MASSACHUSETTS RESIDENTS APPARENTLY UNAWARE THEY WERE HORRIBLY OPPRESSED

You may have seen this yesterday:

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the police response to the Boston Marathon bombings was scarier than the bombing itself, which killed three and wounded more than 250.

"The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city," Paul, a Texas Republican, wrote today on the website of the libertarian writer Lew Rockwell. "This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself."

Paul said the scenes of the house-to-house search for the younger bombing suspect in suburban Watertown, Mass., were reminiscent of a "military coup in a far off banana republic." ...

But it seems, according to a MassINC Polling Group survey, that the good people of Massachusetts didn't notice they were being oppressed;

In the days after the arrest of the surviving Marathon bombing suspect, Massachusetts residents expressed a strongly positive impression of law enforcement and give their stamp of approve to the overall response to the attack. Ninety-one percent of respondents approved of the decision to lock down parts of the Greater Boston area while the second bombing suspect was at large on Friday, April 19, and 86 percent have a favorable opinion of the Massachusetts State Police.

In the wake of the bombings, the public expressed more concern about public safety than the potential for restrictions on civil liberties. Nearly half (48 percent) said they are more concerned the government will not go far enough to investigate and prevent terrorism while 36 percent were more concerned civil liberties could be infringed....

I know, I know: a lot of sensible people agree with Ron Paul that the lockdown was excessive. But it was limited, and it was focused on a goal the populace shared. Nobody was tossed in a gulag.

Oh, and a lockdown probably didn't seem very different from the shutdown of the region, including suspension of public transportation, that took place two months earlier during a big blizzard.

And, yeah, the cops didn't find the guy -- though he was frozen in place, in a town crawling with cops, which may have helped bring the manhunt to an end a lot sooner.

You know why Massachusetts residents didn't feel oppressed by this? Because they think they and the cops were on the same side. The cops were acting in the interests of the people. They were seen as part of society, not as a malignancy sapping a free society's health. Believe me, you hear plenty of people grumbling about the government in Massachusetts, but people generally don't believe that government shouldn't exist. They resent government when it's ineffective, and unresponsive to people's needs. This didn't fall into that category. The cops were making hat seemed to be a reasonable judgment about how to keep the populace safe. So, yes, Massachusetts residents approved.

(Poll via Opinion Today.)