{"id":27412,"date":"2014-08-19T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T05:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27412"},"modified":"2014-08-18T10:35:27","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T15:35:27","slug":"qotd-power-corrupts-police-and-conservative-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/08\/19\/qotd-power-corrupts-police-and-conservative-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Power corrupts, police and conservative edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

When this principle of \u201cpower corrupts\u201d is the driving force behind a conservative\u2019s approach to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, why are so many conservatives unwilling to apply it to those who enforce many of the government\u2019s laws? In the days since Michael Brown\u2019s death, we\u2019ve seen video footage of police firing teargas onto people\u2019s private property<\/a> (language warning). We\u2019ve heard reports of police arresting journalists who were not engaging in any illegal activity<\/a>. If power seems to be corrupting those charged with keeping the peace during the recent unrest in Ferguson, why do some conservatives refuse to consider the mere possibility that a police officer may have been corrupted by power in the event that sparked the unrest?<\/p>\n

The answer is, I think, quite simple. For many conservatives, especially those of us living in nice, comfy suburbs, it\u2019s hard to apply the \u201cpower corrupts\u201d doctrine to law enforcement because we\u2019ve never seen corrupted enforcers of the law. We\u2019ve never been wrongly arrested. We\u2019ve never witnessed our children put in jail based on the false reports of police officers. We\u2019ve never seen our neighbors beaten or tazed without cause. And in the extremely unlikely scenario that a police officer drove into our neighborhood and murdered our unarmed friend in cold blood, we cannot possibly fathom a scenario where the justice system wouldn\u2019t be on our side and where that police officer wouldn\u2019t spend the rest of his life in jail. Therefore Brown must have been a violent, gang-sign flashing thug<\/a>, foolish enough to think he could swipe a cop\u2019s weapon because, in our minds, there\u2019s no conceivable way that a police officer would gun down an innocent man.<\/p>\n

But just because we don\u2019t see the corruption of law enforcement in our own lives doesn\u2019t mean that it doesn\u2019t exist. Police brutality is not the Bogeyman. It\u2019s not an urban legend witnessed by none but told by many. It\u2019s not a myth created by a primitive tribe that is too simple to understand the true source of the brokenness in its communities. Black people believe in police brutality for the same reason they believe in rain \u2014 because they\u2019ve felt it.<\/p>\n

Hans Fiene, “Michael Brown And The Conservative Inconsistency”, The Federalist<\/em><\/a>, 2014-08-15.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When this principle of \u201cpower corrupts\u201d is the driving force behind a conservative\u2019s approach to the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government, why are so many conservatives unwilling to apply it to those who enforce many of the government\u2019s laws? In the days since Michael Brown\u2019s death, we\u2019ve seen video footage of police firing […]<\/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":[9,10,41,13],"tags":[363,725,98,99],"class_list":["post-27412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-corruption","tag-militarization","tag-police","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-788","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412","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=27412"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27413,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412\/revisions\/27413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}