Canadian Cincinnatus

Harper need to attack Obama publically over Keystone XL

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s preferred political strategy is quiet (but firm) incrementalism. He is the Field Marshall Montgomery of politics. He never moves fast but he always moves forward.

This has been his approach to coaxing President Obama into approving the Keystone XL pipeline. By now, Obama’s stonewalling is apparent. Obama will not approve the pipeline unless he is forced to by events. If he had wanted Keystone XL, he would have had it a long time ago. Harper’s slow, steady and reasonable approach isn’t working here. He must change tactics.

He has to attack Obama and play the anti-American card. He must publically scold Obama for hating Canada. He needs to tell Americans that there will be no further cooperation from Canada on anything. At this point, Harper has nothing to lose by escalating. Obama has demonstrated that he will not put US-Canada relations above his domestic allegiance to his domestic environmentalist lobby. Harper must make Obama pay a price for this. Many Americans (including union members who traditionally vote Democrat) want Keystone XL. In opposing the pipeline, Obama will be forced to demonstrate to the American public that he doesn’t give a damn about the US economy (or energy independence from OPEC). Good luck selling that.

A side benefit of this spat is that this will benefit Harper politically at home. The traditional Liberal charge is that Conservatives are too pro-American. Here is a beautiful way to turn the tables. It will put Justin Trudeau on the horns of a dilemma: do you support Canada, or do you stab your environmentalist buddies in the back? Your choice.

From the perspective of political strategy, Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland has a relevant political lesson. What was his secret to success (aside from new-found oil wealth)? 

He consistently picked fights with Ottawa, first with Prime Minister Paul Martin and then with Harper. In the case of Harper, the argument can be made that Danny Williams lost.

“During the 2008 Canadian Federal election, Williams hit out at incumbent Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the federal administration for reneging on a 2006 election pledge to exclude non-renewable energy sources from the equalization formula.” 

On the face of it, Williams’ position was absurd. He essentially wanted his cake (oil revenues) and eat it too (keep the equalization payments from Ottawa flowing in by maintaining Newfoundland’s status as a have-not province, no matter how much oil money flowed in). Harper, of course, balked. If had caved in, every provincial premier would have knocked on his door demanding handouts. Williams retaliated with his ABC (Anybody But Conservatives) strategy in the 2008 federal election. In this, Williams won the battle (the Federal Conservatives lost all their seats in Newfoundland), but lost the war. With no Conservative MP’s left in Newfoundland, Williams ended up with zero influence on Harper, who had manfully taken his lumps and could now freely do what he wanted.

But in another sense, Williams won big:

“Williams' popularity is said to be unmatched in Canadian political history; his high approval ratings lasted right up until his retirement. Although Williams' premiership was considered quite controversial in Canada at large, except for his first year in office, his own provincial approval ratings and those of his government have been consistently in the seventy to eighty percent range for the majority of the time he was in office.” 

Harper needs fight Obama the way Williams fought him. He needs to remember that in this war, symbolic gestures count for much (Williams took down the Canadian flags over provincial government buildings to make Paul Martin capitulate). In his fight for Keystone XL, Harper has two things going for him that Williams lacked. First, the argument for the pipeline is a lot stronger than the argument for equalization payments to a province swimming in oil money. Second, many in the US want the pipeline as well. No Canadian outside of Newfoundland agreed with Williams. Obama is taking significant heat at home for his Keystone stance.

Fight as hard against Obama as Williams did against him, and Stephen Harper can enjoy a Williams-style popularity boom during the next federal election.

Michael Ledeen: “What If Were Winning But Nobody Noticed?”

Michael Ledeen has an intriguing article that touches on a host of important points. His central thesis:

“The headlines are grim, the pictures from Syria, Venezuela and Ukraine are blood-chilling, executions and demonstrations are mounting in Iran, and Obama doesn’t know what to do about anything. … 

And yet, our enemies may be on the verge of losing.  Big time.” 

His data points:

“He [Putin], along with the Syrian, Iranian, Nicaraguan, Honduran, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Bolivian dictators and would-be dictators, was forging a global alliance aimed against the West, and nobody in the West seemed to notice, let alone take steps to combat it…. 

That alliance is cracking, because many millions of people are fighting the anti-Western tyrants.  They aren’t pundits, and they haven’t calculated the odds on success.  They just fight.”

What are their accomplishments? 

“For those keeping score: the enemy alliance has lost in Egypt and Tunisia, is losing Ukraine, is in great peril in Venezuela, is losing men and money in significant quantities in Syria, and faces determined opposition inside Iran.”

Why are the people defying the odds?

“It’s like the case of the bumblebee, which, the engineers patiently explained to us, cannot fly (wrong ratio of wingspan to body mass, etcetera).  But the bumblebees don’t know that, and so they fly.  And even make some honey.”

This is a very salient point, often forgotten by foreign policy ‘realists’. A lot of the time freedom fighters fail. But some of the time they succeed, and against incredible odds. In my own homeland of Estonia, independence was won in 1918 against Bolshevik Russia. The leaders of our independence movement were for the most part intellectuals with little experience in governance, and with no money or military experience. The first item on the agenda? Militarily defeat a foe 100 times in size. Who in February, 1918 would have predicted that they would succeed? But succeed they did, while defeating the German Landeswehr and helping to liberate Latvia from the Germans as side tasks. Take that foreign policy realists!

According to Ledeen, the fact often overlooked by foreign policy experts is:

“Tyranny is the most unstable form of government.”

This is a point I have been making for a while. Dictatorships only seem stable because all their rifts and problems and inadequacies have been papered over. Communist China is not nearly as powerful as it now seems.

“The air can go out of tyrannical balloons with amazing speed.”

While dictatorships can break apart very quickly, the event is impossible to predict because all the crucial information is concealed, from both outsiders and the tyrants themselves.

“The flip side of that coin is that democracies and republics are far more durable, even though (maybe even because) they are fractious, sloppy, inefficient and, especially in foreign policy, typically indecisive.”

What makes free societies so durable is what makes them appear so shabby. We air our laundry in public all the time. But in doing that, we prevent the inevitable problems that every society faces from quietly metastasizing into regime-toppling crises.

“Rule number two is that the world is slow to change.  Except when the world is seized by convulsions and rapid change is the order of the day.  We’re currently in a period of profound change, from the bipolar Cold War world to…we know not what.  But all those who advocate “stability” have failed to understand this moment.”

This is a point that Mark Steyn often makes, stability is a fetish of foreign policy realists that is anything but realistic.

“Rule three is that this world is tailor-made for the American mission, which is to support freedom."

This is where I depart company with paleoconservative isolationists. Like them, I believe the nation-state based on shared culture and values is, or should be, the basic building block of world order. Unlike them, I also believe that nations governed by liberal democratic principles, rule of law and property rights, with a free enterprise economy are a very precious thing. Historically speaking, they are also rare. Somalia, Syria and Putin’s Russia are the norm for humanity. We are the freaks of nature.

Therefore it is incumbent on all people who do enjoy free government to do what we can to nurture and protect freedom. If we don’t, all the liberal democracies of the world, or budding liberal democracies of the world, will be swallowed up whole by the world’s dictatorships. This does not mean we need to build nations in every third-world hellhole we set foot in. Or invade every dictatorship we see. Nor does it mean that we shouldn’t make temporary accommodations with unsavoury regimes, if practicality requires it. But it does mean that if a small country – like Georgia – is invaded by a large authoritarian regime, we must do what we can to help. And if an oppressed people rises up, like, say, in Venezuela or the Ukraine, we should also do what we can to aid them in their struggle. It may be that all they require is a little moral support, or some covert aid to put them over the top.

It is my firm belief that years from now, when the foreign policy of Barack Obama can be judged dispassionately and objectively, his greatest failing will be found to be standing by while the Green Revolution in Iran rose up and almost, but not quite, toppled the Iranian theocracy.

A grand opportunity for some socially conservative ju-jitsu

NBC News characterization of US Olympic Team Skier, David Wise, is thus: 

“David Wise’s alternative lifestyle leads to Olympic gold.”

What’s his alternate lifestyle?

“David Wise, 23, who just won the Olympic gold for freestyle skiing, has now made headlines for a different reason: He’s married to a woman, has a 2-year-old and one day wants to be a pastor — and that’s an usual path, NBC deems.”

The conservative reaction?

‘Critics say the title turns the tables on what’s actually the normal, and paints it as somehow counter-culture.

“Isn’t it fascinating that NBC views a man taking care of his wife and daughter as an alternative lifestyle?” Mollie Hemingway wrote, for The Federalist. “If this is any indication of media views on normalcy, our society is pretty much doomed.”

Twitter posters reacted similarly. Deseret News profiled D.C. Innes’ post: “‘At such a young age, [Olympic freestyle skier, David] Wise has the lifestyle of an adult.’ Huh?” And Julie Dietrich wrote: “@NBCNewYork alternative lifestyle?? Are you kidding me. How is having a wife and child alternative. The kid has character and class.”’

My take?

Bring it on! The left is always prattling on about diversity and the counter-culture and alternative life-styles. Well OK. Embrace that.

It doesn’t matter, for the sake of the argument, whether being in a heterosexual marriage with kids means being in the majority or the minority. If they say you are in a minority lifestyle, then by all means seize that designation - and all the benefits that it confers. 

If they object to your presumption, call them xenophobic, bigoted, intolerant and homonormative. (OK, maybe the last one isn’t a thought-crime.)

If they counter by reminding you that hetereosexual couples with children constitute, in fact, the majority lifestyle, then respond: so you mean there is a moral majority after all?

No matter how the argument plays out, they can only lose – as long as you are willing to zealously grab every concession they inadvertently confer on you.

Happy debating.

Daniel Hannan: Nationalism yes, EU no

Two years ago I had the privilege to hear MEP for South East England, Daniel Hannan, speak at the Manning Networking Conference. It was the best speech I have ever heard in my life. In my opinion, there is no greater champion of the liberal nation-state than him. If you want to know who the heir to Margaret Thatcher is in the UK, you have to look no farther than Hannan. (It certainly ain’t David Cameron.)

Last week, a masterful article by him appeared in the Telegraph explaining why the nation-state is the natural home to liberal democracy and why the EU is not.

“Nationalism as a political ideology. My dictionary defines it as "the drive of people of the same language-group to form independent and unitary states". Nationalism in this sense was a direct consequence of democracy. When Europe was a patchwork of dynastic territories, formed by conquest, marriage and happenstance, it never occurred to anyone to let people decide which state to belong to. But from the late eighteenth century, the idea got abroad that governments should be answerable to the people. And this, of course, immediately raised the question: "What people?" Within what unit was the democratic process to be played out?”

I don’t think it is a coincidence that the people rooting for a transnational superstate are big government types of one sort or the other. And fans of small, decentralized government tend to be nationalists.

“But from the late eighteenth century, the idea got abroad that governments should be answerable to the people. And this, of course, immediately raised the question: "What people?" Within what unit was the democratic process to be played out?

The answer was that a state should comprise citizens who felt enough in common with one another to accept government from each other's hands – in other words, it should comprise a nation. The early democrats were almost all nationalists in this sense. They wanted to replace the Europe of prelates and princes with a Europe of democratic nation-states.”

Democracy and liberty works best when most people want approximately the same thing, and when there are bonds of kinship to encourage individual sacrifice for the common good. 

“It is our sense of common identity that makes us willing to accept election results when we voted for the losers, to pay taxes to support strangers, to obey laws with which we disagree.”

Hannan also makes the valid point that Hitler was not a nationalist, in spite of his party’s name: The National Socialist German Worker’s Party: 

“You can accuse Hitler of many things, but one thing you can't accuse him of is respect for national sovereignty. In no sense did he want a Europe of nation-states of the kind proposed by Mazzini or any of the 1848 radicals. What he wanted was an empire into which other peoples would be forcibly incorporated, either as citizens or as slaves. The defeat of Nazism in 1945, like the defeat of Soviet Communism in 1989, was a victory for national independence. 

Those who have done most to threaten peace, far from being nationalists, are usually proponents of trans-national ideologies. The Islamists today, like the Nazis and Soviets before them, claim to answer to a higher doctrine than the established rules of territorial jurisdiction and national sovereignty.”

This is right. The real destruction in the past century has been caused by ivory tower ideologies.

“The nation-state, rooted as it is in old loyalties, tends to be the surest defence against these enthusiasms.”

The essence of conservatism is to ally modern functions to “old loyalties”. 

“What about the favourite example cited by Steinmeier and Barroso – that of the First World War? We can't blame it on Nazism or Communism or Islamism. Isn't nationalism responsible here? Well, yes, but look at what kind of nationalism it was. The proximate cause of the fighting was the desire of many of the South Slav subjects of Austria-Hungary for self-determination. It's a common cause of conflict, this feeling that people are, one way or another, in the wrong state. Look at the hotspots today: Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine, Western Sahara, Tibet. Jamming different peoples together, rather than allowing them to live as peaceable neighbours, tends to stoke rather than soothe national antagonisms.”

While nationalism has been often blamed for World War I, it is seldom remarked upon that Europe in 1914 was dominated by a few, very large empires: the British, the German, the Austro-Hungarian, the Russian and the Ottoman. I don’t think it was an accident that war started in the most unnatural of them, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Or that three out of the four empires that collapsed after than war (the Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman) were a multicultural polyglot of unrelated tribes. 

The New Republic: “What’s Happening in Kiev Right Now is Vladimir Putin’s Worst Nightmare”

According to The New Republic:

“If it can happen in Kiev, in other words, it can happen in Moscow.”

Couldn’t happen to a nicer KGB goon. 

The article goes on to describe the ways in which Vladimir Putin is more ruthless and proactive than the management in the Ukraine when it comes to putting down dissent. The author also predicts that Putin will reaction the the current disturbances by cracking down even harder in Russia in order to prevent what is happening there from migrating eastwards. Of course, the more he does this, the less legitimacy he has left. In the end, regimes based only on fear are isolated and brittle and are hated by the populace. Putin’s salad days as the savior of Russia are over.

Tim Hudak was the other loser in yesterday’s Ontario provincial by-elections

In yesterday's Ontario by-elections, Tim Hudak's Progressive Conservatives ended up even, retaining one seat, but failing to pick up a Liberal seat (Niagara Falls). Here is why not winning the Niagara Falls riding was bad news for Hudak: 

2011 provincial election results for Niagara Falls:

Liberals - 16.8K

PC -         16.3K

NDP -      12.3K

2013 by-election results for Niagara Falls:

NDP -     14.5K

PC -        13.5K

Liberals - 7.1K

In other words, while the Liberal share of the vote collapsed by 16.5%, the PC share of the vote essentially flatlined (going up only 2%). What this means is that the collapse of the Ontario Liberal Party overwhelmingly benefited the NDP, not the Conservatives - in a borderline conservative riding. If Hudak is to win the next provincial election, he had better up his game - ASAP. He can’t rely on Liberal malfeasance to carry him across the finish line. 

Now, this conclusion should not be interpreted to mean that Tim Hudak should ‘move to the center’. John Tory and Ernie Eves have vividly demonstrated what  happens to conservatives when they abandon their principles and try to become Liberal-lite. They end up on the wrong end of a humiliating shellacking.

Nevertheless, stay tuned. In his next post, my sometimes guest blogger Mike Downtown will present a workable strategy for Tim Hudak.

 

A great campaign strategist aligns with a dumb politician

The strategist is Nick Kouvalis, the incompetent politician is John Tory. According to the Toronto Sun:

“The man behind Mayor Rob Ford's winning 2010 campaign is poised to work against him this year.

Nick Kouvalis will be working for John Tory's mayoralty campaign if the radio host and former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader decides to run, a source told the Sun.”

Two years ago, I attended a seminar at the Manning Networking Conference on political strategy led by Kouvalis, Tom Long (Mike Harris’s architect) and Guy Giorno (Stephen Harper’s former Chief of Staff). I left that session riding a mile high. I thought: so there are campaign strategists out there on our side who actual do Get It. They’re not all a bunch of pathetic, lame-o Red Tory appeasers.

“Kouvalis helped Ford sweep into the mayor's office in 2010 and served as his chief of staff for the first few months of his term.”

Rob Ford’s 2010 campaign was one of the most perfectly run political campaigns I have ever witnessed. It was the Six-Day War of politics. Prior to 2010, whenever strategists intoned that message discipline was one of the most important factors in campaigning, that the only way to get your message across to the people is to repeat it endlessly and refrain from getting sidetracked on peripheral matters, I said yeah, yeah, but I didn’t really Get It. Rob Ford’s “stop the gravy train” message changed that. It permeated every aspect of Toronto’s culture. Even the most thoroughly apolitical were well versed in it. I said, oh, so that’s what you guys meant. 

“Reached for comment on Wednesday, Kouvalis would only confirm that he believes Tory - who lost the 2003 mayor's race to David Miller - can win the 2014 election.

‘John Tory can win this election because he is fiscally conservative, can get support for his plans and get the votes through council,’ Kouvalis said.” 

Kouvalis is a very smart guy, one of best in politics. But he is dead wrong here. In 2003 I also thought Tory was a competent politician. But his bumbling, disastrous reign as head of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party forever dispelled me of that notion, and it should have done the same for Kouvalis and any other sentient being. I could write articles about Tory’s bumbling (and I have: here and here), but suffice it to say, John Tory’s performance was so breathtakingly incompetent, on so many different levels, that he forever disqualified himself in my eyes as a viable candidate for any office. I think he is possibly the most incompetent conservative politician that I know of (though John Boehner is currently making a good run for that title).

By propping up a useless candidate with a brilliant campaign manager, all Kouvalis will succeed in doing is to convert an also-ran joke into a spoiler. Thanks to this misalignment of the stars, Olivia Chow may be able to sneak into office from the left.

And then, the residents of Toronto had better start praying.

The Arroyo: an out-of-the-closet conservative film by an out-of-the-closet conservative

Conservatives love to complain about the pop culture, how it demonizes conservatives and propagates a subversive left-wing agenda. But film-maker Jeremy Boreing decided to do more than just whine. He decided to take matters into his own hands by making a conservative film, The Arroyo, which is just being released. 

Here is Andrew Klavan’s (who is a conservative screenwriter himself, penning one of Clint Eastwood’s flicks) take on the backstory:

“For those conservatives with artistic talent and ambition, this is a spectacular moment to take to the barricades. Big Media is tottering under the assault of new technologies. With electronic publishing and social media, books can be self-published and self-promoted. With the new video cameras, professional-looking films can be produced on the cheap and distributed online. YouTube, iTunes, smart phones, tablets, blogs — all provide opportunities for new kinds of work and new ways for that work to be dispensed. 

But to take advantage of this moment, conservatives have to come to grips with a situation that they naturally find uncomfortable: to wit, we are now the counter-culture.  When it comes to the arts, Radical Leftists are The Man. We need to act like the rebels we now are and stop trying to win the favor of the big studios and publishers and mainstream reviewers. We need to make stuff. Good stuff. And get it out to the audience any way we can.” 

“This is easier said than done, but one genuinely inspiring example has been set by my friend Jeremy Boreing. Jeremy’s movie The Arroyo has had theatrical showings in Los Angeles and Texas and is now available on DVD. The good people at Newsmax will help with distribution and the film is scheduled for release on iTunes as well.”

About the film itself, Klavan has this to say:

“The Arroyo is really an amazing accomplishment. Brought into being on a micro budget, it’s a feature quality film. And to label it conservative would be limiting and unfair. It’s only conservative in the sense that it doesn’t lie about its subject. It tells the story of a rancher on the border who gets fed up with the heartless Mexican cartels using illegals to smuggle drugs across his land. Ignored by local law enforcement and deserted by our corrupt and hapless federal government, the hero takes a stand alone — and finds himself in a world of trouble.”

“The leftist Machete had no trouble corralling a top-flight cast and getting a wide release, complete with upcoming sequel. Jeremy, on the other hand, basically had to pull The Arroyo out of the ground by main strength. And he did, delivering steady writing, good direction and strong performances from an unknown cast (which, by the way, is extremely difficult to do). There’s also a top-notch score by John Campbell and some great songs. It also inspired this beautiful piece by Texas songwriter Cary C. Banks.”

I haven’t seen the film yet myself, but the trailer looks very enticing.

Boreing’s partner in art is Bill Whittle, famous to many for his Afterburner videos. While he only edited The Arroyo, he is developing film projects of his own: The Common Sense Resistance, Big Bat Problems and Aurora.

To those of us who like to complain about Hollywood, I say we have a duty to support filmmakers like Bill and Jeremy, as well as their products. So spread the good word about The Arroyo; get yourself a DVD copy; and support Bill Whittle’s upcoming projects by becoming a paid-up member of BillWhittle.com.

Political Ju-Jitsu 101: by Professor Rand Paul

In politics, when you are attacked, it is a near-general rule that the second worst response is to explain yourself. Too defensive. You are practically admitting guilt. (In case you’re wondering, the worst response is to apologize.) 

Your best response is to counterattack. In attacking you for a particular action, stance or crime, your accuser opens himself up on the same subject. For an example, remember the way John Kerry’s attack on George W Bush’s military service boomeranged back on Kerry, with questions raised about his actions in Vietnam? Kerry had no defence. He couldn’t very well have claimed that whatever happened in Vietnam 35 years ago is irrelevant in 2004, when he himself raised the subject in the first place, elevating it to national importance. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. 

Lately, a go-to trope among Democrats is the Republican ‘War on Women’. In neutralizing this claim, Rand Paul leads the charge:

“The Democrats can't say, 'We're the great defenders of women's rights in the workplace and we will defend you against some kind of abusive boss that uses their position of authority to take advantage of a young women' when the leader of their party, the leading fundraiser in the country, is Bill Clinton, who was a perpetrator of that kind of sexual harassment. Anybody who wants to take money from Bill Clinton or have a fundraiser has a lot of explaining to do. In fact, I think they should give the money back.”

That kids is how you counterpunch. Gore them on the horns of their own dilemma. 

Now, hopefully, Rand Paul’s colleagues in the Stupid Party take notes (though I am not holding my breath).

“What ever happened to Peace Officers?”

A good article in the Ludwig von Mises Institute about a foreboding but little-remarked-upon change of terminology: how our police went from being ‘peace officers’ to  ‘law enforcement officers’:

‘Today when we use the term peace officer, it sounds antiquated and outdated. I’m sure most people in the room under 40 have never heard the term actually used by anyone; we might as well be talking about buggy whips or floppy disks. But in the 1800s and really through the 1960s, the term was used widely in America to refer generally to lawmen, whether sheriffs, constables, troopers, or marshals. Today the old moniker of peace officer has been almost eliminated in popular usage, replaced by “police officer” or the more in vogue “law enforcement officer.”’

While I don’t agree with everything the article goes on to say, the distinction it draws is important. The purpose of a ‘peace officer’ is to keep the peace. The purpose of a ‘law enforcement officer’ is to enforce the laws. The difference is that with the former, law enforcement is just a tool, one means among many towards the end of securing the public peace. If the neighbourhood is tranquil and the dogs aren’t barking, there is no need to hand out tickets or make arrests. The officer’s job is done. All he has left to do is to ensure that this situation remains.

It is instructive at this point to review Peel’s Nine Laws of Policing, as derived by Sir Robert Peel, the founder of modern policing:

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life. 

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Some of these principles have been summarized as, “whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime.”

For what it’s worth, in my opinion, the principal reason today’s police deviate so far from this gold standard is the preventative law. From the radar trap located in a ‘fishing hole’, to bureaucratic gun laws, to the War on Drugs - all have conspired to inculcate an attitude of law enforcement among the police. Who cares about the peace? Have you met your ticket quota this month? It is impossible to prosecute a war on a substance that many people freely want to acquire and not have police officers develop the attitude of an occupying army. They can no longer see that “the police are the public and that the public are the police”.

While certain militaristic innovations like SWAT teams are necessary (how many hostage taking situations do we have today, as opposed to the 70’s?), the requisite legal and procedural constraints on their employment were never properly developed, or if they were developed, they were not with the idea of making them consistent with Peelian Principles.

Right now, the police as a profession are highly esteemed by the public. I personally believe that this is largely a holdover of the high crime days brought about by permissive sixties liberalism (“down with the pigs, man!”). But as these bad old days recede into the distance, what people will increasingly see in their minds’ eye when they think about the police is not Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry but the assault troops, dressed in black, who rode around in armored vehicles after the Boston Marathon bombing ordering people to remain in their homes. 

To prevent that fate (and its inevitable consequences for their profession), the police need to return to the time tested principles of Sir Robert Peel - principles that are a necessary foundation of limited, responsible and civilized government - rapidly.