The Left has been openly hostile to the police at least since the 1960s when it became cool to call cops, “pigs.” Anti-police violence rose during that period and the images of the 1968 Democrat Convention in Chicago where Mayor Daly’s finest clashed with protesters are still remembered.
What is not remembered so well is that Bill Ayers, Obama’s friend and occasional political mentor, specifically targeted the police in his terrorist activity. His bombings of the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon are well-known but he also bombed New York’s police headquarters in 1970 and in 1969 he bombed a statue honoring police officers slain during the Haymarket riot in Chicago. Thankfully, organized anti-police violence subsided as the 1970s wore on but the hostility did not. Delegitimizing the police has been an ongoing project of the Left. To whit, today’s Black Lives Matter protests have taken to chanting, “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”
https://youtu.be/9xNxoeqf0Ws
Who Will Watch The Watchers?
To be sure, the police, because they wield the sword on behalf of the state, require scrutiny. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, as the Roman poet Juvenal wrote. In English, “Who will watch the watchmen?” The Left promotes the lie that no one is watching the watchers – that the police are an unaccountable force unto themselves. But this could not be more false.
In America, independent institutional oversight exists at multiple levels. Every police force is subject to one or more review boards not to mention independent prosecutors (local, state, and federal) and ultimately to the court system. But the Left in general and today’s Black Lives Matter protesters more specifically, would have people believe that the system either has failed or is actively conspiring to murder American citizens. It isn’t true.
In recent weeks we have seen police officers ambushed and murdered on the streets of Dallas, Baton Rouge, and other cities. For decades, the Left has sought to undermine the authority of police with highly charged and mostly false rhetoric. This has created a climate ripe for street violence that has a larger political purpose. It is a strategy to gain on the street what they cannot gain at the ballot box and as such to disenfranchise voters and void our system of free government. Attacks on the police are an attack on civil society itself. It is the mob’s veto and it cannot be allowed to stand.
In today’s episode Seth Leibsohn and I discuss how we came to this point and why the Left employs this tactic. (Hint: because it works). We are joined for part of the show by Dr. John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, author of More Guns, Less Crime.
Attacks On Cops Are An Attack On Civil Society
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