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diff --git a/content/entry/dont-fly-the-thin-blue-line-flag.md b/content/entry/dont-fly-the-thin-blue-line-flag.md index 0671096..bfaaf41 100644 --- a/content/entry/dont-fly-the-thin-blue-line-flag.md +++ b/content/entry/dont-fly-the-thin-blue-line-flag.md @@ -7,13 +7,13 @@ Today I saw an American flag with a thin blue line as one of the stripes and the My problem with this flag is not that I don't believe in the idea of law enforcement. I think law enforcement is necessary. My problem isn't even that most people who fly it seem to have authoritarian leanings. My problem with the thin blue line flag has to do with policing and law enforcement itself. -Much of what police in the United States do causes tremendous harm to society. This includes attacking nonviolent protesters, jailing peaceful drug users, harassing the poor, and lying in court to defend their colleagues. I call police officers who do things like that "[thugs](/glossary/)". +Much of what police in the United States do causes tremendous harm to society. This includes attacking nonviolent protesters, jailing peaceful drug users, harassing the poor, and lying in court to defend their colleagues. I call police officers who do things like that "[thugs](/glossary/#thug)". Much of what law enforcement fails to do also causes tremendous harm to society. White-collar criminals steal billions from the poor, yet they're rarely investigated or prosecuted. You might say those are problems with the law and bad incentives, not law enforcement. But it's not so easy to separate the ethics of law enforcement from the law from the court system from corrections. Let me explain how they're all inextricably linked. -Suppose you're a law enforcement agent tasked with breaking up a protest against [global heating](/glossary/). Suppose the protesters are chained together around some industrial equipment, blocking ancient trees from being cut down. Should you enforce the law and remove them? +Suppose you're a law enforcement agent tasked with breaking up a protest against [global heating](/glossary/global-heating). Suppose the protesters are chained together around some industrial equipment, blocking ancient trees from being cut down. Should you enforce the law and remove them? If all cops acted according to their own personal moral code instead of the law, it would be chaos. But enforcing the law and removing environmental protesters repeatedly results in much more severe prolonged global chaos which cancels out the good of enforcing the law in the first place. Not to mention when global heating gets bad enough, you'll have bigger problems to worry about such as the collapse of civilization. Would you still arrest the protesters knowing that? |