Brownsville: Land of the Free

United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of hard-core pornography, it may be indefinable, but "I know it when I see it."  That is roughly my view of defining freedom.

In general, if a large man with a pistol or an automatic rifle is nearby telling you what to do, this indicates a loss of freedom.  If someone with a weapon insists that you take off your shoes or belt or throw away your toothpaste or takes away your telephone, this indicates a loss of freedom.  Freedom is hard to find crossing a border, going through Sarita, Texas, getting on a plane, going into a courthouse or driving around near the border.

If someone with a gun asks to search your trunk or open your bags or look through your papers, this is a loss of freedom.

If someone with a gun expects to get an answer when your are asked why you went into Mexico, or asks for your ID or a birth certificate, or sends you through a metal detector or won't let you carry a pen-knife, this is a loss of freedom.

There is a certain indignity in much of this.  As long as I am healthy and don't have holes in my socks, it is not much to me, but watching airport security search my old mother when she was in a wheel chair, seemed beyond the pale.  Watching older jurors struggling to take off their shoes and put them back on to get into the courthouse was painful.  After all, they were ordered to be there by the court and probably didn't want to be there.

Maybe when the Bill of Rights are observed, this is a good American definition of freedom.  That poor battered document cannot be taken at face value, though.  The exceptions are bigger than the rules.

Remember the hubbub among minor politicians when Kris Kristofferson wrote, "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose?"  And he was talking about romance and Bobby McGee.

I don't know if it is just my mood in the last few days, or I am changing my mind about the world, but increasingly I am less concerned about societal freedom than those things that make me feel freer.

There is not much I can do about going to the courthouse, but I fly and cross the border less and less as time goes on.  And this makes me feel freer.  I am freer in my house and on foot than I am out driving around.  "Did I remember the seat belt?  Do I have my insurance card with me. Is my inspection sticker current?"  I am freer in Brownsville than Harlingen or Denton, Texas.  There are fewer cameras to report whether I paid a toll or had a full stop.  Also, there is a more tolerant attitude for minor foibles among the police, judges and prosecutors than in other places I have lived.

This was part of the reason I moved to Brownsville in 1980 in the first place.  I had lived in McAllen when I was in grade school and had fond recollections of the Valley.  I was representing the Moonies, that is the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity throughout Texas and Oklahoma after the Regional Commander of the Moonies had been beaten by the Chief of Police of Aubrey, Texas and been charged with an assault on a police officer.  The young man had been selling flowers door to door, and had offended the sensibilities of that mean, inbred little town, Aubrey, Texas.

Anyway, as part of the work I was hired to do after defending the Regional Commander, I started suing cities across Texas and Oklahoma to challenge the constitutionality of their ordinances aimed at keeping out the Moonies.  Mostly, I was met with hostility by the City Attorneys, a group who are notoriously ignorant of the United States Constitution.

Then I received a letter from Brownsville that made me love the place.

Brownsville was an exception.  Instead of the usual nasty response, I received a nice letter from Shel Weisfeld who was then serving as a contract assistant city attorney.  Shel in his letter apologized for the City having inadvertently and improperly restricted the free exercise of religion.  He saved the City a lawsuit.

A few months later I came to Brownsville to see what sort town this must be.  And I began looking for a place to live.