{"id":16194,"date":"2012-07-25T10:45:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-25T15:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=16194"},"modified":"2012-07-25T11:13:23","modified_gmt":"2012-07-25T16:13:23","slug":"michael-bloombergs-call-for-a-national-police-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/07\/25\/michael-bloombergs-call-for-a-national-police-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Bloomberg&#8217;s call for a national police strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the <em>Simple Justice<\/em> blog, <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.simplejustice.us\/2012\/07\/25\/bloomberg-to-troops-seize-control.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Scott H. Greenfield<\/a> explains why New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is so very, very wrong to call for a national police strike:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There are some virtues that come with having a billionaire mayor. He&#8217;s not easy to bribe, for example, so you know whatever comes out of his mouth does so honestly. And therein lies the downside when he says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nydailynews.com\/new-york\/mayor-bloomberg-comment-police-strike-congress-attention-gun-control-debate-level-drew-mixed-reactions-article-1.1120980\" target=\"_blank\">something like this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>\u201cI don\u2019t understand why the police officers across this country don\u2019t stand up collectively and say, \u2018We\u2019re going to go on strike. We\u2019re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what\u2019s required to keep us safe,\u2019\u201d Bloomberg said on CNN Monday night.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Within this idiotic comment are two fallacious assumptions. The first is the &#8220;war on cops&#8221; tripe, that there is a trend against cops, putting them at increasing risk of harm from gun-toting criminals. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theagitator.com\/2012\/04\/07\/the-war-on-cops-that-wasnt-and-still-isnt\/\" target=\"_blank\">Radley Balko<\/a> has beaten that myth to death. <a href=\"http:\/\/reason.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/24\/mayor-bloomberg-says-cops-should-go-on-s\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Riggs<\/a> too. It&#8217;s a good myth to further a public agenda in favor of order at the expense of law, but it just doesn&#8217;t hold water.<\/p>\n<p>The second, however, is the mayor&#8217;s encouragement to police to take the First Rule of Policing a step further than ever before, to use their singular authority to hold a nation hostage. This is perhaps the most dangerous idea Bloomberg could promote.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the only means of staying this armed takeover, should the police ever come to recognize that they have the power if not the authority to seize control, would be guns in the hands of citizens. No rational person could want it to come to such a battle. <\/p>\n<p>So while a billionaire mayor may be above the influences that drive mere mortals, they sometimes utter the most insanely foolish things that take us to a place we must never go. The day the police, as a whole, think they can use their posts to take our government hostage is the day every citizen will need to dust off his arms. The day a billionaire mayor suggests that the police should use their power to influence our government is a day he&#8217;s been in office too long.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b>Update<\/b>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cato-at-liberty.org\/were-not-going-to-protect-you\/\" target=\"_blank\">Walter Olson<\/a> at the <em>Cato@Liberty<\/em> blog:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s enough to make you wonder whether Bloomberg is secretly a passionate admirer of the Second Amendment and keeps saying things this outrageous from a covert intent to sabotage the case for gun control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Simple Justice blog, Scott H. Greenfield explains why New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is so very, very wrong to call for a national police strike: There are some virtues that come with having a billionaire mayor. He&#8217;s not easy to bribe, for example, so you know whatever comes out of his mouth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,13],"tags":[650,49,321,98,290],"class_list":["post-16194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-civilwar","tag-guns","tag-nyc","tag-police","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4dc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16194"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16197,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16194\/revisions\/16197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}