No Good Relations Between Wolves and Sheep
By Mark Luedtke
Most Americans don’t yet realize that the state is a predatory institution and the police are its fangs. But many blacks do. It begins with taxes. Taxes are the modern version of tribute conquerors have always demanded from the conquered. They are not voluntary. They are collected under threat of violence backed by violence. But taxes are just the start. Once the people surrender to having their money systematically stolen by government agents, that opens the door to unlimited violence against them.
People tend to think of laws as something to respect, but in fact nearly every law passed in the last two hundred years legalized criminal behavior by government agents. If a band of armed men surrounded your house and demanded you pay them 10 percent of your income or they would storm into your house, assault you and your family members, kill your dog, take their 10 percent and more, then kidnap you and lock you away in a cage, you would rightly recognize them as the barbaric brigands they were.
But our rulers use legislation to legalize that crime and untold others as long as those crimes are carried out by government agents. The police are the instruments of violence the state uses to back up its threats. Police are to government what enforcers are to the mafia. Since most Americans routinely acquiesce to government threats of violence, they never suffer violence from its enforcers.
I know most of you are thinking that police protect you from crime, and there’s some truth to that, just like mafia enforcers protect people who pay protection money. But government’s protection racket is no more legitimate than the mafia’s protection racket. What protection money primarily buys in both cases is protection from the enforcers. Democracy has arguably been the greatest enabler of predatory behavior in history. It has fooled the sheep into thinking the wolves work for them because every couple of years the wolves grant them a token say in determining which wolves lead the pack of predators.
While most Americans never suffer the bite of the police, the same isn’t true for low income urban blacks. Because they’re a disadvantaged minority, they’re easy prey for society’s apex predator. Several laws of aggression enable government predators to feast on them. The government schools they attend make it difficult for them to get a quality education, hindering their employability. Minimum wage laws further restrict under-qualified young blacks from getting jobs other than in the military. As a result, the unemployment rate for black teens is around 50 percent, significantly higher than whites or Hispanics.
Add in the war on drugs, and these young black men hardly stand a chance. Because of predatory policies, one of the few ways they can make a living is by selling drugs. That makes them easy victims for the police. Because the war on drugs legalized theft of property by government agents, all the police have to do is stop and search any group of young black men at night, steal any drugs or plant them trusting that judges always rubber stamp their claims, then prosecute them in front of a white jury. If they do this enough, they get a promotion. The war on drugs has thoroughly corrupted our justice system.
According to Time magazine, “Black youth are arrested for drug crimes at a rate ten times higher than that of whites. But new research shows that young African Americans are actually less likely to use drugs and less likely to develop substance use disorders, compared to whites, Native Americans, Hispanics and people of mixed race.” Government has transformed what should be peaceful transactions between adults — like buying alcohol — into a machine for preying on, locking up and destroying the lives of young black men.
Since blacks have been violently preyed upon by government agents in America for centuries, it was natural that black community leaders were skeptical when police told them about Kylen English’s suicide while in police custody. The story of English busting out of a police cruiser window using his head while handcuffed, then jumping off the Salem Street bridge is enough to make anybody skeptical. But video and audio of the events confirm the story. In addition, the police had nothing to gain from harming English.
After nearly a year, both sides reached an impasse. The police have nothing to apologize for in this case. Black community leaders have no reason to apologize for their skepticism. Both sides were looking for a way to gracefully disengage while allowing each other to save face. So police, community and business leaders signed a declaration of intent to work together to improve their relations.
But wolves and sheep can never have good relations. As long as government has the power of coercion and a monopoly on force, police will continue to prey on blacks because it pays. If government agents really wanted to improve relations and greatly reduce crime, a great first step would be to end their illegitimate war on drugs just like they ended Prohibition, but that’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
Mark Luedtke is an electrical engineer with a degree from the University of Cincinnati and currently works for a Dayton attorney. He can be reached at MarkLuedtke@DaytonCityPaper.com.