http://missoulian.com/news/state-an...cle_d73e039a-a50e-11e2-93a9-0019bb2963f4.html
When multiple police officers cant subdue a 77 yr old man with dementia then they have no business being on the streets "protecting and serving" the public.
+1
I remember, on this very forum, a
cop lecturing
us with the old saw, "when all you have is hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail."
The irony was immense.
(I hate spelling it out when I do that, but this time I think it's necessary...)
Police are the ones who respond to every situation with a tool from the same bag: force, usually of the potentially lethal variety. Their training is of the militaristic variety, viewing themselves "at war" with an enemy who literally constitutes, potentially, every one of us. So it should be no surprise: some dotard escapes from his nursing home, and they respond by fatally tasing him.
Because
God forbid they treat him how any of us might.
Folks, it's time to assert the plain truth: it is
never OK to legitimize initiatory force. There is no police force, no government, no army on earth which can be trusted with such.
This is the big lie of modern government, and it's become viewed as near truth: that initiatory force is necessary, somehow even good, but only (of course) when government has a monopoly on it; we "need" aggressive police, and aggressive foreign policy/military – for safety.
It's not right, and it's not compatible with sustained liberty. Government is best which governs least, and in practice that means
no initiatory force; the government ought only to provide a mechanism for reprisal against prior acts of initiatory force (aggression).
To put it plainly, the law – and its long arm – have never worked as a proactive means. At best government/law is merely
reactive – proactivity is up to each of us, individually. We
don't need tough guy cops in BDUs patrolling around, looking for people to tase – or homes to invade pursuant to criminally immoral weapon, or drug (or what have you) prohibitions. That whole system – throw it in the garbage where it belongs. It's time to return to minimalist law and policing.
Liberty has long demanded it, and now safety does, too. For, the trade of liberty for safety only works, if at all, for so long. Beyond a certain point, there is a catastrophic reversal wherein both liberty
and safety are lost – as Benjamin Franklin observed, and countless societies suffering under self-imposed dictatorships have experienced.
The proliferation of occurrences like these, in communities near each of us, all over the country, are the first signs of this reversal, I'm afraid.
