“Why can’t the police expect to do likewise?”
“Because they’re police. Even if every cop does everything right and every police department does everything right, some of them are going to get hurt, and some of them are going to die.
If that is unacceptable to you, you should choose a different line of work.”
Why did you ever assume that I was a policeman. I earned my living as an engineer. I have the utmost respect for all of those that are willing to, as you said, get hurt or die. I am old enough to remember when it was extremely rare for a policeman to get seriously hurt while doing his job. I can remember when it was almost unheard of for one to be killed.
Now it is common place. Please pay close attention to my reference to a “common denominator.”
I think that it was John Adams that said (and I am going to paraphrase because I can’t remember verbatim), “Our form of government was intended only for a moral people. It will work for no other.” If it wasn’t John Adams that said this, then whoever did was a very wise man with a very keen vision for reality.
I asked a sheriff friend of mine once what his biggest challenges was. He shared with me that it was hiring men smart enough to be deputies yet dumb enough to do it for the pay. We may be about to see a mass exodus from the profession of law enforcement.
“Why did you ever assume that I was a policeman.”
I didn’t, I was speaking in the general sense.
“I am old enough to remember when it was extremely rare for a policeman to get seriously hurt while doing his job. I can remember when it was almost unheard of for one to be killed.”
You must be extraordinarily long-lived, since there were about the same yearly line-of-duty fatalities for police in the 1910s as there were in the 2010s.
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Without Virtue There Can Be No Liberty
by Mount Liberty College | Jul 21, 2018 | Constitution
To our Founding Fathers, it was obvious, or “self-evident,” that self-government, or a democratic republic, could only be perpetuated by the self-governed. Reflecting these precepts, a contemporary German writer to the Founders, J. W. von Goethe, stated: “What is the best government? — That which teaches us to govern ourselves.”[1] And, a later, prominent 19th Century minister, Henry Ward Beecher, simply said: “There is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.”[2] Self-governance consists of self-regulation of our behavior, ambitions and passions. To this end, the Founders fundamentally believed that the ability to govern ourselves rests with our individual and collective virtue (or moral character).
John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”[3] In this regard, the revolutionary war was as much a battle against “the corruption of 18th century British high society,”[4] as it was against financial oppression. While the Founders and American colonists were very concerned with their civil liberty and economic freedom, demanding “no taxation without representation,” they were equally concerned with their religious liberty, particularly in preserving their rights of individual conscience and public morality.[5] With respect to the vital need for virtue in order to establish and maintain a republic, the Founders were in complete harmony:
George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,”[6] and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”[7]
Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” [8]
James Madison stated: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical [imaginary] idea.”[9]
Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and … their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice … These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”[10]
Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.”[11]
Patrick Henry stated that: “A vitiated [impure] state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom.”[12]
John Adams stated: “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[13]
Virtue ennobles individual character and lifts society as a whole. Virtuous principles eschew prejudice and discrimination, confirming that “all men are created equal.” Virtue encompasses characteristics of goodwill, patience, tolerance, kindness, respect, humility, gratitude, courage, honor, industry, honesty, chastity and fidelity. These precepts serve as the cornerstones for both individual happiness and societal governance.
[1] Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, translated by Bailey Saunders (MacMillan & Co., New York, 1906), Maxim No. 225.
[2] William Drysdale, ed., Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, Selected from the Writings and Sayings of Henry Ward Beecher (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1887), p. 72.
[3] John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren, April 16, 1776. A. Koch and W. Peden, eds., The Selected Writings of John and John Quincy Adams (Knopf, New York, 1946), p. 57.
[4] Marvin Olasky, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue (Regnery Publishing, Washinton D.C., 1996) p. 142.
[5] See, e.g., Id., Olasky, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue; Richard Vetterli and Gary Bryner, In Search of the Republic: Public Virtue and the Roots of American Government (Rowman & Littlefield, New Jersey, 1987).
[6] Victor Hugo Paltsits, Washington’s Farewell Address (The New York Public Library, 1935), p. 124.
[7] Washington to Marquis De Lafayette, February 7, 1788, John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, (U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington D. C., 1939), 29:410.
[8] Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, (Tappan, Whittemore and Mason, Boston, 1840), 10:297.
[9] Speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788. Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1891) 3:536.
[10] Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819. ME 15:234.
[11] William V. Wells, The Life and Public Service of Samuel Adams (Little, Brown, & Co., Boston, 1865), 1:22.
[12] Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts – A Cyclopedia of Quotations(Hanover House, Garden City, NY, 1852; revised and enlarged by C.H. Catrevas, Ralph Emerson Browns and Jonathan Edwards, 1891; The Standard Book Company, New York, 1955, 1963), p. 337.
[13] John Adams, October 11, 1798, letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1854), 9:229.
https://mountlibertycollege.org/without-virtue-there-can-be-no-liberty/