Who's Right About Cops—Conservatives or Libertarians?

It depends on the kind of government you have…

No generalization applies to everyone, but taken in the aggregate, this is how things break down:

• Libertarians look at police as enforcers empowered by the state, and since they think the state should not exist, or should be drastically smaller than it is, they tend reflexively to be wary of police.

• Conservatives tend to believe, as the Founders and classical-liberal philosophers believed, that a limited government is better than no government at all—specifically for reasons of law and order. Consequently, conservatives tend reflexively to “back the blue.”

Rank-and-file leftists, for their part, have convinced themselves that the ideology to which they adhere champions the oppressed against their oppressors, and tend reflexively to see police as a part of an oppressive system.

However, the ideology to which they adhere is actually about power, control, and taking people’s stuff, and as soon as that ideology takes control of, and thus becomes, the system, the police become their enforcers. At that point, rank-and-file lefties tend to support the police as agents of what suddenly, magically has become “the collective good.” And for the smaller percentage of them who come to realize their earlier folly, it is, at that point, too late.

Leftism is a warped, incoherent, hypocritical ideology that ought to be taken seriously only in terms of the threat it poses to human freedom, rights, prosperity, and happiness. Thus, for the purposes of this exercise, we can focus on the more coherent positions of conservatives and libertarians.

We can proceed by considering various conditions of society:

Let us first imagine a country with an extremely limited government. This government is not trying to do too much: its purpose is to keep the peace and otherwise let you go about your business. Its laws are fairly just and applied with equanimity.

In such a circumstance, the conservative view is entirely reasonable. Yes, there will be some bad police, just as there are bad people in every human endeavor. There will be some who become cops not to protect and serve, but because they crave authority. That too is inevitable, but arguably manageable within the context of the society we are considering.

A society that focuses on protecting the innocent will tend to attract a greater percentage of people who truly do want to serve that function faithfully. Such a society is empowering protectors, and while no human system can operate perfectly, its will present a set of incentives that is more likely to draw out the best in people.

The incentives become more perverse, however, as government grows beyond this limited condition.

Let us thus imagine a government that has begun enforcing edicts that go beyond the protection of individual rights—indeed, ones that actually violate individual rights. Imagine a government that has been captured by adherents to one ideological viewpoint, who seek to impose that viewpoint upon everyone. Imagine that private institutions have largely been captured by that same viewpoint (or whose leadership are afraid to stand against it). What do the police become in such a society?

We don’t really need to imagine it, since much of the world is now living through exactly that (albeit to varying degrees).

Sure enough, we have seen cops in countries across the globe go from serving as protectors to acting as enforcers. In New Zealand and Australia. In Ottawa and in New York City. Yes, the Russians are arresting people for things they say in social media, but so are the Brits—and possibly even in greater numbers. There are now signs on trains in the UK warning people that saying the wrong thing in public may be punishable by law. Laws are enforced by police.

Unfortunately, when laws become unjust, most police will continue to enforce them. There are numerous incentives pushing them in that direction, and very few pushing them in the other:

The first incentive is financial. Being a police officer is a man’s or woman’s livelihood. They have bills to pay and kids about to go to college. Are they to give all that up just to listen to the little voice of conscience in the back of their head telling them that maybe something is wrong with the law they are being told to enforce?

The next, closely related issue is philosophical. Can they even be sure, in this complicated world, that that little voice is correct? Is it perhaps better to just let the “experts” and politicians work all that out? In the face of the loss of one’s livelihood, the little voice certainly becomes easier to ignore.

And of course, this loss of livelihood isn’t just the loss of a job in the present. It’s the loss of a job that involved years of training and dedication in the past and a pension that is supposed to provide sustenance later in life, in reward for all that hard work and risk. That’s not an easy thing to give up.

And where exactly should any line be drawn? If a society is declining into genuine oppression, at what exact point does each individual cop’s voice of conscience get loud enough that it can no longer be drowned out by all the other incentives? When is the exact right moment, on that slippery slope, when they dig in their heels? How can one answer such a question with surety?

That question, in turn, cannot be answered in a vacuum, because police also feel a strong sense of loyalty.

They are loyal to their fellow officers. Do they just walk out and abandon them because they are having difficulty with some aspects of their job? After all, many of the laws that they are enforcing are good and still do protect the innocent. Do they leave their fellows just because of a small number of laws with which they “personally disagree”? Do they risk ostracism for speaking out, in a job in which they depend on their band of brothers for their very lives?

They are loyal to the oath they took, and that oath matters to them. They are loyal to the vision they had when they joined—of a community in need of protection from the bad apples among us. Do they just throw all that away?

They are also trained to respect the hierarchy. They are part of a hierarchical command structure—trained to follow orders. Disobeying orders is not something they do lightly.

And finally, of course, there are some cops who are actually in agreement with the direction such a nation has taken, and are eager to enforce all of its edicts. Their voices can be raised louder and without fear, making it even more difficult for others to buck the trend.

You are wondering why police are dragging mothers away while their babies scream, just for the “crime” of not wearing a mask? Why mounted officers are trampling protesters with an entirely legitimate set of grievances against the government—the same government that has given those officers license to trample them? The incentives and difficult questions working against any police officer actually taking a stand of conscience are simply enormous!

(These same incentives and questions apply to the military, which is one reason why I was saddened, but not surprised, when military personnel demanded that my family submit travel papers when we stepped off an airplane in 2020. It’s going to take overwhelming evidence, and some very courageous officers, to both break through the mainstream narrative and defy those enforcing it.)

Some will take such a stand, of course, but it’s rarely the majority. (Fortunately, as history has shown, all that is required is for a minority to grow large enough to cause a tipping point.)

Local police are also more likely to do the right thing than larger or centralized forces (which is surely why, in the United States, we are seeing increased arming and empowerment of federal agencies).

County sheriffs, especially in rural counties, have also become a real bright spot in the United States—offering a beacon of hope to the residents of their counties that if the central government becomes too oppressive, the sheriff’s department will serve as protectors against that tyranny rather than enforcers of it.

The situation, in other words, is not all grim.

The bottom line seems to be that neither conservatives nor libertarians are exactly correct. The more oppressive a state becomes, the more correct libertarians become, but even then, there are exceptions, and the context always matters. The line between protectors and enforcers is as difficult to draw cleanly as it is to find the precise point at which a society officially becomes “tyrannical.”

All the more reason why we want to fight against tyrannical government in all its degrees and manifestations.

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