Support Your Local Police!

That’s been a bumper sticker with a twist, from Mexico to Argentina, for decades.

Right on, Karen, we are about to join the rest of the continent in our method of paying those who “serve and protect” us.

In Mexico, they just demand bribes (“hagamos una cosa!”). In Argentina, the police merely stop you at a random roadblock and insist that you donate a few bucks to their ‘charitable” cause of the day. All smiles, of course, and “contributions” had best be made with alacrity. (In Mexico, many “police” do not even collect a salary. They are simply given a badge, a gun, and a beat. The rest is up to them.The gangs pay very well, and, for those who don’t go along, there’s always beheading or the barrel of lye to send them a message.)

We should remember that, the less we trust government, the less the government will trust us. And act accordingly.

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9:20 am on February 11, 2009

Support Your Local Police?

The Bircher slogan had some meaning in the old days, but ever since the federalization of the cops, begun in earnest by Nixon and carried forward by Reagan and the Bushes, it ought to be, indeed, should always have been–says Joe Stromberg–Don’t Suppport the Federal Police. There are still good local cops, but more and more, local forces are just the occupation troops of the central state. Certainly they act like it. (Thanks to Daniel McAdams for the link.)

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9:44 am on March 3, 2005