Cards on the table. I am a white male, who grew up in relative luxury. I went to "good"schools, traveled all over the world, and grew up mostly in wealthy white and Asian suburbs. I am Jewish, but I never suffered for that; my friends were and are of all backgrounds and none of us gives a rat's behind about the other's religious beliefs or ethnicity. I am, in short, an American with the vices and virtues of the typical sample of that species. No complaints.
My many years overseas in some pretty rough and tough places made me increasingly a political conservative/libertarian, and evermore skeptical of the role of government in the lives of people. I also came to appreciate with an almost religious fervor the greatness of American ideals and the uniqueness of the American experiment. America is the best country on earth, and well worth defending with our lives. I am proud of the small role I played in those years overseas working against the Communist bloc, terrorists, international criminals, and various dopes in the UN, the media, NGOs, Congress, State Department, the NSC, the CIA, and the Pentagon, not to mention countless Eurobores.
That said, I am increasingly concerned about the state of liberty in our country. Speech codes, endless expressions of outrage, demands for apologies, increasing intrusion into our private lives, and a national and local bureaucratic presence cast an increasingly dark shadow over our lives. DMV, IRS, EPA, TSA, a host of law enforcement agencies, and legions of prosecutors, investigators, etc., threaten our freedom. I, for example, once was a strong supporter of local police. I dismissed almost out of hand the views of black friends, for example, about the arrogance, brutality, and stupidity of the police.
I am reevaluating my position.
Now that I am back in the US, and have had the opportunity to interact with cops at public events, on the highways, and other venues, quite frankly, I find most of them arrogant, abusive, quick to violence and to seek to humiliate the citizen with their power, and--sorry--rather stupid. They are not like the smart, hardworking, dedicated cops we see on endless TV shows. The ones I have seen remind me of the typical and overpaid public bureaucrats with whom I have dealt all my life, but these guys have guns, squad cars, and the power of the state behind them.
I am not happy with the state of the police, and fear we risk becoming a state of the police. How have we allowed so many things to be declared illegal and worthy of police and prosecutor attention? Why have we given uniformed, armed bureaucrats so much authority over our lives? We conservatives who are the true defenders of liberty in our Republic need to address this almost taboo subject, and not leave it to the ACLU. Along with cutting taxes, and spending, we conservatives need to insist on cutting drastically the size and scope of our legal codes and regulations, and to reduce the power of unelected agencies, the police, and the courts over our lives.
i've been saying the # of laws needs to be reduced for most of my life. it's just whistling in the dark. no-one believes it's possible.
ReplyDeleteWelcome back. I've been checking this site every 6 months or so for years hoping to see new posts.
ReplyDeleteJust found you. Yayyyyyyyy! Good reading, you're on my list!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I picked you off Instapundit. I kept going back to your old site for years, to no avail. In my opinion, while you were blogging, you were the greatest blog on the net! When I retired from engineering research, I still had the sign "turn on your airconditioner, open a window, fight global warming" posted on my office wall. You are now on my desktop.
ReplyDeleteWelcome Back, I just wanted to let you know you where my "gateway" blog that got interested in politics. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteJoe
Welcome back. We've missed you. My blogging also is in hiatus. But...NRA convention beckons today. I need to go fondle some guns.
ReplyDeleteI have missed your work ever since the Indonesian tsunami of a few years ago. Welcome back to the surface!
ReplyDeleteWelcome back! You've been missed.
ReplyDeleteThere's been overreach by Fish and wildlife gendarmes, too, and don't get me started on the TSA goons.
ReplyDeleteGibson Guitars is raided by the FBI for having a CEO Republican donor, I mean, for importing wood with proper foreign certification, while Democrat donor Corzine is still walking around.
I've met mostly rational cops, personally, except for one who was working security duty at a grocery store who was beyond abusive because I asked to see the manager. I was hustled out and threatened as if I had demanded an audience with Don Corleone.
I'm beginning to think BG Ripper was right after all.
There is another aspect to our loss of liberty that you did not mention. Please consider the evidence (links below) before you reject my contention: Obama is not eligible to be president, his identity is a fraud, and his birth certificate is a forgery. All members of both houses of congress and most judges know this and either do not care or have been co-opted into silence. Rule of Law in the US is a myth. As president he has the ability to use the IRS and the FCC to subdue the media including Fox News. However the biggest mystery of all is that the media coercion to hide the facts of his fraud started during the primaries for the 2008 election. At that time Obama was not president, he had no power to coerce the media. Who is behind Obama that could have that type of influence? That cabal is the greatest threat to our liberty because they are hidden. We don't know who they are but their plans seem to be the destruction of the United States.
ReplyDeleteSheriff Arpaio's news conference
Obama's Draft Registration card is a forgery.
Obama is using a Social Security Number that was not assigned to him.
Proof Obama's Birth Certificate is a forgery
Media Suppression of the story in 2008
Soros and Obama agree to destroy the US
I agree. Government anymore means b-u-r-e-a-u-c-r-a-c-y and the bureaucrats are totally out of control. City. County. State. Federal. The bureaucracy is a unionized hive-mind mass bossed by the likes of AFLCIO president Richard Trumka, a violent, lawless man.
ReplyDeleteGlad your back. I will definately add you to my regular reading.
ReplyDeleteI used to feel great coming back to the US through JFK and seeing PA cops with saggy blue shirts and regulation 38 Police Specials instead of submachine guns.
ReplyDeleteOne factor is the militarization of the police. This is an organic movement that follows the cash delegated to swat teams. The smallest of police forces have swat and other special teams way out of proportion to need. Ditto for their standard sidearms.
That said, the level of criminal propensity to shoot it out has risen, both with cops and indiscriminately at each other. The old time mob hits were almost never at cops and usually had little risk of collateral mayhem. Today's drug and other gangs are constantly letting fly. Cop procedures to everyday actions escalated accordingly. Perhaps our prior more frequent use of the death penalty for murder helped keep the gang killings in line.
I'm overjoyed to see you back. I was a regular reader of The Diplomad back in the mid 'oughties. You brought a very different and necessary perspective to America's place in the world. I'm adding you to my own blogroll (reciprocation not expected or necessary)and will be visiting regularly.
ReplyDeletePS: Did any posts from 1.0 survive? Is there a link to the archive, if so?
ReplyDeleteDiplomad,
ReplyDeleteThanks for returning. I now have another place to visit daily.
I am so grateful to read your posts and realize that the US government still has sensible, patriotic people manning the oars.
Thanks.
Glad to see you're back! I was a faithful reader of the earlier DiploMad blog, and this version has immediately gone on my 'Blogs All The Time' bookmark list, one that I open up at least once/day and sometimes several times/day.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of UN corruption: have you ever read "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures"? I strongly suspect you have; for all I know, I may have picked up the reference to the book from your original blog. Not that I was ever a great fan of the UN, but that book really made it clear just how corrupt (and corrupting) the US is. ..bruce..
Agree with the notion we've let too many things become illegal or illegitimate.
ReplyDeleteMight you describe the most important of these to you? Or point to earlier posts on same?
Thank you!
Well, the police are local hires. Because each local government has a police department. Fire? Some used to depend on volunteer fireman. But, basically, these are jobs under local umbrellas.
ReplyDeleteLocal governments raise tax money to pay for these services.
But the word "umbrella" is key. Because local governments have no Constitutional right to exist. They are there because State Governments create them. (Or as a college professor of mine once said "on a whim.") And, State governments can take away the "charters."
Are more things really illegal? Or did technology blossom, and given us tools none of our ancestors had? The instant news you get on the Internet, for instance, speeds up gossip to a rate that the major media outlets can't even keep up.
I learned something during the three days of the Rodney King Riots. I learned the LAPD was useless. And, especially the Koreans who had come here to open businesses, were being destroyed. They called the cops. And, they found no one came to protect them.
Instead, we got more gangs. When the police don't respond, people who have rifles unlock their gun cabinets.
After the Rodney King Riots destroyed the Black ghettos in LA, there wasn't a supermarket left! Old ladies had to get on buses. To travel at least 3 miles. To buy food. And, then, when they returned with their packages, by bus, their local kids attacked them, often. Taking the food.
Okay. And, we made stupid decisions on the drug trade. But ya know what? In the 1980's, to survive the Dot Com Bubble, our government went to the drug cartels, and laundered their money ... so that Treasury had funds coming in.
With all the laws we do have what we do is "street cleaning." We keep imprisoning cockroaches. And, no matter what you spend, you can't make a dent in this society.
We're not going to come to "more freedom." Most people have lots of it. And, more people can read in English because of the Internet; the same way people around the globe were learning English (starting in the 1940's), because they watched (in droves), American cinema.
Does society always stratify? Well, even ocean water flows at different temperatures. So even temperatures stratify according to depth.
As to the UN they've been stopped as best as possible. You can't stop all the diplomatic pants dancing ... But you can make it all irrelevant. Syria is the guiding light.
While Israel has to survive in a sea of hatred.
The hatred is a defect. The truth? Won't show up. Legends, however, are a necessary commodity to keeping people happy with the story lines. The UN has no legends.
Prosecutors aren't heroes today, either.
Doesn't mean legendary stuff hasn't happened. Just don't settle for substitutes.