Short and Sweet Blog

Hi All.  I’m back, for today anyway.  If anyone remembers me I’m libertarian-leaning, politically, and staunchly Roman Catholic, religiously.  It is from that background I offer my observations and comment.  As a libertarian thinking person I have an affinity with finding ways to disempower the police state (aka Defund the Police). I’m always suspicious, as any libertarian leaning (and probably even any thinking) person should be, of arbitrarily assertable state power.  By referring to ‘arbitrarily assertable’ I mean to convey a sense that we should be very careful of empowering authorities to use force against people who have not harmed anyone. Hence I am suspicious of the use of the forcible arrest power as it was being used against Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta before his death.  Rayshard was a man asleep in his car who had injured no one (except perhaps a Wendys which could have been fixed it by a Wendy’s employee gently knocking on his window),  Likewise we should not lose sight of the fact that Eric Garner, the man who in 2014 was choked into submission eventually resulting in his death for the “crime” of selling “untaxed” loose cigarettes on a Staten Island street.  Eric denied the crime but even if he had been doing so he clearly had harmed no one but nevertheless the policemen involved were charged by political authorities with arresting him. This arrest resulted unfortunately in his death.

My observation is that the people who are demonstrating against the way the police power of the states is being used on our streets, a group who seem to me largely in sympathy with a larger role for government power in nearly every other area of our lives, seem in this one instance to feel strongly in favor of a less aggressive use of government power.  My question would be: How is it that you think that an increase in state involvement in American life generally is going to be enforced when you disempower the police?  Over the last hundred years the role and philosophy of state officers has evolved from that of Peace Officers (the sort of policing which might have sent a possibly intoxicated Rayshard home instead of arresting him) to Law Enforcement Officers (people who are charged with zero tolerance of arbitrary legal standards adopted by politicians whether these standards are generally accepted by regular people or not).  My comment: Pick a philosophy for the type of government you prefer and stick with it but be aware that when you try have it both ways something’s got to give. I’m afraid that in the long run the people now demonstrating for one thing will resolve themselves against liberty and will tolerate and even encourage more arbitrary uses of state power against other regular people just trying to get along.

This entry was posted on June 24, 2020 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.