# GregS • May 18, 2010 @8:13 am
If your goal is to expand the power of government, and to eliminate a restriction placed on that power by the constitution, the way to do it is to find some case where that restriction would benefit some loathsome person, and then to convince people that in extreme cases like that, the restriction shouldn’t apply. For example, if a violent rapist’s prison sentence is about to end and he’s going to be released. This establishes the precedent, and the principle, that, when justified by circumstances, the government can ignore that restriction. Once the principle is established, it’s easy to start expanding its application – if the government can keep violent rapists in prison after their sentences end, then logically they should also have the power to keep ordinary rapists, sex offenders, murderers, armed robbers, drug dealers, and other potentially dangerous criminals in prison indefinitely. And once that becomes the norm, the temptation to expand this to ever more offenses will be impossible to resist.
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