Time to Stop Messing Around and Strike at the Root of Police Violence

It’s tempting to believe that protest marches, violent confrontations, looting, burning, and riots can change police behavior, or perhaps that they COULD change that behavior if applied frequently and vigorously enough. That kind of widespread delusion is, as Thoreau put it, “a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,” with predictable results.

What I’m Thinking

1. Getting people to be rational about politics is an uphill battle during the best of times.  During a global hysteria, it’s hopeless. 2. Due to this doleful realization, I refrained from discussing the lockdown when it first emerged.  The best course, I deemed, was to wait for readers to simmer down. 3. Since many have now simmered down, here’s what I was thinking three months ago.

On Freedom III

Contrasting freedom to liberty is simple: liberty is the absence of physical restraint by others, freedom is the absence of mental restraint by yourself. In other words, freedom is knowing deep inside your bones that anyone attempting to violate your liberty is acting offensively criminal.