The Horrif ic Life Of The Police Off icer By Mark R. Crovelli
(2011-05-16 at 07:05:18 )

The Horrif ic Life Of The Police Off icer By Mark R. Crovelli

F ew people in the world seem to appreciate just how awful it is to be a
government police off icer. It is not that the job involves particularly
physically demanding work, or that the job is particularly dangerous. In
fact, the work is not nearly physically demanding enough (as the cop
fatness problem demonstrates), and neither is it particularly dangerous
(being a cop does not even make the top ten most dangerous jobs). Nor is
the job terrible because of the unstated obligation to wear a tawdry
mustache in public. Instead, what makes the job so horrif ic is the fact
that it requires living a completely contradictory moral life.

Unlike normal human beings, whose jobs require adherence to the same
moral standards that apply in their private lives, police off icers are
required to act in ways they would never even consider in their private
lives. For forty hours a week (or more, if they are trying to milk their
departmental overtime rackets), police off icers are required to forget
the moral standards that govern their private interactions with their
own friends, families and neighbors and adopt the moral outlook of the
sociopath and the gangster.

Specif ically, the job of the police off icer involves giving orders to
strangers and locking them up in cages if they choose not to obey.

Unless the police off icer is a complete sociopath, he would never
consider acting in such a way in his private life. With his blue
polyester in the closet, for example, the off-duty police off icer would
never consider putting his grandpa in a cage if he refuses to obey
orders. He would never consider electrocuting his children or his
grandmother for refusing to do what he tells them. He would never
consider beating up his neighbor if she refused to stop her car and
show a picture of herself embossed on government plastic. But he is
expected to do precisely these types of things to people he does not
even know in his "professional" life if they refuse to do what he and
his bosses tell them.

The fact that many, many police off icers are indeed complete psychopaths
should thus not come as a particular surprise. Indeed, the job is tailor
made for the psychopath and the sociopath who is comfortable with
feelings of cognitive dissonance. People with normally calibrated moral
compasses would shudder to think that they would be required to lock
people up in cages, electrocute them, or beat them with clubs for not
doing as they are told. It would confuse and trouble the normal person
to think that by putting on a blue polyester suit, mustache, and riding
boots it was suddenly morally acceptable to order people around at the
point of a gun (not to mention the icy shudder they would f eel at the
thought of wearing the ridiculous kit itself). It would horrify the
normal person to think that part of his job involved smashing down
strange peoples doors, taking their children, shackling them, locking
them in cages, stealing their drugs and guns, and shooting them if
they happen to resist.

The man with a normally calibrated moral compass is equally disturbed to
contemplate that the purported justif ication for acting in these barbaric
ways was that politicians, of all people, told them to. It is not as
though God Himself or the Pope gives the police off icer sanction to lock
people in cages and to order them about. Quite the reverse, the sanction
comes from people of such sterling moral character as the coke-snorting
drunk driver, Bush II, and the drug-cartel-connected perjurer, Clinton I.

The sociopath and the psychopath are not troubled by the fact that their
only justif ication for ordering strange people around is that a pack of
corrupt millionaires in Washington or Denver told them to, which is what
makes such people sociopaths and psychopaths in the f irst place. The
normal person, in contrast, is not willing to do things to other people
that they clearly resent or despise, or to order them to do things they
oppose, just because a politician says so.

The person with a normally calibrated moral compass would begin to wonder
why the moral standards that govern his private life with friends and
family, and which produce relative peace and harmony in that sphere of
his lif e, do not apply to all situations. Why, the normal person will
inevitably wonder, is there any peace in his family, when no one wears a
special blue suit or has the right to order everyone around and shackle
resisters?

How is it possible that he can get along with his friends at the bowling
alley, when none of them is assigned to break into cars to search for
substances the politicians dislike, and none of them has a right to steal
anyone elses children? In short, the normal person will begin to wonder
why the people who claim to "protect us" are not held to the same moral
standards as everyone else.

The answer to these questions is simple, even if the person with a
normally calibrated moral compass often cannot see it through the clouds
of propaganda that have been spewed over police off icers and politicians.

The answer is, quite simply, that the defense of peoples lives and
property is a job just like any other, and it ought to be provided on
the free market just like every other good and service by people who are
held to exactly the same moral standards as the rest of the civilized
world. The uneasiness that the normal person f eels when confronted with
the existence of a group of fat blue-polyester-clad thugs who are not
bound by normal moral standards is completely understandable and
justif ied. There is no need for these thugs at all, and there is
definitely no justification for exempting them from the moral
standards we hold every other person to.

The provision of bread and chairs and computers does not require
exempting anyone from moral standards, or empowering them to beat people
up and order them around. All that is required is to open the door to
competition, and people fall over backwards trying to please customers
in their quest to make money. The same is just as true of defense
services, which can and ought to be opened to competition between
private providers so that consumers of these services can choose what
kinds of defense services they want to purchase. In that case, the
providers of the services can be held to exactly the same moral
standards as everyone else. Their sole purpose would be to protect
their customers lives and property - not to enforce arbitrary and
unjust rules written by rich politicians on unwilling strangers.

The key to liberating the police off icer from the contradictory and
perverted moral life he currently leads is simply to privatize the
provision of def ense services. Freed from the need to push arbitrary and
unjust rules written by rich politicians on strange people, the police
off icer would then be a moral equal to everyone else in the world who
was striving to make money by serving consumers. He would also, one
hopes, be liberated from the requirement to wear the most ridiculous
bureaucratic costume ever devised by man.

March 24, 2011

Mark R. Crovelli writes from Denver, Colorado.

Copyright © 2011 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or
in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.