Despite it all, the American media, much of the public, and even some of our elected officials have been throwing a collective anti-police fit. Professional athletes run onto fields or courts pantomiming the oddly phrased falsehood, "Hands Up, Don't Shoot," while major networks parade groups of self-promoting charlatans and "experts" to expound upon the "failings" of law enforcement.
I have had it, and here in my short soapbox of a column I want to make a few things clear.
First, our whole damn species is nasty and brutish. History is literally the slow, difficult journey of the oppressed learning to live free. In the era when Leonidas fought at the "Gates of Fire" against the Persians, Egyptian culture—the most advanced of that time—didn't even have a word for "freedom." That's how rare the concept was in the ancient world. But today we have peoples from all over the planet living side by side as neighbors in remarkable peace and tranquility.
For instance, we have Serbs living next to Bosnians, Irish next to Brits next to Scots, Catholics next to Mormons, all going about their lives as if oblivious to their ancestral, religious, or racial histories. They may hate each other, but they are not currently at war.
My first political science professor, an Orange Irishman, opened my Political Theory 1 class with this stunning statement: "The history of mankind would show us that our natural state is to be at war, enslaved, and starving, while today in our country we find a people who have known little conflict, are free, and overweight." We spent the rest of the semester learning about Plato, Jefferson, and Marx and the political theories that shaped the modern world.
