Demilitarization of the Police Requires Demilitarization of Civilians

The recent clashes between demonstrators and police forces in Ferguson, Missouri over the death of Michael Brown at the hands of police forces has many calling into question the slow, steady rate at which police forces in the United States have become militarized. If we want to stop and potentially reverse this trend, we need to understand its underlying cause–the simultaneous militarization of the civilian population.

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Religion and Children

Generally speaking, I’m a proponent of freedom of religion, even in cases in which the religious beliefs in question are rather extreme. I do not think the state should go about preventing people from being Amish, even though by being Amish those individuals reduce our collective economic efficiency. Being Amish is no more debilitating to our economy than many other behaviors adults routinely engage in legally, and a good deal less than some–the Amish do contribute to society, albeit in economically less efficient ways. Some individuals (typically both the very poor and the very rich) lead wholly unproductive lives. However, I’m not so sure I can take this permissive attitude in certain cases involving children.

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Search and Seizure

In the United States, we often get very upset about violations of privacy on the basis that they are thought to violate the 4th amendment, which protects against “unreasonable searches and seizures”. But what is it about search and seizure that is objectionable in the first place, and to what extent do the modern privacy violations we often argue about conform to that?

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Police Prejudice

I ran across an interesting old Supreme Court decision today from the mid-2000’s. It was a 7-2 decision and if I remember it didn’t get much play at the time in the press–though that was eight years ago, and I may just be forgetful. The court ruled that the police do not have a legal duty to protect any given citizen. The decision justifies a whole slew of first principle injustices–it was wrong, and we are worse off for it. Here’s how.

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Aaron Swartz and Copyright Law

Recently, Aaron Swartz, a talented programmer involved in the creation RSS feeds and Reddit, committed suicide. Apparently this was in response to his being hounded by a federal prosecutor for the crime of violating copyright protections and sharing a large cache of academic articles access to which was controlled by JSTOR, an online academic library club of sorts. In the aftermath of the Swartz suicide, activists are demanding a significant curtailment of copyright law. Is this a reasonable policy? That’s my question for today.