In one of the threads below, I posted a pretty inflammatory post about cops. I don't back down from it and I feel that way. However, perhaps, it didn't express the true depth or nature of my frustration and cynicism.
Yes, I understand that there are good, honest, hardworking cops who only enforce the laws. However, the laws have become oppressive and unfair. Does it not bother any of you LEOs that a farmer who may have violated some obscure environmental law can be raided by police and federal agents in combat gear? Or a tax evader can have his front door blown off by cops and agents? Or a blind man in California can be shot as he comes down the stairs carrying a blackpowder pistol in an attempt to defend himself when police raid his home because he had one marijuana plant growing on his 650 acre property? I'm sure all the agents and police in these events were nice guys with families who were just doing their jobs, it still didn't help their victims, the last guy is dead. Like it or not, LEOs, you are the enforcers and the symbols of these laws. Aggresive policing of these laws results in needless conflicts and raised tensions. When will the police start taking responsibility for these sorts of things and stop hiding behind the "we don't make the laws" dodge. I'm sure the Polizei who started working when the Kaiser was in power, through the Weimar Republic, and ended his career rounding up Jews to send to the camps said the same thing. And I am sure that he was a decent guy who had a family and kids and drank beer on the weekends with his buddies.
Fact is, people fear the cops today because they know that there are many laws that can result in otherwise good and harmless people running into conflict with cops. They know that given the slightest excuse, cops will exercise their authority with the maximum amount of force. Some cops revel in this fear and the fact that they represent the power of an awesome state apparatus. Even those of you who don't think about it all that much, have to, upon reflection admit that you embody this power and that there is great potential for abuse. But what is abuse? Merely doing your job and following the laws as written can result in otherwise harmless people being arrested and imprisoned, often for crimes that were not crimes six months ago or for things that aren't crimes across the state line. Do these people deserve to be imprisoned or harassed? How does it make you feel to have a part in that?
LEOs and others claim that we make our own laws by elections? Well, how many of you actually believe that? Even if completely true, do you want the absolute say in what is right and wrong based on the opinion of 51 percent of the registered voters who bothered to vote? Do you really think you have any say in determining obscure regulatory rules and laws?
All of this is to say that LEOs represent the sharp edge of an oppressive centralized government. They may be good people and they may try to do their job as well as possible, but they cannot get away from what they are. It gets worse continually. As to protecting me from bad people, well, I'm glad they're doing it. I really don't feel I need the protection, but is nice. However, I don't feel it is worth the cost in civil liberties. Afterall, I hear that street crime was very low in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
