Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of
Representatives
Congressional Issues 2008
DOMESTIC ISSUES
Police
The government's police forces no longer provide security. They arrest
and imprison (sometimes) criminals after they
have already committed their crimes.
Security is best provided by agencies that compete for customers in
the Free Market.
Outside of some small academic and activist circles, most
Americans reject the radical ideology of socialism as it
pertains to the economy as a whole. Hardly anyone believes that
the state should maintain the means of production and that
private enterprise should be abolished. Most people understand
the folly of divorcing all industry from private property
ownership and running an economic sector completely through
central management.
It is interesting, then, that
most people still believe in total socialism when in comes to
providing services of security and justice.
There is a considerable
literature exploring how the market might handle law, but rarely
are people exposed to it. Murray
Rothbard, Bruce
Benson, David
Friedman, Robert
Murphy, Samuel
Konkin and others have made insightful contributions to such
theory. However, we do not need to know how exactly the market
would deal with this to know that socialism has institutional
limitations that prevent it from achieving its advertised goals;
and there is no reason not to apply this understanding to the
question of law enforcement.
Police are abused when their skills are wasted on pathetic losers who
do not initiate force or defraud anyone. The "War on Drugs" is
an abuse of police. It is completely
unconstitutional. It encourages lawlessness on the part of the
police.
Listen to the tape secretly made by the wife of a pathetic
dope-smoking loser during
his arrest. The police whose
voices are heard on the tape are using the power of the sword --
coercion and violence -- to make an arrest in the "War on
Drugs." The officers are trying to force this low-level drug dealer
to sign a form giving police "permission" to search his home.
See also: The Expanding Federal
Police Power The Federal Government should not be involved in local police issues.
The federalizing of local police is a dangerous trend which threatens our
liberties.