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Collateral Damage in the Culture War
There is an air of incivility in American society today: A simple elevator ride can turn in a lecture on social justice, an editor of Think Progress is calling for people to “confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep and where they work” and simply wearing a hat in a restaurant can touch off a violent attack.
Which got me thinking: What would I do if I were in a restaurant and a politically-based fight broke out as I was eating? Would I get involved if, say, a political argument broke out and it degenerated into fisticuffs? Would my reaction be different if I was by myself, or if it happened when I was with my family? What would I do if the fistfight turned even more violent and lethal force was clearly about to be used? Would I use lethal force in that situation? How far would I be willing to go to defend not only my life but my ideals as well?
It’s important to think of what might happen and what your actions might be before such things happen, because a plan isn’t going to suddenly materialize when you need one. Will you get involved in a shouting match if “your side” seems to be losing? Will you stop someone from being assaulted just because the message on their clothing has driven someone to violence? Will you step into a fight that was caused by a political disagreement? Where do you draw the line between minding your own business and standing up for what’s right?
I think about these things because it gives me a starting point to form a plan that I can put into action if such a thing happens in front of me. Rather than be frozen with inaction, I’ll have a starting point that I can use to evaluate what is happening and what I can do about it. I can do this because I’ve imagined what political violence in a restaurant or other place might be like, it won’t be an unthinkable event for me.
It saddens me that I have to think about such things. It would sadden me even more to be caught in the middle of a life-threatening situation without a plan or the means to defend my life and the lives of those dear to me, so I train and I prepare for a day I sincerely hope never happens.
Published in Guns
I was responding here to someone who criticized me for suggesting that this conservative should get law enforcement involved because ‘that doesn’t work when you’re dead. ‘
Unless my reading comprehension is impaired, no one died in this example. Appealing to the police for support and protection is a better option than facing off against the mob with your own weaponry, unless you’re also lusting for blood.
I wasn’t criticizing you, I was pointing out that the job of the police is to solve crimes, not to protect people. And it isn’t that no one died, it’s that people are being terrorized for their ideas. That’s wrong, and un-American.
I’m missing something. I thought being “harassed, stalked, chased, punched and spat upon” qualifies you as the victim of several crimes, which is what the police are supposed to deal with. That’s why we have them. They don’t always do an effective job, but our solution to this problem shouldn’t be to become vigilantes, thereby making the situation worse by accepting lawlessness as a new norm, it should be to press law enforcement to do their jobs better.
Ain’t no cops in that photo, and the police in Selma were on the wrong side of things.
One of tenets of armed self protection is that there will not be a cop around when you need one.
To borrow a line from Nick Fury in “The Avengers,” I’m asking you, what are you prepared to do?
You may not be interested in social justice, but social justice is interested in you.
This is a subject I’ve been mulling over quite a bit for the past year or two. If you look back to many of the big advancements leftism has made in this country, they were a result of corrupt law enforcement failing to discharge their duties in adherence with law. The labor disputes in the early part of the century were largely due to powerful companies owning local law enforcement, leaving workers no other reasonable alternative than embracing the (often Communist) union organizers who stood up for them, sometimes despite massive disagreements with the rest of their political platform. The actual problem was ignored, creating instead a new and more powerfully corrupt rival system of labor unions. Same with the Civil Rights era: corrupt local law enforcement was so riddled with the disease of racism that the only solution was federal intervention — but, instead of that intervention strictly addressing the unequal application of law, it was far broader in scope and full of new corruptions that we’re still dealing with today. Bypassing the issue of ineffective and biased policing doesn’t make things better in the long run, but rather entrenches new systems of corruptions. If we, as conservatives, care about law and order, we need to focus on insisting on law and order, and repairing as best we can the flaws in that system rather than creating new ones to suit our short-term purposes.