well. But theres not much that we "little people" can do about it besides get arrested and sent off to Gitmo. And its that fear that keeps everyone from marching into the streets demanding heads of the Senators on pikes.

we can go back to sleep November 5 and forget about it for four more years.

It's just a case of indigestion.


like this morning....
no sooner did republican reps come out of caucus and soothe with platitudes, did the market rise 50% on the pablum.

No vote yet, no assurance that the bailout would pass, but no assurance that it was doomed either.

So off to the feeding trough went Wall Streeters speculating on the market within seconds.

The Dow rose 50% in five minutes, from +95 to +144.

can we say , "now I lay me down to sleep...."?

I wouldn't, but most will.

you are a nation of sheep following a wolf...

This is the sad truth...

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so,
a well organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Eighth Annual Message, November 8, 1808

The strongest reason for the people to retain their right
to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect
themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson


I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous
to our liberties than standing armies. Already they
have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set
the Government at defiance. The issuing power should
be taken from the banks and restored to the people to
whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson

If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their money, first by inflation
and then by deflation, the banks and corporations
that will grow up around them (around the banks),
will deprive the people of their property until their
children will wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson

The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our
Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their
destruction... I sincerely believe that banking
institutions are more dangerous than standing
armies; and that the principle of spending money
to be paid by posterity
... is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on
this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the
United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States or to
the people' (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the
boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress,
is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer
susceptible to any definition."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to George Washington,15 February, 1791

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government,
so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution
so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
-- Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a
trial of strength and bid
defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson, 1812
Source:Liberty Quotes

An elective despotism was not the government we
fought for, but one which should not only be founded
on true free principles, but in which the powers of
government should be so divided and balanced
among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one
could transcend their legal limits without being
effectually checked and restrained by the others.
Thomas Jefferson

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism
to liberty in a feather bed.
Thomas Jefferson


we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual
debt. We must make our election between economy
and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into
such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and
in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in
our labors and our amusements, for our calling and
our creeds...
Thomas Jefferson

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our election between economy and liberty
or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as
that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in
our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and
our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...
[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our
miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence
by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks
of our fellow-sufferers...
And this is the tendency of all human governments.
A departure from principle in one instance becomes a
precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society
is reduced to be mere automatons of misery...
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and
oppression."
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of
Independence, 3rd US President
Source: Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

A nation pretty much has to be sheep, doesn't it? The sheep always have to outnumber the wolves, regardless of what type of animal you're actually talking about. Otherwise the wolves would run out of food in a big hurry.

could the wolf be a burning Bush?