Comments Elsewhere

I stated six points on which I think that my views, and the views of many other libertarians, differ from those who are likely to call themselves “law and order types.” The comments from a single Freeper which you quoted above touch on at most one of those points (#6, if that is what he means by “I object to the double standard of justice,” which is by no means clear). So, again, I do not see what this has to do with my objections to the way you have drawn the categories.

If you intend your categories to lump together (A) people who believe in breaking the vast majority of existing laws, who believe that cops should refuse orders to enforce the vast majority of existing laws, who believe that in many cases law-breakers should feel free to evade or forcibly resist cops’ efforts to enforce the law when and if it’s prudent to do so, etc., with (B) those who believe that people should generally follow laws even if those laws are unjust, that cops should generally enforce the laws even if those laws are unjust, and that people have a duty to submit to cops even when the laws are unjust, then I submit that your categorization is bogus. I further submit that your categorization does not accurately reflect what Randall meant when he said that most conservatives are “law and order types.” I further submit that the way that most conservative “law and order types” actually think. If you think your quotation does something to dislodge this claim then you need to make clearer how it does so.

If you don’t intend your categories to lump these two together, but only to include group (B) and not group (A), then I submit that your attempt to delineate categories is not bogus, but also is not responsive to Randall’s claims about conservatives or “law and order types.” He claimed (1) that “many” conservatives make excuses for, or attempt to minimize worry over, police brutality — which is an true empirical generalization not overturned by pointing out a single counterexample on the Internet — and (2) that most conservatives are “law and order types” in some sense that should be objectionable to libertarians as such — which is not disproved by pointing out the distinction between those who commit certain errors, and those who commit those same errors while also being raving sociopaths.

Incidentally, it would help discussion if you’d actually respond to the dilemma presented. What do you mean by “genuine law and order types”? Do you mean it in the first sense, which I characterize as uselessly broad, or the second sense, which I characterize as non-responsive to Randall’s claim? Until you actually make it more clear what you mean when you say “genuine law and order types,” it remains rather mysterious what you mean when you try to argue that being a “law and order type” isn’t something objectionable.