Posted on 08/20/2014 10:21:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rand Paul became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in the past two years, the Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party's most passionate voice on criminal justice reform, explicitly decrying the system's disproportionate impact on African Americans. You might assume that Paul, widely seen as a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, is trying to redeem himself with black voters who were alienated by his criticism of the Civil Rights Act. Yet both positions spring from the same wariness of state power, as illustrated by the senator's recent comments on the over-the-top police response to the unrest that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo.
Paul has always said he supports the provisions of the Civil Rights Act that apply to racial discrimination practiced or enforced by the government. But during his 2010 campaign he said he was not so keen on the parts of the law that ban discrimination by private businesses, likening such "abhorrent behavior" to the racist speech that we tolerate, even while condemning it, because of our commitment to individual freedom.
Not surprisingly, NAACP President Benjamin Jealous vigorously disagreed with Paul's views on the Civil Rights Act. But Jealous also said this: "I have got to hand it to Rand Paul. It takes some serious guts to publicly challenge such a cherished pillar of the modern American identity."
Paul's positions on criminal justice issues also take some serious guts. He is not just reaching out to a segment of the electorate that is overwhelmingly hostile to Republicans; he is challenging members of his own party to rethink their reflexive support of law enforcement and tough-on-crime policies.
"There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response," Paul wrote in Time last week. "There is a systemic problem with today's law enforcement," he added, and "big government has been at the heart of the problem," fostering the militarization of police equipment and tactics.
Paul went further, encouraging Republicans to consider what it feels like to be on the receiving end of excessive police force and excessive criminal punishment. "Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system," he said, "it is impossible for African Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them. This is part of the anguish we are seeing in the tragic events outside of St. Louis, Mo."
The point is not that Officer Darren Wilson committed a crime when he shot Michael Brown, a question that has yet to be resolved amid conflicting accounts of the incident. The point is that black residents of Ferguson had ample reason to suspect the shooting was not justified and to worry that the official investigation would be rigged in Wilson's favor.
"Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention," Paul wrote. "Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for nonviolent mistakes in their youth."
We are not used to hearing Republicans say that sort of thing. But it happens to be true, and Paul, who in March 2013 introduced a bill that would effectively abolish the federal government's mandatory minimum sentences, is trying to do something about it. He is also sponsoring legislation aimed at restoring the voting rights of nonviolent felons who have completed their sentences and mitigating the lasting impact that serving time has on people's employment prospects. "I believe in redemption and forgiveness," he explained in USA Today last month.
Rand Paul is not asking conservatives to abandon their beliefs. He is asking them to extend their avowed skepticism of big government to the parts of that apparatus that lock people in cages and shoot them down in the street.
Liberals are cop lovers... Always whining to some cop, foreign or domestic, and snitching and threatening
RE: I do hate this militarization of the police. Its not a good thing for you and me and I think that’s what Rand Paul is worried about.
OK, here’s a question for Rand Paul, if there are riots on the streets and shops are being looted and burned, what kind of gear are the police supposed to wear?
If it is necessary to serve warrants with a SWAT team in a free republic, then we are no longer a free people in a free republic.
We are subjects living in a police state… but we deny that we are.
This gets to the crux of our national problem. Only a moral and religious people are capable of freedom.
If a larger segment of society no longer subjects themselves to being governed by morality from the biblical religions, then we become more corrupt and vicious - and we will have more need of masters to rule over us simply to keep order.
Liberty cannot live long in such a society. Mankind values the promise of safety and security over the idea of liberty and so it will appoint masters to rule over the people. Eventually - that always becomes despotic.
And here we are. A growing immoral society become corrupt and vicious and a people applauding the need for a militarized master.
This is how liberty dies….. and usually to thunderous applause.
Ditto.
Well the blacks have been rioting on and off for my entire lifetime. For the most part the cops usually just blockade off a perimeter and let them do the watusi for a couple of days til they get tired. The cops usually don’t really stop the looting and rioting.
I have zero problem with SWAT going in and putting a stop to looting and rioting that is a legitimate activity. I don’t think its legitimate for them to be patrolling on a regular basis with MRAPS etc for every little search warrant. This militarization has changed their attitude from one of public servant to one of enforcer. For instance arresting and tear gassing the press. No excuse for it.
60% of SWAT excursions are serving warrants. I’ll admit that figure was from the ACLU and it irritates me to use them as a source as we are rarely on the same side of an issue.
His solution is to get elected by pandering for black votes.
Amen to your summary! Well done.
Thank you.
You tell me what happens if we continue to criticize the police every time they respond to situations like this.
As I just posted above in 44 - only a moral people are capable of liberty. As a society grows more corrupt and vicious, it will have more Masters appointed to keep order. That always is a death-knell for liberty.
Your question proves we are in a mess. You address this point perfectly:
Sooner or later, he is going to use this agreement to claim there needs to be a force trained for situations like this. And when he does, who is going to object? Why that's right, the same idiots that habitually and rabidly attacked the police at every turn. Only then it will be too late.
Exactly. However, the same result will occur if we simply sit silent and idle while the local police and all the alphabets in Government are armored up and trained to view John Q. as a domestic terror threat.
What is going on is brilliantly insidious. On one hand, the police are being ordered by His Heinous and the Oligarchy to give preference to lawbreakers and alien invaders and punishing those actually doing what they ought to do.
On the other hand, the police are being militarized and trained to see American citizens as a threat wherefore the use of SWAT teams to deliver warrants is now S.O.P. along with killing family pets and brutal tactics fit for a combat zone to "effect an arrest".
You see the result of those two seeming-contradictory policies and noted it beautifully:
It creates the climate for the public to clamor for Obama's Civilian Security Force - which will be run by, Obama and his MarxoFascists under the guise of 'having control to ensure a racist cop killer incident like Ferguson never happens again'.
And at the same time, the same result happens if we sit silent as we watch the NOAA, and the Education Department along with your local Mayberry Police Department outfitted with their own SWAT teams complete with MRAPs, combat gear and hollow-point ammunition.
Who defends the police? Right now, nobody!
They defend themselves just fine. Thin blue line when one of their own is corrupt. The result of which is that they have lost the trust of many of us as an institution that is supposed to serve and protect when the reality is that the courts and even the cops have created the understanding that 'serve and protect' is in reference to themselves alone so they can go home to their families at night.
Cops have no one to blame for public distrust but themselves. Problem is that it is now being exacerbated and used as a weapon by the media, the regime and the race-war antagonists to give justification for a Domestic Security Force beholden to Obama.
We're playing right into the hands of the worst ilk in modern times. There are people out there who want a domestic "military" force. Do we? Well, some of us are trashing the only thing that prevents it. If the officers can't be trusted, then who can?
Well no - the only thing that actually 'prevents' such a thing is if We Citizens exercise our right to bear arms. The genesis of much of this police state issue is because the People were willing to trade their right of self defense to the government. Constables are one thing - militarized SWAT teams are another entirely. But such is the reality we are in because like the liberals themselves, we've allowed ourselves to buy into the lie that the government will provide for us. In our case - security.
They are so concerned with it, that they attack the police in time of civil unrest.
Declaring images of MRAPs with cops in camo fatigues, body armor and mounted weapons sighting in civilians who are not yet rioting as ridiculous, dangerous and over-the-top as an 'attack on police' is disingenuous at best.
At minimum, perhaps it is a massive shock to us all that what we used to recall as police, today look like a combat division about to storm Fallujah. We are reacting to those images. God help us the day we are desensitized to such images, for that will be the day we can truly mark the beginning of our forceful subjugation.
But hey, the police are our enemy, so lets escalate the situation so we have troops on our streets.
The police are being trained to see Conservatives, vets and anyone distrustful of government as an enemy and to act accordingly. I think it is a mistake to assume the police are our friends. If the police are being trained by the feds to see citizens as a problem, they are going to treat us as a problem.
Law enforcement needs to recognize it is losing our trust and faith. Videos of cops brutalizing people at the wrong houses, killing pets and saying outrageous things about how citizens should not have the right to self defense - well that adds up to much of what you are reading as alarms of caution.
Do you think the National Guard on our streets is supportive of the police being our last line of defense, or does it support the idea that a domestic military force would be a good idea? You tell me.
No. I think we made the mistake of making the police our sole protectors and last line of defense when WE OURSELVES should be seen as our sole protectors and last line of defense.
And who did the forum participants zero in on? Why the police of course.
Because (I assume) what we saw was not what we used to consider to be police. Instead what we saw was a military combat force sighting-in mounted weapons on armored vehicles at citizens.
If the cops showed up that night with shields, firehoses, mace and tear gas, I do not think you would have seen the response you read.
If we want to discuss the matter of over militarization of the police, then lets develop some gatherings to discuss that. Lets set up meetings around the nation, call in police chiefs and make them part of the process. Then make headway by agreement.
Absolutely.
Standing up in the middle of a riot or civil unrest and taking a whack at the only persons who stand between us and total anarchy is societal suicide.
I do not consider the police to be the only persons who stand between us and total anarchy. As I said before, I'd rather trust citizens armed to the teeth to stand between order and chaos than an agent of the state.
Keep playing the game this way. It's the most sure fire way I know of to encourage Obama to do what you folks say you don't want.
It's a catch-22, and we may be having this discussion in-vain because it is possible we are too far gone as a society to turn around from where we are going.
Interesting and dangerous times indeed. But that would be because we waited too long to address where we have arrived and too many of us put faith and trust where it should never have been placed.
Only a moral and religious people are capable of liberty.
objection, your honor, leading the public witness...
Read about why the Minneapolis Gang Strike Force was shut down. They were a criminal gang unto their own.
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