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Samizdata quote of the day – The public get the police they deserve There’s an old saying in policing, usually uttered after the latest scandal or disaster: ‘The public get the police they deserve.’ It reflects how police officers feel about the elites who set their rules of engagement, as well as the occasionally capricious public they serve: whatever the police do will be criticised by somebody. Which, probably, is as it should be; policing isn’t a popularity competition. If a police officer is performing their duties properly, ‘somebody’ is going to have their day ruined. That ‘somebody’ used to predominantly be criminals. Sadly, that’s no longer the case. Yet still, I wonder, What did we, the British people, do to deserve the police we have now?
– Dominic Adler
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The police are following their training and policies, and laws, set from above. If they do not behave like this – they lose their pay and pensions. And they know that other people will be hired in their place – who will do these things.
So it might seem that the British people are not to blame – but in a way we are to blame.
British culture, at least at elite establishment level, has long mocked principles – such as moral responsibility (free will), and natural law – natural rights (natural justice – as opposed to the Social Justice of state control), the idea that humans are beings – moral agents, with rights AGAINST the State.
This has become the land of Thomas Hobbes, David Hume and Jeremy Bentham – of the pragmatic state, which can do anything it thinks is for the best (the greatest good of the greatest number) and the ordinary people, gradually – over time, have come to sort-of accept this.
True even as late as 1914 there was a Constitutional Club network and a massive (far bigger than the American one) National Rifle Association – heirs to the old Liberty and Property Defense League of the 19th century, and even the Association for the Defense of Liberty and Property in the 1790s. Indeed some argued that there might be Civil War against the emerging Progressive state – but we had the First World War instead, almost a million dead patriots.
But all that is gone now – Hobbes, Hume and Bentham have won. The boot has come stamping down on our faces (because we are not “really” people, human BEINGS, supposedly Hobbes, Hume and Bentham “proved” this) – and things are going to get a lot worse.
We have a state that is “all-in-all” – because most people sort-of accept it. We have become “men without chests” who do not really seem to believe we have free will (moral responsibility) and rights against the state – and are not willing to die to protect others from injustice.
Yes there are sometimes sparks of resistance – but they are half hearted, not organised, and easily crushed. And then the state takes revenge – and establishment figures gloat.
To be fair….
Are other countries really any different?
Even in the United States about half the population, at least to some extent, think this way.
About half the population do not really believe in the 1st or 2nd Amendments – or in the philosophy of humans as human beings (Free Will Moral Agents) that is their foundation.
But “the public” isn’t a monolith.
So, the powerful parts of the public – increasingly, AWFL’s – affluent white female liberals – get the police THEY want – toothless, unmasculine, pronoun-equipped, ever mindful of hate speech – while the people who really NEED police to be powerful and enabled get screwed.
Nobody in the bad parts of Minneapolis were pushing for the Defund The Police movement. That came from the loving concern of the white lady libs.
They should work out their internal guilt some other way.
(The 2020’s are turning me rather anti-woman. Maybe it’s just me.)
bobby b,
I have often said that women shouldn’t have the vote. This not because I think women are weak minded creatures who don’t understand the issues, it is more complex than that. If women have the vote, then politicians will craft policies to capture that vote. As the state creates nothing but merely confiscates and redistributes, these policies will inevitably involve confiscating men’s assets and redistributing them to women. This both morally wrong, although nobody cares about that anymore, but harmful to society.
When a woman wishes to marry, she naturally seeks out a man with substantially more income than herself to support her during child rearing. If men’s assets have been redistributed to women, such men are now thin on the ground and in demand. The consequence is large numbers of women remaining unmarried and childless. The consequences for society are disasterous.
@bobby b
affluent white female liberals – get the police THEY want – toothless, unmasculine, pronoun-equipped, ever mindful of hate speech
That is what they want until some thug accosts them on the street or breaks into their house. Then they want RoboCop, Dirty Harry and the Terminator all wrapped into one.
Without female voters the United Kingdom would long have been a fully Collectivist place – an utter tyranny.
As it was, about half of all voters voted Labour from 1945 onwards (as late as 1966 this was still true) – if it had been just men voting then the House of Commons would have been utterly dominated by Clause Four (i.e. full Collectivism – look up “Clause Four” in the Labour Party Constitution of 1918 – it is full on SOVIET and was not changed till the time of Mr Blair) supporting Labour M.P.s.
As it was, Professor Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party in the 1940s, demanded the de facto banning of opposition to socialism – and the more moderate Clement Atlee (Leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister) was only able to fend off Professor Laski (and others) by pointing to the large number of Conservative Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. Without women voters those Conservative Members of Parliament would not have been there.
This doctrine that women are inherently Collectivist, that they support tyranny for some sort of biological reason – is Determinist (it denies Free Will – Moral Agency) and, as the above shows, it is WRONG.
Female voters may be more Collectivist, on average, than male voters today – but this was not always so.
And the writers who have undermined belief in Free Will, Moral Agency – Moral Responsibility, and preached a state that can do anything it likes (Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham – and so on) – have been MALE.
A very good if depressing read.
May did promise, however, a quid pro quo. Her reformed British police would be ‘leaner’, but would enjoy full operational latitude. Under the Conservatives, they would concentrate only on fighting crime.
Hollow laugh.
People nowadays focusing on May’s Brexit treachery and surrender tend to forget the enormous damage already inflicted on the country by this deeply flawed trouser-suited harpy (a sort of pound shop Hilary) well before the distasteful last minute withdrawal of her leadership opponent.
Roué le Jour,
So, it’s “Me hunt mammoth… you have sprogs…”. Can anyone here set-up a GoFundMe account to buy Roué a one-way ticket to Kabul? He’d be much happier – unless he plays chess.
The reverse is also true:
The police get the public they deserve.
The last page of the history of every great civilization reads,”Today is a glorious day, for we have finally liberated the women.”
“Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
210 babies per 100 women. “Reality can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop.”
Paul Marks:
This doctrine that women are inherently Collectivist, that they support tyranny for some sort of biological reason – is Determinist (it denies Free Will – Moral Agency) and, as the above shows, it is WRONG.
Female voters may be more Collectivist, on average, than male voters today – but this was not always so.
——————————————
Women have strength and stamina disadvantages in any physical labor.
Women who want to have children are at a disadvantage even in post-industrial workforces, and the non-negotiable needs of human children are… non-negotiable.
Women have physical and temperamental disadvantages in defending themselves physically.
All this makes them risk averse, and despite decades of proud talk and puffed up office jobs – quite happy to be supported by men while fashionably bad-mouthing them.
In aggregate, these behaviors are well-established – despite decades of feminists trying to twist reality’s arm.
Even the most gifted and ambitious rarely marry beneath their (economic) station. It’s very likely that this is not just cultural, but genetic.
It is also unclear how committed women are to unfettered free speech and the open-competition model at the heart of modern capitalism.
The Left has advanced the DEI and LGBTQ agendas by applying the framing and language of a tea/Tupperware party to moral and political issues (AKA The Personal Is Political). It’s about being nice and conformant in the moment…
We get a lot of this with liberals still sympathetic to the Palis. The (masculine) idea that the Palis had their opportunity to uphold a brokered peace deal, and are now responsible for their actions, is completely swamped by the (feminized) emotional virtue signaling of victimhood politics.
Men should get an additional vote upon marriage.
Paul. True enough about women. When Robert Menzies helped found the Liberal Party here in Australia, a free-enterprize alternative to the Labour party, he made hid first appeals to women, and they voted conservatively. Perhaps all conservative parties should make their policies woman-friendly?
You’re literally saying that you’re fine with a democratic vote, until it goes in a different direction than you wish it to, at which point we should remove the vote from people who are pushing it in a direction you don’t agree with.
I mean, sure. Alright, sunshine. lmao
I’m not the biggest fan of “democracy = freedom” but this is something else, lad.
s/women/men/g
If we give men the vote then politicians will craft policies to capture their vote, too. It stands to reason therefore that no-one should be given a vote. 😉
BenDavid – read my comment again. For decades men in Britain were more Collectivist (more Big Government) in their voting than women.
So women voting for Collectivism is not based on biology – because they did not use to do that.
By the way black people are not biologically left wing either – as late as 1960 there was little difference between how black Americans voted (left and right) and how white Americans voted.
So this, the modern tendency of black Americans to vote for ever Bigger Government, is NOT biology either.
Roue, maybe better framing is
“If [the many] people with little stuff have the vote, then politicians will craft policies to take resources from [the few] people who do have stuff.” Perhaps, being more risk averse (for good reasons), or for some child rearing or other reason, women are preponderant in the little stuff group, but really, it’s about stuff, not gender.
We across the west are approaching the FAFO phase of:
“No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.”
I don’t think we went wrong giving women the vote. We went wrong giving poor people the vote. And now the police are underfunded…
Nicholas Gray – yes in Australia as well, women used to be less Collectivist than men – less-not-more Collectivist in their voting.
No massive genetic mutation has occurred – this is not biology. Something else has happened.
For example, if women really have voted for the “centrist” (read LEFTIST) candidate in the Polish Presidential election, this Mayor of Warsaw follower of the International Community with his utter hatred of Polish independence and Polish culture, then Polish women (if they are the people voting for the left) have changed dramatically.
This is not a biological change – there has been no time for biological evolution, this is a cultural change – a terrible cultural decline.
Although I suspect the removal of leading Polish conservative television stations from the air, may also have something to do with what has happened.
I wonder if pro national independence and traditional culture television stations are allowed in Romania – or whether it has gone down the road of Poland and other countries.
Perhaps, perhaps, women (for whatever reason or reasons) are more inclined to vote for “centrist” candidates – even when the “centrist” candidate (or rather the person the media presents as a centrist candidate) is, in fact, a leftist (NOT a centrist) out to fundamentally undermine the culture, and the independence of the society – as the Mayor of Warsaw is intending to help do, in line with the agenda of the international community.
Only a very bad person could look at what has happened to cities in Britain, France, Germany and-so-on – and want to do that to Polish cities (to the Polish nation – sign its long term Death Warrant), in the name of “Diversity” and “Social Justice” – radical change (indeed radical destruction) is NOT “centrist” – no matter how many times the media, and the education system, says it is. A “centrist” would want to keep things as they are – not destroy traditional society and replace it with a new society that has failed, utterly failed, everywhere else it has been tried.
And the people must in danger from this agenda of radical transformation are women.
Just my conjecture…
In the past, the conservative path was considered the more conformist one… so women voted for that.
But years of Gramscian penetration has changed that – majority of women have been thoroughly indoctrinated, through media, through education, that the liberal viewpoint is the majority one, so they conform accordingly.
It has nothing to do with the inherent virtues of the viewpoint. Although a lot of women are waking up to the idea that the liberal path of uncontrolled immigration, transgender empowerment, and green energy is absolutely insane.