Deluxe Ironic Lunchtime Bonus Moment

[Updates below.]

As far as I'm concerned, the police have long since gone from being occasionally helpful, generally useless, overly glorified public servants to becoming one of the most prominent threats to an individual's liberty.

[...]

In theory, the cops should be a last resort called upon to protect your life and property. In practice, they have become part of the problem.

-Jay Jardine

Normally when I head out to lunch, I prefer to have something along with me to read. I dislike spending my free time staring out the windows at passing traffic when I could be digesting ideas along with roast beef, turkey, cheddar cheese, ranch dressing, and whole wheat sub buns. These articles are almost always "scholarly" in nature and make bad reading while at work because I get so caught up in them.

So today I had lunch at the Quizno's near the intersections of Highway 183/Research Blvd., Burnet Rd., and MOPAC. As I pulled up, I noticed the parking lot was pleasantly low on vehicles, meaning I could enjoy at least some quiet time to read and eat before the lunch rush ruined the atmosphere. As I parked, I noticed the best spot in front of the primary door was occupied with three Austin Police Department motorcycles.

The cops were eating at a table directly in front of the ordering line and there was no one in front of me when I walked up to ask for my sandwich. The employees provided me with their typically high level of customer service and I was out of the line and at a table with little wait.

Which was a bit of a disappointment. I was carrying a printout of Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law without Government (PDF) from the Ludwig von Mises Institute's Journal of Libertarian Studies and I was hoping they'd see the title and offer a pithy comment or two to each other just loud enough for me to hear.

What would I have done at that point? Well, it depends on the nature of the comment(s), but I can imagine the "frank exchange of ideas" roughly ending up like this if it went ugly:

Policeman 1: Whether you want to admit it or not, you need us and you need the government to live safely.

Me: I certainly may want property protection, but I certainly don't want other people to have money coerced from them to pay for it. Besides, it is my right to decide if my things need protection from third parties by third parties.

Policeman 2: Coerced? C'mon, man, don't be so silly. Taxes are too important to the things that keep society going to just give up. Grow up, son.

Policeman 3: Hell, if you don't want us to help you with a robbery just send us a letter saying you want no protection at all.

Policemen: *laughter*

Me: You motherfuckers certainly didn't help me much when two of my car stereos were stolen, so why should I give a damn about your help anyway? And you question the coercion in taxes? Let me explain what I mean - you see those firearms strapped to your belts?

For the typical citizen, they serve two or three purposes. They provide a means to self-defense, pleasure from target shooting, and pleasure from hunting. Do you know what they are for you? They are means to coerce people to obey the government's laws and to self-defense from the people who won't obey your commands to obey those laws. In your hands, they are primarily instruments of threat to follow your orders. Without that threat of violence, you are powerless. In that sense, you are thugs with badges on a mission to decide what's in my best interest while keeping in mind the request of the community to be nice to me.

Those guns are what give you and your brothers at the state and federal level the means to bust down my door at dawn to kidnap me for not paying my taxes; for ignoring your demands that I register my car and get it inspected; for buying a responsible teenager a beer; for opening a restaurant that won't follow the city's rules on indoor smoking; for not getting a permit to improve my house; for producing wildly explicit pornography involving consensual actors under the age of 18; for not sticking my financial head into the shadowy and unpredictable viper's nest of neighborhood, city, state, and federal regulations that dictate what, where, when, and how I live my life or for any number of sane and useful activities that your employers believe should be criminalized...to arrest, assault, and harass me for acting as the rightful owner of my property?

Fuck. You. Or has the right to speak my mind been so abrogated by the state and its cronies that it has become illegal for me to tell you what I really think about the illegitimate enterprise that you work to uphold and defend?

Policeman 1: Sir, please step outside so we can speak with you further.

Policemen: *stand up, chairs squealing against the floor*

Me: Of all the times I decide to not bring my handgun with me...

Of course, this is a nightmare scenario that revolves around me having the guts to preach like that in the first place and I am under no illusions that a shoot-out would end well for anyone or is desirable in the first place.

But as I read that JLS article, I wondered what they'd do in the face of a tirade like that. It would be embarrassing to anyone to have such a pointed verbal assault directed at them and their institution, so I certainly wouldn't encourage intellectual debate by saying it. My father being a deputy sheriff wouldn't matter a damn to them or me, but it would certainly spice up the wire report if it devolved from a discussion to a fight.

Would they simply write me off as some idiot kid?
Would they demand I produce my driver's license so they can make a note of me in some database to be monitored later?
Would they take me into custody on a disturbing the peace charge and forget about the thing except as a joke for the buddies to hear about the next day?
Would they snap under the stress of a job that has them viewing and engaging with the nastiest elements and actions of society?
Would they pause and consider what I'd said?

UPDATE 1/28/2005 11:51am
Hypocrisy or Consistency?

Posted by Drizzten at January 25, 2005 03:11 PM