Looking for Trouble
Today while I was driving one of the guys I work with to his day program, I was stopped at a light and had a chance to take a long look at a police officer in a Sherrif’s car. This is of course not exceptional.
Today, however, it occurred to me that what he was doing was really quite odd if one is actually interested in producing a better society. Police patrols reinforce in citizens a belief that they cannot take care of themselves and each other without the ever-present threat of deadly force.
Many thinkers follow Carl Schmitt in asserting that classically liberal societies are founded on the instance of the exception. If this is true then police patrols are a way of making the founding exception ever-present. The dreaded (yet hoped-for) confrontation in which we will have to band together once again to destroy the indian/black person/communist/terrorist is always potentially a moment away.
I have recently begun thinking about what a good society would look like (instead of just complaining about this one). For me it is important to envision what my town would look like if it were a good town, it keeps my vision grounded. There is certainly room for police officers in this vision. These officers would respond to calls from concerned people or people that needed help (I’m guessing that the vast majority of the time police officers are helpful is when their presence has been requested).
That the modern liberal state’s patrolling gunmen are actually unnecessary, whether they are in my neighborhood or an Iraqi neighborhood, is really a testament to the fact that the modern liberal state is unnecessary. Or, perhaps more accurately, the necessity of these gunmen is self-necessitating insofar as the presence of gunmen (and gunwomen) always raises the stake and makes more probable the deadly violence they are supposedly holding at bay.
