Broad meadows

Of all rights, perhaps none rival in importance the right to self defense. It is the most basic instinct of all living things. The deer or the elk care very little that a pack of wolves has banded together with the intent to kill and has the power to do so. Its power is limited typically to running away.

Humans don’t really have that option. You need only see videos of people trying to evade police to know how that usually works out. While many conservatives and Christians consider themselves pro police and pro law and order, my opinion of their value to the republic is dubious.

Don’t get me wrong, I like order, I just don’t think law and police are the way that happens. As I wrote earlier, what makes the Ten Commandments perfect is that they outline the harms to be adjudicated and the reasons they happen, typically a disregard for God and also humans.

If one understands and governs their behavior in a way that acknowledges responsibility for one’s own actions before God, harm becomes an unlikely outcome. Law is meant to punish, but where there is no harm, there should be no law. Traffic enforcement is a simple example of this. It seems to operate under the assumption that everyone who is driving is trying to wreck the cars that they have worked for, paid for, insured and maintained. Of course, that’s absurd. But it punishes all of the time when no harm has been committed.

At the same time, you have crimes with obvious and substantial amounts of evidence that aren’t even investigated, let alone adjudicated. This more than anything is evidence that the police aren’t here to protect people like you and I, but the system, the institutions. They are what make up democracy, not the will of you and me. Do the police do good things? Of course they do. Most are pretty good people, but some are bullies. I don’t think that’s a bug, but a feature.

In the United States, we are meant to be self governing . In my mind, that means as long as I do no harm to my neighbors, no sanction is to be imposed. Government is meant for those who will not govern themselves. Looking for ways to punish the innocent while using the damage done by the guilty is not justice, but a great injustice. And that just for the sake of insulating the institutions while providing little benefit. This is why individuals need to and have the right to defend themselves.

Twice I have been attacked within sight of a police station. That proximity helped me not at all. In one case, the attacker hit and ran, leaving me with a black eye. I saw him a couple of weeks later running across the street with a cast on the hand he hit me with. The other kicked my door in and threatened to kill me. Fortunately, he didn’t have a weapon and I was able to fend him off.

My point is, if they won’t punish actual harm while simultaneously punishing people who have done no harm, then what is their purpose and why are we paying them?