One of the biggest problems with the John Birch Society is its pro-government authoritarianism on matters of so-called “law and order.” JBS still holds to that “support your local police” garbage even though it has been clear for many years that “local” police are merely adjucts to militarized federal police forces.
I even once read a ridiculous article in The New American about how “police brutality” is a media conspiracy and that those dirty hippies are just asking for it anyway.
So in the same vein is a recent communique that went out from the Society calling for the pardoning of two government bureaucrats known as Ramos and Compean. These two guys were border guards who were harassing non-government-approved persons (known as “illegal aliens”) who were transporting non-government-approved substances (known as “drugs”) and people got shot.
The government’s case against Ramos and Compean is on a level of incompetence and inconsistency that one would expect form the feds, but what is the JBS’s main line of defense? The bad guys were drug dealers (The JBS has no problem with drug prohibition apparently), and Ramos was nominated for “Border Patrol Agent of the Year.” Wow, a Bureaucrat of the Year award! Didn’t the feds who murdered Randy Weaver’s family also win awards?
Do Ramos and Compeans deserve to be pardoned? Almost certainly. But surely so do most of the people that people like Ramos and Compean waste taxpayer dollars purusing and beating down for the State.
11:48 pm on December 11, 2008