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Designated decoys
By J.D. Tuccille

A policeman parks his car outside a bar shortly before closing time, certain that the exodus of drinkers will provide him with a tipsy driver or two toward his arrest quota. Immediately, an obvious drunk stumbles from the bar. The drunk drops and retrieves his car keys repeatedly as people leave the bar, enter their vehicles and head home. Convinced that he's found an easy target, the officer ignores the departing crowd. Finally, the drunk reaches the last remaining car, enters and starts the engine.

The officer flips on his lights and pulls his cruiser next to the drunk's car. Grinning and obviously stone-cold sober, the man says, "How's it going, officer? I'm tonight's designated decoy."

You don't have to approve of drunk driving to enjoy the joke's gleefully rebellious spirit. The idea of people working together to defeat enforcement of a law they dislike draws from a deep-rooted tradition of healthy disrespect for authority in a country founded in revolution....

...Fortunately, not all of us feel bound to obey the illiberal will of the majority; some people remain wedded to the idea that they have a right to run their own lives no matter what happens at the ballot box. Look at stubborn restaurant owners who refuse to enforce local smoking bans, or librarians who erase records of borrowed books to keep them out of police hands, or jurors who free defendants who violated laws that shouldn't exist. Separately and together, these dissenters do their best to thwart democratic tyranny.

This minority of free-thinking and free-acting people have effectively chosen to be our "designated decoys." We owe them our thanks - and we need a lot more like them.