The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : My Little Eichmann Moment

Text Size

On Saturday night/Sunday morning, I joined a group of libertarians who were ringing in Thomas Jefferson's birthday by dancing at the Jefferson Memorial 'round about midnight -- everybody brought their iPods so as to not disturb other visitors. Nonetheless, after a few minutes, we were asked to disburse by security, and I along with much of the rest of the group did so, given that the plan was just to dance for a few minutes and go somewhere else afterward anyway. (Plus I had forgotten my iPod.) This being a group that isn't particularly fond of being pushed around by authority, some participants lingered, and questioned why everybody was being ejected. It didn't take long before one dancer was pinned face first against one of the pillars, cuffed, and arrested. The incident has caused an uproar among libertarian bloggers.

Video of the arrest is now up here in three parts, and I make my debut as a Nazi collaborator in the third video, about 4:30 in. My voice can be heard off camera. As the dancer is being detained, libertarians are yelling about the oppressive state, and the legacy of Japanese internment to a puzzled officer who (to my knowledge) wasn't responsible for the arrest. Though I agreed that the arrest itself was absolutely ridiculous, I made an ill-fated attempt to argue to a crowd of perturbed libertarians that lobbing anti-statist rhetoric at an officer who didn't seem to know what was going on, wasn't the most productive course of action. Needless to say, it didn't go over too well with my companions, and I was soon reminded that, "Adolf Eichmann said he was just doing his job!"

Am I the type of guy who would have sold out my fellow Jews if I were living in Nazi-controlled Europe in the 1940s? You can watch the video yourself and decide whether in my attempt to be reasonable and Obama-like, I unwittingly became an accomplice to an act of government oppression.

Meanwhile, I am happy to report that the so-called "Jefferson 1" was released, though unfortunately only after hours of detention.