A Warning to the Innocent Black Man: Beware Blowback's Blowback

By Victor J. Ward

EPJ published an article that was spot-on:

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/12/domestic-blowback-two-nypd-coppers-down.html?m=1


The death of the two officers has caused me sadness for two reasons. First, although I have serious disagreement with the state and its actors and actions, I feel for the two officers that were killed and their families.

I need to constantly remind myself that many of the state actors are simply ignorant -- just as I was until a few short years ago. I did not appreciate Libertarianism for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that I had never heard of it as a political philosophy.

Most police officers don't understand the non-aggression principle. Most police officers have bought the lie that they exist to protect and serve. Most police officers believe that drug possession and drug use and drug sale are malum in se, not malum prohibitum.

As someone once said, "If a person is sincerely wrong, when confronted with the truth, they will either stop being wrong, or they will stop being sincere."

These police officers were sincerely wrong. Most people are sincerely wrong about liberty and freedom and Libertarianism. I have to remind myself to be more "gentle" as I try to help those I most affectionately refer to as "soft-headed."

The reason that I find it difficult to be patient and gentle is that when I do confront the "sincerely wrong" with the truth, I have found that they choose the path of insincerity rather than the path of truth. But, I must still practice patience and gentleness, for, out there somewhere, are people who really want to know the truth and will respond to it.

The other reason that the police officers' deaths sadden me is that it will lead to the death of more innocent people.

Police officers are usually called when violence is afoot or has just occurred. (The very reason that the Eric Garner situation was a tragedy was because the officers were (initially) present, but violence was not. Moreover, it was the police that introduced the violence.)

Therefore, police officers approach most situations thinking that they may need to use one of their many weapons. Said another way, the police have an itchy-trigger finger. This is because they are scared. I would be, too.

Now, unfortunately, the police are going to look at every person that approaches them as someone who may kill them. They are going to recognize that the person most likely to shoot them is someone from the Land of Urban Primitivism, because it is the urban primitives that are most likely to engage in Blowback.

The police officers, in an attempt to counter this Blowback, will have a Blowback of their own.

All people should have already been hesitant to contact the police. But now, especially for the innocent Black man, be careful how you approach those people in government service who are armed with guns. They don't trust you; therefore, you cannot trust them. If at all possible, avoid them at all costs.

Victor J. Ward is a long-time EPJ reader, who first came across libertarianism by reading Murray Rothbard's Ronald Reagan: An Autopsy and Walter Block's Defending the Undefendable.. At first  the writings of Rothbard and Block shocked him, but after thinking about it, he realized that Rothbard and Block were right.