Constant: My description was adequate to my own purpose, which was to explain what it was about Randall’s statement that made it slippery. If you take “law and order type” one way, then you can conclude that a law and order type would tend to side with the school guard. But at the same time, the membership of the “law and order type” would be very, very small. If you took “law and order type” another way, then the membership would be quite a bit larger, but then you could not conclude that a law and order type would tend to side with the school guard.

Yes, and I gave some specific reasons why this “another way” in which “law and order type” might be understood failed to do the argumentative work that you would like it to do. These reasons specifically had to do with its being underspecified in such a way that it either (a) misrepresented what self-described “law and order types” mean by the phrase “law and order type,” by redefining the term so as to lump in many people with diametrically opposed views; or else (b) failed to demonstrate any equivocation by Randall and failed to give any reasons to doubt Randall’s conclusions as stated by him.

You are, of course, free to engage with or not to engage with any given criticism of your argument. However, it seems to me that if you want to introduce a distinction for the purpose of analysis and criticism, then it is your responsibility to actually make sure that the terms you distinguish are at least precise enough to do the work you want them to do. Since you have resolutely evaded rather than engaged with a set of reasons given to think that you have failed to do this, even when directly asked to clarify the intended meaning of terms that you set out to introduce, it severely undermines your attempt to use this delineation in order to make any kind of point against Randall.

Incidentally, I can find no textual support for your claim here that Randall would “conclude that a law and order type would tend to side with the school guard.” What he said is that “many conservatives” (apparently because they are “law and order types,” as he, not you, understands that term) “might not want to break a poor black kid’s wrist themselves but who can look the other way if it happens once in a while,” “wish we would stop making a fuss,” and express an attitude that “gets you the Gestapo.” Lots of people, including self-identified “law and order types,” may wring their hands about obvious abuses of police power. But if they still support the attitudes and practices that make those abuses well-nigh inevitable, then so what?

Constant: That’s absurd. I’ve already explained why and you did not address my explanation, merely denied it.

A bald claim that so-and-so’s statements “imply” some comparative claim, different from the claim that he or she actually stated, is not the same thing as an “explanation” of how they imply it. You provided only the former, not the latter. Until you actually present a case for this position, I’m under no obligation to refute one.

One way that you could test whether such a comparison is indeed implied is by bringing up the comparative case and asking about it. As, for example, you did, when you mentioned the role that liberals have played in the history of public schooling. Since Randall then promptly agreed with your statement about liberals, it seems to me that it is uncharitable, if not simply dense, of you to go on imputing a comparative claim to him when he did not explicitly make that claim in the first place, and since he agreed with you when you presented a contrary comparative claim.

Constant: That’s also absurd. There is an obvious distinction between an argument that has some merit as a prima facie case which deserves a response, and a statement that is merely provocative.

Yes, and you have manifested in your actions that you consider Randall’s remarks to be the former, not the latter, since you responded to them. Turning around now to huff and puff about how the remarks that you responded to don’t really merit a response is just rhetorical bluster.

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.

Constant: Randall singled out conservatives. That implies a comparison.

No, it doesn’t. You may have imputed that comparative claim to him, but he didn’t make it and I think your imputation goes beyond anything he actually implied.

Nor did he “single out conservatives” in the first place. He (1) made a statement about conservatives which had nothing to do with the category of “law and order types”, to which (2) you replied with a remark about liberals, with which (3) Randall agreed, and to which he added a further observation that most conservatives where what he called “law and order types.” At this point, (5) you replied with some remarks about “genuine law and order types” as against “cop worshipers,” at which point (6) I objected to your discussion of “genuine law and order types” as non-responsive to Randall’s point.

The only comparative statements that were at issue in this exchange were the ones that you made, in which you suggested that modern liberals were more to blame for the historical development of public education than conservatives were. A statement with which Randall agreed. And which had nothing to do with the latter discussion of “law and order types.”

Constant: Frankly such tripe doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a response.

Don’t be disingenuous. If you didn’t think it deserved a response then you would hardly be spending your time responding to it.

Constant,

1. I don’t believe in a “the ideal law of a perfect libertarian minarchy.” I regard that as an internally contradictory description.

2. I don’t know what the comparative virtues or vices of modern liberals and American conservatives have to do with anything in Randall’s remarks, or your response, or my complaint about your response.

Randall didn’t make a comparative claim; he stated that most conservatives are “law and order types” in some objectionable sense. You then complained that “law and order types” “covers too much,” “is too vague,” “has been made flabby,” and covers “a great majority” of American conservatives, but not for any reason that libertarians should find objectionable.

I think that the category you made up to respond to Randall, “genuine law and order types” (as opposed to “cop worshipers”) either (a) is still limited to a set of views that libertarians, as such, ought to find objectionable (and which, by the way, are immediately relevant to the case discussed in the article above); or else (b) has nothing in particular to do with what either Randall meant by identifying most American conservatives as “law and order types,” or what American conservatives usually mean when they identify themselves as “law and order types.” In either case it’s not an adequate response to Randall’s comments.

Constant: “Law and order type” covers too much and is too vague. If we take the ideas embedded in the words absolutely seriously, then I am a law and order type and so are you. Are you for indiscriminate mass murder? Are you for rampant burglary? No? You’re actually against murder? Really??? Against murder??? Then you are a law and order type.

Suppose I, like you, am willing to take a stand against murder and burglary, but I also believe the following propositions:

1. The overwhelming majority of existing laws are unjust (e.g. drug laws, tax laws, immigration laws, sex laws, etc.).
2. Each and every one of us has an unconditional right to break those laws that are unjust
3. Each and every police officer has a perfect duty to refuse to enforce those laws that are unjust
4. The prima facie right to enforce just laws is conditional on the level of force used not exceeding limits imposed by a principle of proportionality.
5. Each and every one of us has a prima facie right to evade or forcibly resist any police efforts to enforce an unjust law, or to enforce even a just law with disproportionate force, using any level of force up to the limits imposed by a principle of proportionality. In any case where one is at risk of imprisonment, these limits are very high.
6. A person’s status as a police officer does not affect considerations of proportionality: morally, they are due no special deference and they enjoy no special prerogatives in the use of force.

Would this make me a “genuine law and order type” under your definition? If so, I think your definition has nothing in particular to do with what the overwhelming majority of people actually mean when they identify themselves as “law and order types,” even when those people are not specifically what you call “cop worshipers.” I would suggest that pretty much any self-identified conservative “law and order type” (i.e. the folks Randall was referring to) would deny at least propositions 2, 3, 5, and 6, and probably also 1. And their reasons for denying 2, 3, 5, and 6 would be precisely that they are for “law and order,” not for breaking laws, refusing orders, and resisting cops. Indeed, an alarming number of libertarians (especially minarchists, but even sometimes well-behaved anarchists, such as Randy Barnett) would be willing to deny at least some of 2, 3, 5, and 6, even though they clearly agree with me on 1.

Of course, “law” and “order” are both contested concepts. There is a (Spoonerite) sense of “law” and a (Proudhonian) sense of “order” in which I’d argue that justice and freedom not only are consistent with, but indeed both require and are required by, something that you could call “law and order.” But the question is what purpose this kind of linguistic revision would serve, in context. It’s certainly not what most self-identified “law and order types” mean by “law” or “order” or “law and order.” What they mean is that they believe in certain fetishized practices with respect to law and order, and probably that they believe in adhering to those fetishized practices even at the cost of doing injustice or violating freedom. And if that’s what “law and order” effectively means in most people’s mouths, then “law and order” can go to hell. I would rather identify myself according to the values that I actually hold to be unconditional and fundamental, e.g. freedom, justice, self-ownership, individual rights, etc.

The first seven incidents I linked to were reported in the last month alone. That may tell you something about frequency. They were not systematically sought out by me; they are merely the cases that I happened to be aware of just off the top of my head. If you would care to do a bit of your own research, you could find many more.

For example, we have yet another isolated incident, in Waite Park, Minnesota.

And another isolated incident in Golden Valley, Minnesota.

And yet another isolated incident, in Pennsylvania.

Here’s another isolated incident in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Memphis, Tennessee.

Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Atlanta, GA.

Hattiesburg, MS.

Baltimore, MD.

San Jose, CA.

Providence, RI.

Puerto Rico.

Paterson, NJ.

Buffalo, NY.

Mount Kisko, NY and New York City, NY.

Chicago, IL.

Chicago, IL. Again.

And yet another isolated incident, in Chicago. Along the way, this story notes:

Between 2002 and 2004, for example, more than 10,000 complaints — many of them involving brutality and assault — were filed against Chicago police officers.

Here’s several more cases, and several recorded on video, if you like.

Now, neither Randall nor I made any claim about whether violence by police (or by government-hired rent-a-cops, as in the Palmdale case) is “epidemic.” He said only that it was systemic, and I implied that these cases are not appropriately described as “isolated incidents.” (Which comes to the same thing.) Something may be systemic without being “epidemic,” since the latter has to do with how often something happens, whereas the former has to do with what caused it, when it did happen. But the fact that every one of these articles came out just in the last month, and every one of them I found with a causal search on Google News, may, again, tell you something about how frequent this sort of thing is.

Finally, as for the “good cops” out there, if I’ve hurt their fee-fees by saying something unfair or unbalanced, well, I for one am sorry. But comparing hurt fee-fees to lynch mobs and race riots strikes me as a bit hyperbolic.

And conflating a harsh attitude towards those who have chosen to take on a particular State-privileged profession, even if that attitude is somehow unfair, with bigotry against a race of people, also strikes me as a bit confused.

It sure seems as though there are a lot of these “isolated incidents” going around lately….