Author Topic: It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police  (Read 890 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Glock32

  • Conservative Superhero
  • *****
  • Posts: 8747
  • Get some!
It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police
« on: July 22, 2014, 02:29:13 PM »
I am heartened to see that skepticism of the police has dramatically increased on the Right end of the political spectrum.  There's still a lot of badge worshipers, but recent events like Albuquerque, the flashbanged infant in Georgia, the near-weekly reports of somebody's pet dog being murdered have, IMO, permanently altered perception of police in this country. They're now increasingly seen as imperious bureaucrats with guns. Functionally they are the standing army warned against by the Founders.

This article was published yesterday in National Review:  http://www.nationalreview.com/article/383312/its-time-conservatives-stop-defending-police-j-delgado


Quote
Imagine if I were to tell you there is a large group of government employees, with generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer, who enjoy incredible job security and are rarely held accountable even for activities that would almost certainly earn the rest of us prison time. When there is proven misconduct, these government employees are merely reassigned and are rarely dismissed. The bill for any legal settlements concerning their errors? It, too, is covered by the taxpayers. Their unions are among the strongest in the country.

No, I’m not talking about public-school teachers.

I’m talking about the police.

We conservatives recoil at the former; yet routinely defend the latter — even though, unlike teachers, police officers enjoy an utter monopoly on force and can ruin — or end — one’s life in a millisecond.

For decades, conservatives have served as stalwart defenders of police forces. There have been many good reasons for this, including long memories of the post-countercultural crime wave that devastated, and in some cases destroyed, many American cities; conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (“Dirty hippies being arrested? Good!” is not an uncommon sentiment.) Although tough-on-crime appeals have never been limited to conservative politicians or voters, conservatives instinctively (and, it turned out, correctly) understood that the way to reduce crime is to have more cops making more arrests, not more sociologists identifying more root causes. Conservatives are rightly proud to have supported police officers doing their jobs at times when progressives were on the other side.

But it’s time for conservatives’ unconditional love affair with the police to end.
"The Fourth Estate is less honorable than the First Profession."

- Yours Truly

Online Libertas

  • Conservative Superhero
  • *****
  • Posts: 63649
  • Alea iacta est! Libertatem aut mori!
Re: It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2014, 02:51:54 PM »
For me it is not that hard a call anymore...

Once they started choosing enemies of liberty over us it was over.

They chose their unions over us.
They chose the progressives over us.
They chose the democrats over us.
They chose the bureaucrats over us.
They chose the Federal government over us.
They chose gun-grabbers over us.
They chose criminals over us.
They chose military hardware over us.

They don't give a flying fornication for us, they care only about themselves and those that give them goods and power, they'll snap to and take on any task no matter how illegal, no matter how gray, no matter how repulsive.

Sure, there are a few who won't, and perhaps the small towns in rural America have local forces not as whacked out of shape as this, maybe some counties have constitution-minded people in Sheriff offices...but the majority of the rest is lost to the dark side, they are unaccountable minions of people eager to inflict them, and that they chose all of them over us tells us all we need to know.
We are now where The Founders were when they faced despotism.