Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire It is not just cops

Has anyone here ever seen Barak and Joe in the same place at the same time? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

FreeMe

I hope you're not including me in the diploma dropping group.............

....Now the whole point of this thread, was not that all police are bad, or even a significant majority of them are dishonest. It was that the system is becoming increasingly oppressive, police training needs to be revised, we have runaway government, there are too many laws, and that the police are in danger of becoming merely the tools of the this system and will be used to keep the people in line. I believe in many cases that this has already happened. None of this precludes the fact that there are a great many good police that do good things or that even "bad police" may do as much good as harm on many occasions. The point is that good people can become parts of bad things and that they can be held accountable for those things if they do not engage in a little self-examination.

Matthius

I am going to disagree with you again on this. Germany had a parlimentary system before Hitler. Now, Hitler's party got the largest single percentage of the vote of any party in the Reichstag elections that year. In a Parlimentary system that means as leader of his party, he was entitled to a position of leadership in the government. Everyone knew this going in before the election and those voting for Hitler knew that Hitler could come to power if he got enough of the vote. Yes, Hitler was supposed to be at the head of a coalition government and he soon ignored the rest of the coalition and made himself dictator. But the fact remains, that as head of the party receiving the most votes in the Reichstag, he was entitled to a position of power under the Parlimentary system.

The point of the whole comparison to Hitler being elected is that just because an official is initially elected does not mean that he is incorruptible or incapable of using that position for personal gain. I did not wish to discuss the intricacies of pre-war German politics.

Here is what I beleive we can agree on. Hitler's party received the largest single amount of votes in the 1933 elections. He used this seeming legitimacy as a springboard to greater power. He used this greater power to the detrimate of many people. We must be vigilent that something similar does not happen here. It could happen here as that the natural tendency of all governments is to grasp power. A terrible situation in this country, similiar to the problems faced by the Weimar Republic, could make us vunerable to unscrupulous men or women. These persons will almost assuredly be elected to some position before they make any outright grab for power. We must also be vigilent against creeping government power and understand that just because we vote, it does not always mean that we can undo any harm by means of another vote.

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Amen to this...
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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.

JLHEARD

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE GOOD COPS OR BAD COPS! It is about cops and their role in society.