Dudley Hiibel is a rancher in Nevada. In May of 2000, he was arrested for refusing to produce ID. His case will be heard by the US Supreme Court on March 22. The SCOTUS decision will determine whether America has become a police state, whether anyone with a badge can walk up to you and demand "your papers", and arrest you if you refuse.

The incident took place before 9/11, but will of course be colored by that act of terrorism. At the heart of the case is the question: is the refusal to show ID considered probable cause? Probable cause is what gives an officer the power to arrest (as opposed to reasonable suspicion, which merely gives him the authority to question someone or frisk them for weapons).

I hope he wins. However, win or lose, it highlights how willing the authorities have been to exert and even overstep their authority, even prior to the "war on terror".

I've said it before but it bears repeating: legally, a country cannot declare war upon any entity other than another country. A country can not declare war upon an abstract idea like "terror" or "drugs" or "obesity". It may declare war upon another country which is practicing certain abstract ideas like "terror", but not the abstract idea itself.

So we get these faux wars like the war on drugs and the war on terror - but they are not really wars at all. There is no enemy nation. "You're with us or you're against us" is a good way of separating friend from foe when a nation is engaged in a real war, but becomes a meaningless phrase when there isn't really a war going on.

These faux wars are not that which they label themselves. Just as peanut butter contains neither peas nor nuts nor butter, the "war on terror" and "war on drugs" have nothing to do with war, or terror, or drugs.

What they are about is increasing State powers over citizens: making their assets subject to forfeiture without following due process and with no recourse, forcing citizens to submit to authority everywhere they go ("your papers...", stripsearching random citizens at airports), to submit your personal information to them (ask yourself how on earth NASA got the raw census data of thousands of American citizens? NASA?... and just what did you think the Form 1040 was really used for?).

These are wars not of America against another nation, but America against America itself. And if Hiibel loses in SCOTUS, then Americans will have already lost most of their vaunted freedom.

America is at a crossroads. 9/11 probably accelerated the process of reaching this crossroads, but the crossroads was bound to be reached anyway. Does America decide that it can handle the real meaning of freedom? Does America remember what liberty is? Or will it follow the present path: will it increase police powers, stifle freedom, increase taxation, increase state programs, increase intrusion into citizens private data and their lives, coddle Americans from cradle to grave, protecting Joe Sixpack from boogeymen like "drugs" and "terror"?

Will the real America please stand up?