Cops Should Defend Civil Liberties For Themselves And The Citizenry

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – There is no doubt that there is an ongoing usurpation of civil liberties.  I think that second to natural rights, as Brad Birzer talked about two weeks ago on this show, civil liberties are of primary concern.  If you do not have civil liberties, then you cannot live in a free society.  I’m sorry, you can’t if you do not have civil liberties and if you do not have people who are willing to recognize and protect and defend civil liberties.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Big discussion here today on just how far we as citizens of these United States and of the several states, each with its own constitution, are willing to allow the emerging bellicosity of certain police departments to go.  Folks, this is a valid question.  This is not “pick on cops” day.  We must be doing a pretty decent job of that because I haven’t gotten any hate mail from police officers.  Every time this comes up, I usually get hate mail, [mocking] “You and your little civil liberties and you civil libertarians, you just wait until you need one of us to protect you, buddy.  You just wait and see.  You’re trying to get all the citizens to hate us.”

This is part of the problem here that we have in communicating in 2013.  We have difficulty talking to one another anymore.  We’re great at email.  We’ve got that down.  We’re great at texting.  We’ve got that down.  We’re great at tweeting and Facebooking.  We’ve got that down.  Oration, oratory, hmm.  I don’t actually want to have to talk to anyone about it.  Why don’t you want to have to talk to anyone about it?  Why talk when I can just send him a text?  Try sending a text when you’re Roy Middleton, 60, and you’re in your Lincoln Town Car, in your own car, parked in your own driveway, retrieving a cigarette.  “Don’t shoot, officer, I own the car,” send.  Who do you send that to, 911?

It is a valid question.  There is no doubt that there is an ongoing usurpation of civil liberties.  I think that second to natural rights, as Brad Birzer talked about two weeks ago on this show, civil liberties are of primary concern.  If you do not have civil liberties, then you cannot live in a free society.  I’m sorry, you can’t if you do not have civil liberties and if you do not have people who are willing to recognize and protect and defend civil liberties.  At the end of the day, if you live in a civilization that practices self-government, that means that you are governing yourself.  That means that you pass the laws.  The cops don’t get to pass the laws.  The sheriff doesn’t get to pass the laws.  The legislature does, whether it’s the city council or state legislature or the police jury or the county council or the alderman or whatever the case may be.  If you live in a civilization or a republican enclave, the purpose of self-government is to have direct access to the law….

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Cicero said, “Freedom is participation in power.”  If you’re not participating in power and if someone else gets to write all the laws and you don’t have any recourse, then you don’t live in a society or in an area where you’re practicing self-government.  That’s a problem.  I thought that all Americans wanted to practice and desired to practice self-government.  It sounds good in theory, but not many people actually want to get in the nitty-gritty of actually doing and practicing self-government because it requires a very rapt and attentive citizenry.  You have to be involved.  You have to be engaged.  You have to be knowledgeable.  You have to be willing to sacrifice your time, although it’s not really a sacrifice.  You have to be willing to attend meetings.  You have to be willing to keep up on local events.  In other words, you have to be a [r]epublican.  You have to be active in your community.  This requires time, time that you’re going to have to take away from watching that television show or that series of television shows on Netflix tonight, or whatever the other distractions may be.  It shouldn’t be a distraction.  This is civic duty.

Back to the point, if the police are claiming they are simply exercising and executing the laws by these incidents where they’re shooting people or threatening to shoot people in their own homes, then we need to change the damn laws.  If you’re claiming you’re totally within the law, fine, then I’m going to change the law and I’m going to make you outside the law then.  If you’re a police officer, when you’re off duty, you value your civil liberties, do you not?  I think we’re all in this.  This is High School Musical [singing] “We’re all in this together.”  AG, if you use that for a promo, I will come to DC and personally handle you.

AG:  All right, I won’t.

Mike:  If you use me singing High School Musical as a promo, I will be at your high-rise penthouse in Maryland one night. [mocking] “Who’s there?” — “Andrew, it’s Mike, open up.”  I’m kidding about that.  But it’s a serious conversation that I believe is productive.  I don’t mean it to be nonproductive.  I don’t mean it to be just a bitch session like we seem to have ample supply of.  These are valid concerns that I think all of us ought to have.  Anyway, that’s just a little bit of a recap from last hour.  The story is Florida deputies fired 15 shots at this gentleman, Roy Middleton, who was in his driveway that was attached to his home and his car was in his driveway, on his property, when he was shot because sheriff’s deputies thought he was attempting to steal his own car.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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