[stcredzero]

The key thing to remember is that a police state is not necessarily a source of evil. It's merely a condition that can easily allow evil to happen. If you do not clean your room, it will get messy because the corrective mechanism has been switched off. In a police state, the authorities can do evil things because mechanisms of accountability have been switched off. The authorities can be good or evil, but either way, they will get away with bad things.

This explains how police states can come about incrementally, through numerous incremental changes that erode freedoms and checks and balances.

[hga]

Sorry, but I'm with Lord Acton, "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." You're welcome to point out examples of kind and gentle police states, I'd try Japan first, but I don't think you're going to get very far.

You may have a point in your last sentence, but I don't see how it derives from the previous paragraph.

[lukifer]

The full quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely."

The police and the public both deserve an appropriate level of power; to lack power is to lack agency. Occasionally that power will be abused by either party. But as power becomes unbalanced towards any person or group, corruption becomes nearly guaranteed, whether through malice, indifference, or incompetence.

[hga]

You're right in all counts, and I'm ashamed I forgot the correct version of the quote. Thanks for the correction.

Continuing this line, right now the casualties are so one sided because the public is understandably very reluctant to shoot the police, even when that results in their immediate death. If that changes....

[lukifer]

I've found myself thinking a lot about this recently: the asymmetry of self-defense.

In a civilized society, we outsource our violence to police and other agencies, with mostly net-positive results. If the police are wrong, our self-defense moves instead into the realm of courts and law (setting aside the flaws with those systems).

However, extreme abuses of police power change the equation. While there are obviously reasonable circumstances for a cop to execute you without trial (when you are posing an immediate danger), there are effectively zero circumstances where you are allowed to physically defend yourself against the police.

I'm not necessarily advocating that there should be a circumstance when it's okay to shoot a cop; rather, that there are behavioral and social side effects from that intrinsic asymmetry, which affects the relationship between the necesseties of state violence, the legal system that supports them, and the civilians caught in the middle, innocent or otherwise.

I've also been thinking about it in the context of drones and anti-insurgent warfare. In conventional war, the enemy is dehumanized generally, but no one is demonized for shooting back: it's expected behavior. But in the context of quasi-occupation, civilians have neither legal nor physical recourses for defense. Picking up a weapon automatically marks you as the enemy; your only defense is to do nothing and hope that your drone pilot is accurate and merciful. The typical rhetoric is that terrorists are the worst of the worst because they are willing to kill civilians, which I would agree with; yet wielding a gun against a uniformed soldier or even a drone effectively marks you as a terrorist all the same.

I don't own guns, and never plan to; while I'm not a knee-jerk pacifist, it's very important to me never to take a life, a pledge I would only break in the most extreme of circumstances. But I certainly hold a great deal of empathy for those who feel the need to take personal defense into their own hands, and I believe there is a solid case for seeing self-defense as an inalienable human right.

(At this point, I wonder if the best self-defense at home or abroad might be to capture or stream video 24 hours a day...)

[hga]

"In a civilized society, we outsource our violence to police and other agencies...."

I suspect you'll not be surprised that I strongly disagree. Honest police (I gather most of them, in fact) know they can't be everywhere, e.g. "When seconds count, the police are minutes away." Worse, it's well established in the courts that police have absolutely no duty to protect anyone in particular; the most recent case is particularly stark, on a subway Joseph Lozito subdued a knife wielding assailant taking quite a few injuries while the NYPD officers there cowered and locked themselves away.

Hmmm, have you ever lived in an area where concealed carry is shall issue and self-defense was encouraged by the local authorities? In my home town, which I've retired to, they went so far as to say a woman had an "absolute right" to use lethal force against some home invaders, and the staff of the required concealed carry class I and my father took were all active duty police officers who were entirely supportive of citizen self-defense.

I wonder if your take on drone warfare is a bit off. Haven't followed Afghanistan that closely, but I know during our occupation of Iraq we allowed people to retain an AK-47 for self-defense, "picking up a weapon" was not an automatic mark of an enemy. Context mattered, and I strongly expect does in Afghanistan. Pick up a weapon and move towards an allied unit, likely enemy. Outside of that context, isn't so clear, especially in such an well armed society.

And you at least in part recognize that, "wielding a gun against a uniformed soldier or even a drone effectively marks you as a terrorist", although I'd substitute enemy for "terrorist", and enemy is quite enough to allow for a violent response.

[lukifer]

> have you ever lived in an area where concealed carry is shall issue and self-defense was encouraged by the local authorities?

I have not, I have talked to several Texans for whom this is the case, given that police help was 45 minutes away. It enriched my perspective on gun culture quite a bit.

> I wonder if your take on drone warfare is a bit off.

Yeah, I'll admit that I'm not exactly extrapolating from intimate knowledge of details. And you're right that "enemy combatant" is the term generally used. I do still think that is an imbalance in that is effectively impossible for us to see those combatants as legitimate in the same way as the social construct of "soldier", because they fight for a sect or tribe rather than a nation-state. But then, past wars have often involved pre-emptively describing the enemy as sub-human, so perhaps it's just more of the same, if not a slight improvement.

I'd be very curious to learn if there has been any attempt to "sharp-shoot" or otherwise physically defend against drones. Or do they simply strike from too far away for this to be feasible?

Also, I'd wager ten-to-one that in the next decade, we'll see a Supreme Court ruling on whether personal defense drones are covered by the 2nd amendment.

[hga]

Additional thought, promoted by Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds (http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/017469/): "The secret of social harmony is simple: Old men must be dangerous."

[BrandonMarc]

I believe the point was that a police state may not seem inherently evil as it gradually comes about, which is why it's so easy for it to happen without anyone noticing.

Therefore, the overall larger point is: the populace has an even greater need for vigilance and paying attention, and to do everything they can to keep the powers-that-be in check while they can.

[stcredzero]

> You're welcome to point out examples of kind and gentle police states

Again, we have people making assumptions and coming out with stupid readings. Where do I say that there are kind and gentle police states?

The likelihood of a kind and gentle police state is the same as the likelihood of someone's house staying neat if they never clean, or a machine never breaking down even if preventive maintenance is neglected. Entropy is not on your side.

> You may have a point in your last sentence, but I don't see how it derives from the previous paragraph.

There are a lot of people who think of themselves as "clever" but who don't create little trees or clouds of implications and converse on this basis. You are currently operating on one meta-level too low for this conversation.