On Defunding the Police

 

Yesterday I attended an event called a ”free store” held at a local Anglican Church. Pretty much says what it is: people donate items they no longer need, and other people come and take what they want or need.

Not sure this is a better concept than the self-sustaining Salvation Army Stores, though. The Sally Ann stores are sustainable because they are win-win. The donors get rid of things just taking up space; the buyers get a bargain; the proceeds can pay some salary to the workers, and the profits go to help the poor. The free store takes more volunteer effort. And it’s inevitably pretty hectic and disorganized. Grabbing wins the day; not need.

But I sure can’t complain personally.  It worked out well for me; I think I saved about $100 on items I needed for this big old house.

One thing I picked up was a 22-page pamphlet titled “A World without Police.” I have not read it all. It is calling to defund the police, on the grounds that they exist only to protect the property of the rich from the poor. They sustain the evil capitalist system.

This is so obviously wrong I suspect nobody believes it. Laws exist to protect the weak from the powerful. This is the stated premise of the best-preserved ancient legal system known to man, the Code of Hammurabi: government forms “to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak.”

The powerful do not need the police; they do not need laws or morality. They would rather be free to do as they like. 

Do rich people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump or George Soros need the police to protect their property? No; they can afford private security. Indeed, they could afford private armies. Without the police, they could run roughshod. If imperfect, the police protect us from this.

But then again, it was not the poor handing out the “Defund the Police” pamphlets. It was young “white” Anglican men. Some wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs. Probably university educated. Probably from well-off families. Anglicans are, after all, generally more prosperous than any other Christian denomination. 

It is the rich who crave this. Even a revolution would actually increase their power. They could be in complete and perpetual command as the “vanguard of the proletariat.” 

Meantime, they vote for corporate bankers like Mark Carney or wealthy lawyers like Jagmeet Singh, and scorn someone who has worked his way up from orphanhood and adoption like Pierre Poilievre as 'unqualified."

The great question in my mind is, do they realize they are being duplicitous?