An Antithetical Position: How Many Advocates of Limited Government are Getting it Wrong When it Comes to the Police.
Scroll through the comment section of the latest video documenting the rampant abuse of authority present within law enforcement and you'll likely be presented with a strange paradox; the comment of a pro-police libertarian. Comments like these, many of which can be found on videos of indisputable abuse that one might come across on a daily basis make it glaringly obvious that many of us lack the philosophical/moral/ethical moorings, historical context, and overall understanding necessary to look at the problem clearly. When even those who openly and vocally subscribe to the principles of liberty find themselves flippantly dismissing the problems of police brutality, excessive force, and general abuse of authority in law enforcement, it serves as a pretty good indicator that the narrative has been thoroughly turned away from the principles upon which the U.S. was founded.
They're not writing the laws. The politicians are the REAL problem.
It's strange to me that most of those who say they value individual liberty as a principle can agree that the profession of politician generally attracts a class of people wholly unfit for the monumental task of governance, as its power is so inherently enticing to those who would seek to abuse it, and corrupting to even those who enter the career with altruistic intentions. Yet many of the same people who say this about politicians will tell you that "there are people who suck in every job" when trying to contradict someone who says something negative about the profession of law enforcement officer. Really, I don't see much of a difference. No, not all cops are cruel or ill intentioned. In fact, most of them truly believe that every action they take is for the good of society, and the same could be said about politicians, but the job wields near unassailable authority, and tasks itself with such abhorrent abuse of other people's rights that it's almost impossible to be a good police officer, for the smae reason that finding a politician that can reasonably be reffered to as "good" is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Police are simply the enforcement arm of the government. It's so strange to me to see self avowed libertarians try to somehow separate the police from government, as if they are any less culpable for the government abuse which they personally act to enforce. If the politicians are violating our rights by writing laws that violate not only the constitution, but our very natural rights, then surely the police force is violating our rights by acting to enforce them.
If we're going to say that a large, overreaching government is inherently evil, we MUST also say that it's enforcement branch is ALSO inherently so. To do otherwise is to abandon any kind of consistency.
We're tasking the government with doing increasingly more and more that was historically taken up by the citizen. This includes both self defense and the task of maintaining the security of a given community. We're trading our rights to the government in exchange for some level of ostensible safety, and it is a course of action completely antithetical to the spirit of the nation. Many of our founders wrote that the path to peace is the same as that to prosperity; the path of individual liberty. How can anyone in all seriousness advocate for the virtues of voluntary exchange, only to turn right around and argue that the government is the only possible means of attaining peace and security for the people?
It's a hard job. We can't judge them because it's hard to do what they are asked to do day in and day out.
I'll agree with the first part; it IS a hard job. So hard, in fact, is the task of law enforcement in an ever growing centralized state, that I would argue it is a futile endeavor. We're never going to achieve the peace and prosperity that we desire this way. We're asking too much of these people. We're asking that a small group of government employees assume the responsability of protecting everyone in the nation while at the same time enforcing legislation that outright infringes on the rights of those very people.
Moreover, I don't really care if it's a hard job if it doesn't provide a service worthy of it's funding, much less if it actively serves to diminish our natural rights. Even if your job is the most difficult, dangerous one in existence, if it serves as an active force against liberalism, your career is irredeemable.
If we want that, government needs to step back and let armed individuals use voluntary interaction and cooperation to personally work toward those goals.
Every profession has it's "bad apples", idiots, jerks and even crazy people. We can't judge every cop by the actions of a few.
There are a number of reasons why the comparison between the profession of LEO and every other isn't an apt one. For one, the position of police officer is a government career. Most of us are well aware of the corruption inherent in government agencies. Free from the regulatory influence of the market, abuse of authority, lack of transparency, and general corruption are inevitable. Second, police are ostensibly tasked with protecting the public. Because of this, they have been granted increasingly absurd degrees of leniency. The double standard when it comes to what is and what isn't deemed to be a legitimate use of force, both by the courts and by the public at large, is staggering. Let's say I'm a canvasser, for example, and carried I a pistol with me as I worked. Let's say I went to a person's house to ask them if they wanted to sign my clipboard, had a dog come around the corner at me, and then shot it, saying I literally "feared for my life"; almost no one would argue that I was in the right. All a police officer must do, however, is claim that he did indeed fear for his life, and they will usually get away without any meaningful consequences. Not to mention the instances of police performing no knock raids ON THE WRONG HOUSE, throwing flash-bangs into cribs and beds as families sleep, and nigh countless documented cases where they generally ruin peoples lives due to what would certainly be deemed inexcusable incompetence in any other field of work. The problem is obviously both much different and much worse than the inevitable small percentage of crappy employees that slip through the cracks in any occupation. The problem is both massive and systemic. We've given law enforcement so much power and authority that they've effectively become a separate class of citizen with a set of rules all their own, a fact which not only renders the constitution hopelessly impotent, but effectively strikes our very natural rights from the conversation.
It's painfully clear that these cases of abuse which we see day in and day out aren't simply the actions of a "few bad apples", but a clear example of government grown out of control. Tasking a group of government employees to beat us all into a submissive state of order under the often arbitrary and sometimes downright cruel rules and dictates of government officials(some of whom aren't even elected) is in no way congruent with the spirit of liberalism upon which this nation was founded. A rightful and rightfully achieved order is most easily obtained by letting people do as they will, and letting the free people find for themselves the best way to secure peace and prosperity.
Well, there we have it; just a few of the arguments you may see being made by a self proclaimed lover of liberty that render their user completely contradictory. Perhaps some of these commenters think that most people are stupid, and will just muck everything up if you let them. But we all need to trust in the principles of liberty. The evil that can be enacted by a stupid or ill intentioned individual is rarely is ever as potent a threat as that of a collective, especially when said collective is the governing body of a large and influential nation, and it's principles are based on the supposed virtue of the ideology of collectivism itself.
