Federal Agents Conduct Search at Ilhan Omar's Residence in Immigration Probe
Raids, Campaign Ads, and a Government Becoming Judge in Its Own Case
When the same hand that wields the warrant also buys the praise, power is no longer held on trust but begins to slide toward usurpation.
I am told that federal agents have entered a representative’s home under a “judicially authorized search warrant,” approved by the Department of Justice, in an investigation said to concern immigration paperwork; and, at the same time, that the government continues to pay for ads promoting the sitting president, even after he has announced some separate political vehicle of his own. I will not pretend to know more than this sparse record yields. Yet even these few facts are enough to raise a question that has followed princes and parliaments for centuries: is this power still exercised as a trust for the public, or has it begun to serve the particular advantage of those who hold it?
When I wrote that political power is “a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community… only for the public good,” in the Second Treatise (I paraphrase), I meant to mark a boundary. Force may be used in a commonwealth, but only under known laws, by settled procedures, and for ends that free and equal men could have consented to, had they been asked at the beginning. A warrant issued by a judge is, on its face, a mark that some procedure has been observed. But a seal on parchment is not the thing itself. The question remains whether the law under which it is granted, and the manner of its execution, truly serve the safety and property of all, or are bent toward the ruin or disabling of a political adversary.
In matters of crime, the magistrate may certainly search houses and seize papers; men do not leave the state of nature only to make fraud and perjury safe. Yet the law of nature, which is but reason, binds rulers as well as subjects: no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions without just cause. The burden of proving such cause always lies on power, never on liberty. It is not enough for a ministry to say, “trust us, an investigation is ongoing.” In my Essay Concerning Human Understanding I urged that assent be proportioned to the evidence; to demand belief where proof is withheld is to ask men to renounce their understanding. A government jealous of its character would therefore hasten, so far as honesty of inquiry permits, to publish the grounds of so grave an intrusion.
The danger grows sharper when the same government that directs the raid also pays for public praises of the ruler whose officers conduct it. I learn that the government has spent large sums on advertisements promoting the president, and that this spending continues even after he has declared some new body, styled “MAGA Inc.,” and called upon others (by what you term a “Truth Social post”) to fund his campaign privately. Here the ruler appears with two faces at once: as the magistrate entrusted with common treasure for the safety of all, and as a contender in the very contest by which that trust is renewed or withdrawn. When the purse of the public and the glory of the candidate are thus entwined, the ruler begins to be judge in his own case.
Some will answer that if the legislature has appropriated such money, and if some law authorizes “public communication,” then the matter is settled; the majority has spoken. But majority consent in a given assembly does not sanctify what no people could ever rationally authorize at the first institution of government. No one, considering men as the workmanship of one Maker and all naturally equal, would consent to a constitution by which those in office might at pleasure spend the fruits of their subjects’ labour to secure their own continuance in power. To employ the force or treasure of all for the particular advantage of some is not execution of law but partiality; not magistracy but faction armed.
Nor is it a light aggravation that these two powers move together: on one day, a home is searched in the name of public justice; on another, public money sings the virtues of the man at the head of that justice. I do not say these actions are already tyranny; that word should be reserved for a long train of abuses, tending the same way, and not thrown about for every single irregularity or hard case. Yet prudence consists in noting tendencies early. When emergency or discretion, which I have elsewhere called prerogative, ceases to be plainly for the public good and begins to harden into an unaccountable practice serving those who wield it, the people are already being prepared for servitude.
What then is required? First, laws about political expenditure must be so clear and so impartially administered that those in office cannot, under colour of informing the public, in effect purchase their own applause. Secondly, searches and prosecutions of political figures must be hedged about with such transparency and such visible independence that even opponents can see the justice, or at least the good faith, of the proceedings. Failing this, confidence decays, and with it the very authority rulers seek to preserve; for all political power is held on trust, and when that trust is plainly and persistently broken, it is not the people who rebel, but the governors who have dissolved the government, leaving men to their last appeal against force.
From the works cited
- Second Treatise of Government — Political power defined narrowly as the right to make laws, with penalties, only for the public good — anything beyond that definition must justify itself or stand condemned.
- Second Treatise of Government — Government by consent and majority decision, with the legislative supreme but itself bound: a fiduciary power, held on trust, forfeited by breach.
- An Essay Concerning Human Understanding — Assent must be proportioned to the evidence; believing beyond one's proofs is a failure of duty, not a mark of faith.