The shooting of Michael Brown
and subsequent riots in Ferguson, Missouri are having a profound
effect on conservatives, who are starting to extend skepticism of
state power to law enforcement. Here’s the most recent example I
just ran across, from Erick Erickson of Redstate.com:
Police do a good and necessary job. But if power corrupts men
and absolute power corrupts absolutely, we should be wary of
putting our neighborhood man in blue in camouflage, a helmet, and
an AR-15 inside an armored personnel carrier except in the most
serious of circumstances.No conservative is saying police do not need to be able to
outshoot and out arm the bad guys. But many of us are saying police
are more quickly than ever before resorting to playing soldier when
they could accomplish the same as just a policeman….Regardless of how one views the events of Ferguson, we should
all be troubled by the over-militarization of routine police
activity. We should all be troubled at the growing number of well
documented cases of heavy handed local and state police. Being a
conservative means we should support the judicious use of
force.
Read the whole thing, including a concluding swipe at libruls
(“who routinely turn a blind eye to the abuses of the state
targeted toward their opponents”), here.
To get a sense of where Erickson, a very prominent conservative
writer and activist, is moving on from, check out this
old compilation of hits.
Last week on MSNBC’s Hardball, I touched on how an
increasing number of conservatives seem to be gravitating to a
more-libertarian skepticism of state power (in policing, foreign
policy, privacy, etc.) in the wake of Sen. Rand Paul’s ascendance.
Watch that segment below:
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1p6GTCh
via IFTTT