Check Lanes are Wrong

Something which we are seeing more and more often, at least here in Michigan but it seems safe to assume that it's happening in many areas of the country, are drunk driving check lanes. The idea is to capture drunk drivers before they can do any harm. On paper, it isn't a bad idea. Yet other ideas on paper, such as our Constitution, my well be at odds with it.

Why should anyone be pulled over merely to see if they are driving legally? Aren't we supposed to be innocent until proven guilty? Aren't the authorities supposed to have reason to detain us, let alone inspect ourselves in our private vehicles (vehicles as private as our own homes, in moral if not legal fact) before they can take action against us? Why do we tolerate such violations of our basic rights?

Because we are fighting drunk driving? While drunk driving is of course reprehensible and irresponsible, to say the least, is it ultimately justifiable to allow anyone's rights to be ignored simply in a preemptive attempt to prevent crime? Isn't a crime supposed to happen, either in fact or in full view of law enforcement, before it can be addressed? As bad as drunk driving is, why should it get a free pass when questions of our civil liberties are involved?

We may be told that it is in part because driving is a privilege. Well, there's a bit of a moral issue with that. Why isn't driving seen a right as much as working freely within the job or housing markets? It is, you know. Any competent human being, one willing and able to follow the legitimate rules of the road, has the moral right to operate a car. As such, the state, no matter how many of its own rulings or assertions to the contrary, cannot prevent an otherwise free person from driving. It must allow anyone to drive for which there is no compelling reason to keep them from doing it.

From there it must presume, until there is compelling evidence otherwise, that that person is driving well and competently. Anything less is an infringement upon that guy's rights.

This is not to defend drunk driving, though we shall be accused of such. It is to defend law abiding citizens. Isn't that why we have laws to begin with? If so, then we must apply the true spirit and the rule of law properly and equally across the board, no matter how justified we may feel with allowing certain exemptions. If we are not doing that, then we have something worse than drunken drivers staring in our faces. We have nothing short of tyranny rambling towards us on the very roads we hold sacred.