Here’s a video where a conservative defends a big-government welfare-based government monopoly, and a liberal puts forth alternative free market solutions.

The liberal talks about Latinx and Trans people and other liberal buzz words, which rubs me the wrong way. The conservative shows such little respect for liberty and justice. No wonder we’re in such a mess.

Here’s my response to the video:

I don’t think this guy has ever thought critically about the police for a single millisecond. It is rare for police to ever stop a crime in progress. So police aren’t for protection. In fact, they aren’t even legally obligated to protect you. Ideally speaking, they are there to find criminals after they’ve committed the crime and bring them to justice. Their other purpose, which never comes up in government PR, is that police are there to collect taxes.

Even in cases like terrorist shootings that he mentions, police rarely protect anyone. At Columbine, police hid outside in fear, even after the shooters killed themselves.  The conservative never explains why hundreds of thousands of cops across the country are necessary for a couple of shootings a year. Why can’t citizens with an AR-15 respond to situations like that? They couldn’t do much worse than the cops.

He then talks about a lady being murdered and trying to call 911, and being told there are no police. Again, it’s rare for police to show up to prevent a crime in progress, so the whole thing is just a fantasy. Wouldn’t a better solution be to have an app on your phone that you can alert your neighbors that you need help. And wouldn’t it be nice for the men in the neighborhood to be men and show up to help to show that they love someone enough to potentially lay down their lives for someone else? We don’t have to do that, because we pay the government to do it.

The conservative then raises the question of how we could deal with situations like shoplifting. Maybe the same way the founding fathers dealt with crime before police, when we were still a free people. The police take the information from the store, and then try to locate the suspect. That doesn’t have to be done by police. That can be done privately by investigators, bounty hunters and the courts, which is how early America did it. Read this excellent article on that history.

Then, the liberal says that the job of cops is to manufacture criminals. I think that isn’t the day-to-day mindset of the cop on the street, but I think that is true. With the tough-on-crime mentality of the latter half of the 1900s, politicians made a lot of things illegal that weren’t illegal, and increased prison sentences dramatically. I’ve also heard that there are district attorneys offices whose budgets are wildly too big with a lot of extra staff. What does a prosecuting attorney with nothing to do start looking for? What will happen when we start putting cops in every junior high and high school? You’re going to get more criminals. There have been cases where private prisons bribe judges to send them inmates. This is not far fetched, and the conservative is just not well informed. It’s not exactly surprising that cops aren’t told this, or that this isn’t in the government PR message.

Then the conservative mocks the idea of policing for profit, and says that cops only make $30,000 per year. I suppose there are some places where cops aren’t well paid, but there are also cops who are making great money, and even have pensions worth a couple million. Check out this Forbes story on that.

And the conservative makes fun of the idea that poorly-paid cops are going around trying to put money in other people’s pocket. Well feast your eyes on the video below. Oftentimes they’re trying to put money in their own pocket, as has been verified in local newspapers over the last week or so.

He then goes on to say that cops need to be one step ahead of criminals as far as militarization goes. Criminals have an AR-15 so why go against them with a pistol? The whole point of the 2nd Amendment is that the people are to be as well-armed as the government.

The people are paying the police to protect the citizens, but the police seem much more concerned about their own safety than those they’re paid to protect.

The liberal makes a great point that to end police, their budgets need to be cut. The conservative says that budgets are too small as it is, and for more training, they need more money. That is crazy as far as I’m concerned. When you see 6 or 10 or 15 cops show up to a simple call, it seems like the best thing to do is lay off about 90% of cops. When I’ve had the cops called on me for doing perfectly legal evangelism on a public street, 8 cops showed up. They must have been bored stiff that night.

Starting around 5:15 to 5:53, he then makes a point that I think is important. He says that all shootings are different and have different policies, training, etc. This is something that I’ve been harping on for a long time. Arizona defines murder in a different way than Indiana, which is different from Mississippi. Is it the government’s job to define murder. I have a Christian friend who said officers were justified in one particular incident, and he appealed to state law. Ok, Christian, if you allow the state to define murder, abortion is perfectly legitimate, because the state says so. God defines murder, and every cop who kills someone will stand before God and be judged by His clear and precise law. God will not judge anyone based on Colorado law.

He then mocks the liberal idea of rapid response justice teams saying that cops are that system. But that presupposes that cops bring justice, and the government isn’t stealing to fund their very existence. But he’s clearly someone who hasn’t thought about this stuff very much and seems to worship government power. Here is where he most blatantly shows that he’s a big-government conservative, and cares not a wit about free-market solutions, but in forcing his chosen solution on everyone based on force.

And he thinks the state-sanctioned rapid response justice team is automatically better than the free market rapid response justice team. It’s like he thinks the government people are magical, and this service is only possible through the power of the state. I think a lot of the same people would be involved in the free market security service, except that they could much more easily be held accountable.

So that is it. I’ve debated many people on this, and I never get rational arguments. All they have to offer is emotions.

Sometimes I wonder what it will take to convince people that the police are an occupying army roving our streets. Surely if they killed an innocent man from the turret of one of their armored SWAT vehicles that would convince people.

THEY DID.

Here’s an interesting video where Carrier (HVAC company) announces to their workers in Indianapolis that they’re moving the factory to Mexico.

I don’t know why they’d announce such a thing with more than a year’s warning. Those workers are now angry and likely to not put forth full effort. There could be a lot of factors I don’t know about, of course, but I would tell them at 5:00 the day they’re laid off.

Why is a Mexican workforce so much cheaper than an American workforce? Because the U.S. government puts all kinds of barriers in place for employers and employees. When, for example, government makes a law giving employees a new right, it just makes employees that much more expensive. Government has stepped into the relationship between employer and employee and dictated to both that the employer has to do X, and the employee must receive X. Neither has any choice in the matter.

The employee can’t opt to reject that benefit in order to be more competitive, or even to receive the benefit as a pay raise. That new benefit sounds good, but in reality, the employee is paying for it, or he’s pricing himself out of the market, and in the case of Carrier, the employee’s competitor is a Mexican.

Minimum wage is a more concrete example. In Seattle, the city has dictated that minimum wage is $15. The entry-level worker earning minimum wage may not be producing $15 worth of value for his employer. In that case, the entry-level guy will be laid off, and replaced with someone who can produce $15 or more worth of value. Or some company’s may be able to move out of Seattle, or some jobs can be replaced with computers, such as cashier jobs, where one cashier will monitor several self-checkout systems.

Raising the minimum wage sounds good, but it only hurts those who most need help. Furthermore, if raising it to $15/hour were a good idea, why not $20 or $50?

There are thousands of ways that government interferes in an evil way to price American workers out of the market. The only way for Americans to be competitive and get manufacturing jobs back is to get government out of the picture, and get them to stop meddling. B

I’ve given up on the Republicans for the most part. The American government at all levels is anti-Christ, and none of them see it. None of them want to end socialism, and some of them want to increase it. But here’s the highlight of all the debates so far.

For argument sake, let’s propose the following. I have passed a new law saying:

1. I am the government.
2. I can drive whatever speed I like.

If a cop pulls me over for speeding, I will pull out my law book and quote to him, “I can drive whatever speed I like.” Of course, he’d have a good chuckle and write me a ticket. He has a gun, and just as importantly, the willingness to kill me.

The knee jerk reaction of 99.9% of people reading that would say my government is not valid. But why? Why is the state of Colorado law valid, and my government and law invalid?

Isn’t making up a new government exactly what the state of Colorado (or whatever government at whatever level) has done? A group of guys got together and said, “We are the new government.”

Then, they say something like, “Let’s write a consitution! The constitution will define our territory and we’ll make up out of thin air a process for new laws to be passed. Somewhere in the law or the constitution, we’re going to have to say that we have the right to apply our laws to the people within our boundaries. If someone comes along and asks whether we have the right to do this, we’re going to be able to quote to them from our laws saying that we do have the right.”

So, they’d say the law applies, because the law says it applies. This is circular reasoning, and isn’t a valid answer. If I said Islam is true because the Quran says so, you’d say that’s circular, and you’d be right to reject my answer.

I’ll put forth a few devil’s advocate answers to the question about why the government of Colorado laws might be valid.

The laws of the government of Colorado are valid because:

1. They control the territory defined as Colorado.
2. The government has been in existence in its current form since 1876.
3. Anyone who enters the territory of Colorado agrees to abide by the law or face the consequences.
4. Government agents have guns and are more than willing to use them. They rule by force.
5. The Bible says we should obey the civil magistrates (Romans 13:1-7).

Numbers 1 and 4 are really the same. Forcing or threatening people doesn’t really make laws or a government valid, though it can be very effective.

Number 2 is not really a valid answer. It’s possible that the government has been invalid since its inception, or it has become invalid at some point. So, 1, 2 and 4 aren’t good answers.

Number 3 is a little bit more interesting. At least it adds a layer for us to peel away. There are people in Colorado who don’t agree to submit to the laws of Colorado. (If none of the other five million, there is at least me.) Why does the law apply to those who don’t agree to submit to Colorado law? And you’re back to the original question. Answer number 3 is just fluff.

Number 5 is really the only answer that would come close to being a good answer. However, if you’re going to claim number 5, you’d have to see whether the government qualifies as being valid by the standard of Scripture. I’ll tell you that it fails miserably.

This answer leads to a conundrum for government, because they explicitly reject that they might rule by biblical standards. They have rejected the Bible and Christianity as possible sources of guidance for government. THEY have rejected the only possible reason for their validity.

The only valid government is one that enforces God’s law as prescribed in God’s law. If they rule by God’s law, then they have God’s blessing in forcing people to do certain very limited things.

While I may not have covered every possible response to the question of why the government of Colorado is valid, I assure you there are no valid answers other than the biblical answer.

My made-up government, consisting of one citizen, is more valid than the state of Colorado, assuming I adopt God’s laws. They have no God-given or moral authority. All they have is the threat of force.

Oh, good news, I just made my wife and kids citizens as well, so now my government has 5 citizens. Care to join me? You might want to check out what God’s law says, but it is beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMhNFGzqtIQ

I’m a little bit surprised they even have the ability to arrest him for such a silly thing.

How long are we going to put up with this kind of behavior? I wish all the people protesting the cops could actually spend their time doing something useful, like working to cut the budget of police or something specific.

If there were 50 cops there in LA that June, 1989 day. Not ONE stood up to the others and said, “We shouldn’t be abusing these people.” That would be the bare minimum. Not only that, not ONE said, “We’re on the wrong side. We shouldn’t be enforcing man’s law when it contradicts God’s law.” Out of 50 cops that day, zero showed themselves to be good cops.

Zero out of 50 is a terrible percentage. Furthermore, below is the story of a good cop, and how that got him fired, because good cops can’t be tolerated on the police force, at least in Las Vegas. I’ll admit there might be good cops, but you must admit the evidence is pointing to a small percentage.

I’m shocked that at least two Christian cops in the course of this conversation [This post was a comment I made in the course of a Facebook conversation discussing the first video.] can’t bring themselves to say that the cops in the video were evil. What is the deal? What have they bought into that makes them so biased? I’ve asked them both directly to denounce those cops. This is a private forum where their fellow officers won’t ever know what they say, and they still don’t have the courage or the common sense to bring themselves to say anything bad about these other cops from 26 years ago.

How will these guys ever have the courage to actually stand up to their fellow cops in real life when they can’t call evil what it is on Facebook? If they want to see a bad cop, they can look in the mirror. I hope they prove me wrong and come out to strongly denounce what police across the country did to Operation Rescue. But I’m not holding my breath.

We live in a country under God’s judgment and generally run by ungodly perverts. Cops enforce the evil, pagan laws in this country, and I have Christians telling me I’m the one that has to assume a cop is good. It seems to me they need to start showing themselves to be good. When magistrates (which includes cops) in this country start standing up to evil, maybe then we can start identifying some good cops. Until then, the good cops are so few in number that they must keep a low profile, are under discipline, or already fired or quit.

I haven’t received a lot of feedback on these ideas. Debate and conversation is a good way to test ideas to see if they stand up. In response to this post, here are a few of the responses from Facebook.

1. “That is a VERY short sighted and offensive meme and corresponding blog post. There are brothers and possibly sisters in Christ in this group who serve the public in law enforcement. Perhaps the lack of response to that blog post should give a clue. How is what you say about fellow image bearers edifying?”

I think it’s very edifying to  claim that it is inadvisable for Christians to be police, assuming it’s true. Of course, no argument against the proposition was offered by this older woman.

2. “Maybe ‘no good cops with jurisdiction near abortion clinics.’ Otherwise, I agree completely.”

I certainly agree that that is all the article proves. But, you could go through and show how there are enough unjust laws in this country that no jurisdiction would be left with an excuse. This country has gone so pagan that I don’t see how a Christian can remain a cop unless they are there to work against the whole system.

3. “This was truly an awful article. I feel sorry for you.”

Maybe this guy is a cop? He never returned to offer any further brilliant insights.  Unfortunately five people liked this vapid comment.

4. “I think the writer makes a great point.”

I can’t help but agree.

5. “I would just ask that everyone be respectful during this. Let me explain, I live in Australia and I worked as a Police Officer for a while. Through this time I never saw a conflict between my beliefs and my actions. After I finished that job, I began to feel different. I would get flashbacks of incidents I went to, would be unable to stand in crowded rooms and began to distrust even my closest friends. Yesterday I went to a specialist who diagnosed me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The first thing I did was approach my brothers in Christ, who just began to spout the same kind of stuff here.

I mention this as while I understand the issues being mentioned, please be respectful while speaking on this issue. I love the Pub, but sometimes when these issues come up, I feel far from welcome.”

Cops having an us vs. them mentality is one of the problems. That is a mentality of an army occupying enemy territory. If his Christians friends start saying the same things as he hears elsewhere, maybe he should take a hint.

6. I know of At least one good cop: he’s a captain and an elder in my church.

I bet some of the guys in the video where Christians and elders at a church. You’ll pardon my doubts as good cops don’t remain cops for long.

7.  “The first few minutes of the video below debunks the fantasy that a large percentage of cops are good.” Bill, this line alone should have told you that the author of this post is not reasoning well. I am a police officer, and I cannot tell you exactly how I would have responded to that call because I do not have all the information regarding those specific circumstances. Many times the officers know information that the rest of the public does not, and that is a factor in why an officer made a particular decision.

But to be fair, enforcing unjust laws is something every Christian cop has to be sensitive to. As our government moves further down a path of unrighteousness, it should concern any Christian who is an agent of enforcement for that unrighteous government. However, sinful behavior is something anyone in any profession is tempted with. How much lying, stealing, etc. go on in the business world on a day to day basis that Christians who work in offices have to deal with?

In my time as a cop, only once have I had to make an objection to an order based on conscience, and it landed me in the chief’s office the next day. But, it was worth it, and I’m glad I took a stand for my convictions. By and large, as a cop, I spend my time and energy on worthwhile pursuits- enforcing violations of God’s moral law, holding criminals accountable, and protecting innocent people so they can go about their lives peacefully. There is not an abortion clinic in my jurisdiction, and for that, I am thankful.”

The fact that he can’t adamantly condemn the cops in the video shows he has a bias problem. I’m glad he has refused to follow orders in the past, but I think if I were a cop, that is something that would come up quite often, not just once in a long career.

Also, for the government to use the sword to enforce God’s moral law isn’t how it was intended. There are things that are a sin that aren’t criminal. He doesn’t lock up people for lying. But I bet he does lock up people for drug crimes. Doing or selling drugs is a sin, but it isn’t a crime in God’s law. And I bet he’s written a speeding ticket or two in his day, which is enforcing the arbitrary laws of men. Not to mention that in God’s law, there are no police.

8. Cops don’t arrest protesters because they are protesting abortions. The ordinances and laws enforced were not written with abortion in mind. Those same laws could be used to protect religious organizations as well. Just because the anti-abortion protester is against abortion doesn’t mean their actions are right in the sight of God. You don’t get a free pass from being Christ like just because you are anti-abortion. Just like other activists, many anti-abortion protesters intentionally break laws and create conflict with police so the can play the victim and make recruitment videos.

He included his happy “serve and protect the citizens” picture. It’s as if a cop can never criticize another cop. It’s quite sick. I have video proof that 100% of 50-100 LAPD cops are evil cops, and cops can’t bring themselves to admit it. It’s as if they’re reading a highly-edited cop version of the Bible.

Neither can they say what they would do in that situation, leaving me to wonder if they would do exactly what the LAPD did that June day in 1989.

9. My self along with twenty other Christians were out at the abortion mill today in Riverside California and we had two encounters with the police and they were very kind and favorable towards us and our cause. I think there are proper ways to protest the abortion mills and we ought to comply with the established laws of the city that we are in.

Generally, if you do exactly what the cops say, you’re OK. Some of them (though far from all) might even be familiar enough with the 1st Amendment to let you exercise your right to free speech on a public sidewalk. Of course strict obedience to every cop’s whim is what communism was built on.

There is another conversation that brought up an interesting, albeit fallacious, point that I will save for another post, but I think it’s obvious that no one  really even tried to argue against the post, and the proposition remains intact after some scrutiny. But I’m always looking for more feedback.

One thing that is discouraging is that this is a Christian Facebook group, and judging by the comment likes, there is a lot of unreasonable support for the cops. Of course, when you grow up in a police state, and it’s all you know, maybe your arguments in favor of the police state aren’t rational.