Ghost of a flea: SS-PA

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November 10, 2008

SS-PA

An important message for my American cousins, particularly to conservatives who - generally speaking - think of themselves as law abiding citizens.

The police are not always your friends.

The important lesson to take away from the linked video is not that freedom of speech will be curtailed in Obama's America (though it most certainly will be) but that it is not the job of the police to protect your civil liberties. It is the job of the police first and foremost to maintain public order; in this case by forestalling a riot and/or a lynching.

This is on balance a far more disturbing situation than at first meets the eye. The police do not represent a danger to liberty because a man is arrested for wearing a McCain/Palin T-shirt, the police represent a danger because a man is arrested for incitement to riot. Watch the video and consider what possible course of action those officers could have taken when confronted with a scene straight out of an H. Rider Haggard nightmare. Short of calling in the National Guard and letting the city burn (both viable options if you ask me but I am not police) the only sane action is the one they took.

The problem, therefore, is twofold. First, if all Obama's stormtroopers need to do to crush dissent is threaten civil disorder then they shall do so again and again. That way lies Weimar Germany. Second, the police really do have to maintain order and to follow the orders they are given. This is the dilemma faced by police forces in any conquered country; abandon your post and defer to the forces of anarchy or keep at your job and become de facto agents of the occupying power. Given the former course presents dangers to their livelihoods, their families and their dispositions, most police will - however reluctantly - choose the second course and enable, however reluctantly, the occupation.

An excellent primer for the coming years is Len Deighton's SS-GB. In this novel it is November 1941 and in Deighton's alternate history Britain has fallen to the enemy. In the real world, it is all too easy to imagine Lord Halifax or the like reaching an accommodation with the Nazis and consequently to imagine Britain's defeat from within, this especially in light of November 2008 (as Osama bin Laden argued, the jihadis could only wound America, only the American left could defeat America).

Churchill anticipated the problem presented by the police in the event of a German occupation and prepared terrible measures for this terrible contingency. In the event of a German occupation, Home Guard commanders who found themselves behind the lines were to open sealed orders. At the top of the list: shoot dead the local chief of police. It had to be done. The police knew too much about the locals and had to be prevented - at any cost - from assisting the Germans.

By the grace of God it never came to that. By the grace of God it never will.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 10, 2008 05:53 AM

Comments

Now this is just creepy. I read that book over 20 years ago, and didn't think much of it at the time. For some reason, I thought of it two days ago whilst raking leaves. Now you write about it on your blogsite (sorry, couldn't resist).

I must be coming here too often. You're turning me into a flea-brain.

Posted by: Clayton Barnett at November 10, 2008 08:27 AM

That does sound like a cause for concern... :-)

Posted by: Ghost of a flea at November 10, 2008 03:51 PM