There are idiots in every group, so you have masturbaters, defecaters and all around haters to the left and right and all points in between. Once you have a public assembly there seem to be hangers-on who drift in to enhance the affair with shenanigans of all sorts (not to mention those who would sabotage any movement by posing as lefties or righties and sh*tting around.)

Special thanks go out to all the trolls and people who don’t get “you’re” take.

@Maria: “Peaceniks, Homos, and Potheads Who Wear Ties” is the best name for a band. Yes, but Talking Heads is easier to fit on an album cover.

I was only pointing out that simply because we went without something until 400 years ago says nothing about its necessity here and now. Standing police forces may well be unnecessary in the present day, but the fact that we didn’t have them until Henry Fielding thought them up has nothing to do with it. Anyway, it’s not an important point. I just thought to point out that the comment, to my mind, didn’t really help her argument at all.

I also have a problem with Tim P.’s assertion that the police should be praised since they are ‘showing a lot of restraint’. Hey, awesome. They’re showing restraint by not doing the things they’re not supposed to do at all. You don’t get praised for doing what you’re supposed to do anyway. Just because they do less of that when they’re ‘provoked’ now means that they’re still doing things they shouldn’t do.

They’ll generally do that when they know the press is all around them.

I agree almost entirely with your second point, but the first is a bit more dubious. Human civilization did without a lot until about 400 years ago that we might now call essential – women’s suffrage and ipods come to mind. But that’s hardly an argument against them.

I’m not saying we can do entirely without them any longer; there are too many people on Earth now for that. But if their numbers were reduced considerably and their powers reduced dramatically, society would become more decent, not less. Police don’t make any society more “decent”; they just enforce the will of the potentates codified as “laws”, most of which have little if anything to do with “decency”.

Those are bad things?