It seems that, within this last week or so, Missouris St. Louis suburb of Ferguson has been generating considerable news, due to a series of incidents that began when a police officer confronted a local man suspected of robbery and, in doing so, killed that man, perhaps in legitimate defense or perhaps in needless aggression, although such details are still being investigated. After this news was reported, some Ferguson residents chose to respond to it through public demonstrations and even riots, to which local police officers chose to respond not only by thwarting rioters, which is good, but also by violating various Constitutional civil liberties such as freedoms of both assembly and speech, which is bad, even by deploying tear gas at peaceful journalists. This Newsweek article considers the possibility that militarization of Fergusons police officers (which has been fostered through various federal programs in recent years) may have influenced Ferguson residents foolish choices to needlessly escalate their recent violence, as I believe that it did. I understand that, although we would do well to freely choose to love/serve God as our heavenly King, we each are (or should be) sovereign with respect to our fellow mortals, which implies that we have equal innate God-given rights. And I understand that we can (and generally should) establish Earthly governments to function in bottom-upward fashion to help us to expertly defend these rights from aggression, including from themselves, which is their only legitimate role, rather than to operate in top-downward fashion to arrogantly seek to run society. Sadly, this latter attitude has, over these last several decades, increasingly permeated American society at all levels, from federal legislators to local police officers, who have all increasingly shifted their focus (statistically speaking) from helping us to defend our rights from each other to arbitrarily ordering us to do whatever they please and whooping us if we disobey. This upside-down view of Earthly government, which is causing local police officers to become increasingly both nationalized and militarized, is yielding much evil fruit, including the needless deaths of U.S. citizens. Governmental agents, including police officers, who receive military training and/or equipment are naturally encouraged to develop a distorted perspective that confuses alleged criminals who ought to be peacefully prosecuted via due-process-of-law (by obtaining warrants and collecting evidence and issuing subpoenas and such) with enemy soldiers who ought to be violently conquered via armed combat (by shooting first and then asking questions later). This militant mentality enables a nations public agents to be more easily misused by corrupt cunning public officers for the purpose of conquering that nation from within. Such conquest is rendered easier by a related trend of police nationalization, which is antithetical to an ideal political system. Ideally, an Earthly governments most basic units should be individual households, which each delegate minimal political authority in bottom-upward fashion to public officers, whose ONLY purpose should be to expertly assist their citizens in defending their rights from aggression. In this same system, broader political jurisdictions exist ONLY to provide expert support (NOT leadership) to narrower political jurisdictions within themselves, including by performing tasks that they alone can do most effectively, such as either violently repelling foreign invaders or peacefully extraditing foreign criminals. This implies that public agents, just like public officers, derive their political authority from their fellow citizens, and should always defend peoples rights, but should not necessarily enforce politicians edicts. So, we would do well to reject these two dangerous trends of both nationalization and militarization, along with related trends like screening out police officers who are intelligent, and instead uphold community-based peace officers who will defend our sovereignty from our fellow mortals, rather than federally-subservient brutish thugs who will aggressively impose their (or some oligarchys) oppression upon us. This latter mentality is dangerous to our rightful liberty, which is one reason why America developed a wise legal tradition of separating its war-waging functions from its crime-fighting functions, rather than confounding these two roles with each other, which tradition endured until the 21st century---and, since some federal officers are now trying to undo this exemplary legal tradition, we American citizens would do well to counteract their efforts in order to restore all thats best in it.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 21:43:15 +0000
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