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Date Posted: 14:57:18 02/03/03 Mon
Author: mark van dyk
Subject: No police means anarchy?

I feel as if I have brought this up before, but once again someone as equated a lack of police with Anarchy. I find this position to be interesting, firstly because Anarchy simply means no government. Anarchy is based upon a simple idea that people can govern themselves. Indeed, it might be said that Democracy is a compromised, watered-down, form of Anarchy.

The second thing that makes this interesting is that this viewpoint intimates that having police is synonymous with harmony and not having them is synonymous with disharmony. This is quite simply wrong thinking. Having more police on the street hints at only one thing. An increase of fear and crime that has inspired a society to hire more cops. Meaning: Disharmony.

The majority of people in this society abstain from committing crimes not from some fear of repurcussion, but simply because they have had this moral code instilled into them as children. I would not steal from a friend because I would feel bad about doing so. Most people act in a like manner. Men do not kill and rape because, for the most part, they abhor such actions. Such men do not need others to police their actions and never will. Certainly we can expect that there are men in our society that do not have these moral codes well instilled. These are the men who likely commit crimes. Yet, do police prevent them? Will these men become chaotic, rampant menaces to society if we remove police from the streets?

I think the answer is that if we were to remove police instantly from our society then certain elements among us would take advantage. Yet, certain other elements would punish these people. After a short time of unrest and chaos, order would be restored. The natural state of a society is one of relative order, not constant chaos because of the lack of police.

We must remember that seeing more police on the street is a symptom of a much deeper disease, and that is the disease of "lack of moral education". We must see that putting more cops on the beat points to a failure of our own culture to provide men with the tools necessary to function lawfully and in a civilized manner.

To say that, "The criminal should have known better," is really to miss the point. The fact of the matter is that he did not know better or he would not have committed the crime. His moral education was lacking.

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