The Gates Incident as a Free Speech Case

Harvey Silverglate, a founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has an excellent article in Forbes on the arrest of Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates. For Silverglate -- and I agree with him -- this is entirely a free-speech matter. Gates was arrested exclusively for what he said to a policeman and for how he said it. The incident is less about race and more about a police attitude toward "civilians" that free people should not tolerate. That attitude is exemplified in the current practice of not including police personnel in the term "civilian." This is a recent change. "Civilian" used to mean everyone but the military. This is another sign of the militarization of the police, which is stimulated by the "wars" on drugs, guns, and other things that are not directly connected with crimes against person and property.