The Police; L.E. Read

In a word, we have been sponsor ing, arguing for, trying to explain something no one ever saw - try ing to make the case for an un pereeived abstraction! In the interest of better com munication, why not use a term that is consonant with what or ganized force really is: the police. All of us, from youngsters to old sters, have seen policemen. Wood row Wilson, for instance, never saw government but he saw police men·, one of them in the mirror a Chief of Police. So let us try 75 76 THE FREEMAN February that image of limited government - the police - to better present our freedom point of view. The question is this: Are our policemen - local, state, and na tional - friends or foes? This, I believe, can be resolved by assess ing their countless actions as re lated to justice and injustice. They are friends when supporting jus tice and foes when inflicting in justices. Is Justice Served?

Here is my conclusion at the outset: When the police serve as an agency of justice, we should in all good conscience regard the agency as a friend. But-when the police power becomes an instru ment of injustice we should look upon it as a foe; for then it is a political device that contributes toward rather than deters social chaos. Above all, let us bear in mind that the police force is but an agency or an instrument of ours, and that ours is the respon sibility to keep it a friendly agency of justice rather than a foe of mankind. Wrote Edmund Burke: "When ever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe." I side with Burke: Liberty and justice are inseparably linked! So, what is liberty? It is the "pursuing of our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to de prive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it." My phrasing: No man-concocted re straints against the release of cre ative human energy.

Let me catalogue a few in stances where the police behave as a foe and try to explain how the agency could serve as a friend instead. Inflation: When the agency di lutes the medium of exchange it is a foe, precisely as if every policeman in the U.S.A. were en gaged in counterfeiting. Foe? If the money supply continues to escalate at the rate since 1938 from about $35 billion to $280 bil lion - the supply by the year 2000 will be one and one-half trillion dollars. Savings, insurance, bonds, and other such assets wouldn't then be worth a plugged nickel. Here is a separation of liberty and justice. How can the police agency be come a friend '? Remove the cause of inflation: excessive police ex penditures. For it is an observed fact that whenever the costs of the police power rise beyond that point where it is no longer politi cally expedient to defray its costs by direct tax levies, such agencies resort to inflation as a means of making up the deficit. Inflation syphons private property into the 1975 THE POLICE: FRIEND OR FOE? 77 coffers of the police. Let the police power do only what police are sup posed to do: Invoke a common justice and keep the peace! That would be a big step toward liberty and friendship.

Food stamps: a perfect exam ple of the police agency as foe! In 1965 the cost of the food stamp program was $85.5 million. This year it will approximate $7.2 bil lion - up 8,400 per cent in ten years-with 16,000,000 people rid ing this gravy train, feeding at the public trough. Where is this and similar. plundering schemes of the police force taking us? To a situation of all parasites and no hosts - the rich becoming poor and the poor poorer. Li herty and justice separated! The light shed by this police injustice? Allow everyone maxi mum opportunity to become self responsible. It is as unjust for the police to forcibly take from some and give to others as it would be for me to rob you to aid a person who is the object of my pity. What about instances of distress? Rely on the practice of Judeo-Christian charity. Were the police not pre empting this role, true personal charity would be more than suf ficient. For another step toward liberty and justice, let us relieve the policeman of this highly ques tionable activity.

Social security: Why should every person engaged in "covered employment" be compelled to con tribute 11.7 per cent of the first $13,200 of his annual earnings to this huge "policemen's benevo lence fund"? For the benefit of those already retired? For a chance to draw from the fund if and when he reaches 65 and re tires from "covered employment"? Is it justice to force everyone to contribute to this "fund for the future" regardless of the indhrid ual's present needs and circum stances or of his own ideas about how best to save and invest his property? What should a friendly police man do in this regard? Why not ask that he protect and defend the right of each of us to buy as much or as little insurance as he wants from whomever is willing to sup ply it? And if either party at tempts to defraud the other, let the policeman then intervene as an agent of justice. Price controls: The police are foes when they control the price of commodi ties, rent, interest, wages or permit control by labor or business or whoever. Prices are expressions of value judgments.

No policeman or anyone else can determine the value of this or that for you or me. Value is always a subjective determination. When 78 THE FREEMAN February the policeman tells you what price you must payor at what price you must sell, he is, in effect, forcing you to buy or sell contrary to your wishes; in other words, he· is con trolling you. All attempts at price control have failed; the results have been surpluses and shortages and economic chaos. People con trol is rank injustice. The friendly policemen let prices be determined in the free and un fettered market, that is, by sup ply and demand. Liberty and justice! Paying farmers not to farm: a foe to consumers - who pay more; a foe to taxpayers - who keep less; a foe to the farmers-them selves - who degenerate into plunderers. The friendly way? Be done, "lock, stock, and barrel," with this silly blockage of the market. Restore liberty and justice!

Police-type education: This is featured by three forms of police coercion: (1) compulsory atten dance, (2) police dictated curri cula, and (3) the forcible collec tion of the wherewithal to pay the enormous bill. The police have no more place in education than in religion. In my view, police "education" has been one of the greatest errors in American his tory and this fact is becoming more and more evident with each passing year. The collectivistic jargon issuing from classrooms accounts, in no small measure, for collectivistic practices in all walks of life. Foes! What then would be friendly? Get the police out of education except to identify any and all mis representation, and impose ap propriate penalties! Leave edu cation - as we leave religion to citizens acting freely, coop era tively, competi tively , privately, voluntarily. Education is a volun tary taking of ideas freely offered by others, not a police process of stuffing information into a captive audience. The police who side with this view are friends and the upholders of liberty and justice as related to education.

Why give more examples of a list virtually endless? These few specimens - a mere sampling may· suffice to demonstrate the difference between justice and in justice at the hands off the police. Now to the role of the citizen who believes in friendly police and who is devoted to the propo sition that liberty and justice are inseparable. Is there a part for each of us to play if we seek the good ·society? Indeed, there is! Note the phrasing of a previous sentence : "When the police serve as an agency of justice, we should in all good conscience regard the 1975 THE POLICE: FRIEND OR FOE? 79 agency as a friend." We should, but we don't. And this lack of self-discipline may account, as much as any other reason, for the loss of liberty and justice, for runaway police. It occurs to me that the re quired discipline may be more un known than carelessly glossed over. John Philpot Curran said: The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vig ilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

This oft-repeated axiom is, in my view, the missing discipline. True, the words are well known; it's the meaning that's not known or even suspected. The axiom sounds good, but actually, what does one do to be forever vigilant? How exer cise this discipline? Yes, we rail against inj ustice but we do not know how to hail justice - or so I believe. Merely take note of the fact that when and if a policeman does something that's just - consistent with lib erty - we do no more than regard it as the what-out-to-be and let it go at that. Not vigilance at all; merely static acquiescence. In favor of justice, yes; vigilant standard-bearers, rarely, if ever. This raises the final question: How does one become a vigilant standard-bearer ? Would that it were as simple as a pat on the back to those police who do what's right and just! And even this would not be simple, for there are ever so many who so conduct themselves but whose actions we never hear about. Mere praise does not suffice. All well and dan dy, but there's nothing vigilant about that.

What then? The police agencies might soon rise to their principled role were their millions of mem bers to stand ramrod straight. But this for certain, they will never so behave short of some exemplars among the citizenry. Eternal vigilance is nothing less than exemplarity of the high est order on your part and mine day in and day out, now and for ever. A society gets the police men it deserves; for the police agencies are no more than a re flection of you and me. We aid and abet what's good and just on the part of the police by being good ourselves - by nothing less than personal standard -setting performances. * ,:est and by three (P. T. ,ist (Ed sociologist c oec auer, a professor at the London School of Economics, has published several important books on the topic of economic development, but by far his most comprehensive work is Dissent on Development, published by Harvard University Press in 1972. The key to economic devel opment in a society, argues Bauer, is the character of the people. The presence of a socialist planning apparatus inhibits development, since it pours money into state approved projects, bases its deci sions on politics rather than eco nomic returns, and acts as a scape goat for personal failure ("the government did this to me"). But far more important is the attitude of the population: Dr. North is the commentator on the "Gold & Inflation Telephone Report" (213) 422-1266.