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In these trying times, its difficult to find something to smile about. But Ive found some modicum of mirth watching very sympathetic liberals go the extra mile to help hone the message of activists calling to "defund the police." For instance, Katy Tur, an MSNBC anchor, had Isaac Bryan, the executive director of the Black Policy Project at UCLA on Meet the Press Daily to explain what "Defund the Police" really means.

Isaac, thank you so much for joining us. Lets talk about what this means because I think there are a lot of people out there who hear defund the police and [think] it means abolishing a police department. It doesnt. So can you explain it to me?"

Bryan very politely replied that he disagreed with the premise of the question. Defund the police doesnt in fact preclude abolishing the police. Bryan says the term means taking that idea as far as the political imagination and the political will of our leaders across the country is willing to push this idea."

Most Democratic politicians understand that actually abolishing police departments root and branch would be close to political suicide (and terrible policy). Even Sen. Bernie Sanders is against it. They also understand that nobody in America wants the Democrats to embrace this idea more than Donald Trump.

Thats why many liberals want Defund the Police to mean reform the police or even reinvent the police. The problem is the activists who hold the emotional and psychological high ground wont play along. When the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, spoke with protesters last week, he said almost everything the crowd wanted about fundamental reform, systemic racism, etc. But when a leader of the protests asked him, yes or no do you favor outright abolition of the police, he said no. The crowd booed. The leader told him to get the [expletive deleted] out of here. And he wandered off to chants of shame and a sea of extended middle fingers.

What we have here isnt a failure to communicate but a legitimate difference of opinion. Some people favor serious reform. Some favor actual abolition. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that the people who truly favor abolition should continue to say so and the people who dont should probably stop trying to prove their solidarity by using a slogan they disagree with. And, so far, most prominent Democrats, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden have done exactly that.

So much for the politics. What about the actual ideas?

Lets start with reform. Banning choke holds, redirecting some responsibilities to mental health professionals, EMTs, and social workers has been tried with some success. Moving further on that front is sensible.

Repealing qualified immunity laws so that police officers can be held more responsible for their actions is more complicated but certainly worth exploring. As a matter of principle, Im opposed to all public sector unions, even if some do worthwhile things, so Im certainly open to fresh thinking about police unions.

Many people have focused on the example of Camden, New Jersey, as a model for defunding the police. Except it isnt. In 2012, the cash strapped city decided to disband the existing force, which was rife with corruption and union-fueled dysfunction, and started over. They rehired some 100 officers and committed to retraining. It appears to have been modestly successful. But no one driving through Camden today would mistake it for some cop-free utopia where yeoman citizens police themselves.

But abolishing the police? Thats insane.No really, its insane. Who will respond to school shootings? Social workers? What about bank robberies? Who will investigate murders? If you just want to rename the police, fine. But the police function is essential to a civilized society. And there are times when that function can only be performed by agents of the government willing and able to use force.

Some defunders propose community patrols, which sound a bit like local militias to me. But whatever name you give them, how does that not create more problems? Do you really want untrained groups of cop wannabes confronting suspicious characters in a neighborhood? Thats how Trayvon Martin got killed by George Zimmerman. All of the problems with race, but also class, would be exacerbated if local communities took it upon themselves to do police work. Affluent, mostly white, communities would have more resources and poorer, mostly black, communities would have fewer.

Anger over George Floyds killing is justified. But what is true of individuals is also true of mass movements: You dont do your best thinking when youre really angry.

See the article here:
Liberals Want 'Defund the Police' to Mean 'Reform.' It Doesn't. - The Dispatch

Liberals are constantly demanding that we believe the science. Im all for that. But the problem is the science changes, often quickly. Worse yet, what some want to call science is increasingly politics masquerading as science. And nothing has demonstrated that better than the coronavirus.

Consider House Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiNRCC turns up heat on vulnerable Democrats over Omar's call to abolish police Shocking job numbers raise hopes for quicker recovery Engel primary challenger hits million in donations MORE (D-Calif.). In an April press conference discussing the coronavirus pandemic she said, If you dont believe in science and you dont believe in governance, that is their [Republicans] approach.

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden formally clinches Democratic presidential nomination OVERNIGHT ENERGY: Trump signs order removing environmental reviews for major projects | New Trump air rule will limit future pollution regulations, critics say | DNC climate group calls for larger federal investment on climate than Biden plan Google: Chinese and Iranian hackers targeting Biden, Trump campaigns MORE (I-Vt.) said last March that the Trump White House has shown the world that it does not believe in science.

And lets not overlook Democratic presidential nominee Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden formally clinches Democratic presidential nomination The Memo: Job numbers boost Trump and challenge Biden Chris Wallace: Jobs numbers show 'the political resilience of Donald Trump' MORE. On May 19 he tweeted, We need a president who believes in science.

These believe the science scolds are little more than thinly vailed efforts to attack conservatives who ask reasonable questions. They also convey a sanctimonious intellectual superiority over anyone who challenges the left.

But demands that we believe the science raise the question: Which science are we supposed to believe?

Earlier this year the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) rejected the notion that the public should be wearing face masks. CDC Director Robert Redfield told a House committee, There is no role for these masks in the community. And U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams tweeted, STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in preventing the general public from catching coronavirus.

I watched several of the experts explaining last January and February why wearing anything but an N95 mask wouldnt protect the wearer or others. And several TV pundits went so far as to mock people who did wear masks.

But by early April, the CDC had flipped. CDC is additionally advising the use of simple cloth face coverings to slow the spread of the virus.

So in February you were silly if you wore a mask, and by April you were a fool not to. As Biden said of President Trump the day after Memorial Day, hes an absolute fool for not wearing a mask.

Heres the question: Was it science (1) when the CDC rejected mask wearing; or (2) when the CDC strongly recommended everyone wear a mask; or (3) does the CDC flip-flop demonstrate that the science may change when more information becomes available?

Warning to liberals: If you choose the third option you undercut all of your politically motivated believe the science rants.

Oh, and now the health experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) say heathy people should only wear masks if they are taking care of someone with COVID-19 or coughing or sneezing or under a few other circumstances.

So while Trumps recent in-person meetings with businesses apparently did not meet Bidens science, he did meet the WHOs science.

Will someone please tell me which science I am supposed to believe?

Theres more. In March and April, we saw lots of scientific studies discussing how long the coronavirus could survive on various objects. That led to massive wipe-downs, fumigations and sterilizations of everything.

But the CDC recently updated its guidance, informing us that the virus is spread mainly from person-to-person. While it can happen, the CDC does not think the virus spreads easily through contact with things.

And the political nature of believe the science appeared again in the recent protest marches and even riots over the tragic death of George Floyd.

For the past few months the left has warned us against reopening the economy too soon. The science, we were told, said it would lead to a spike in coronavirus infections and death.

But those same people have been largely silent as thousands of people flooded the streets to protest the Floyd death. Most protesters were not wearing masks. Most were not socially distancing. Many were singing, chanting and even screaming all of which the science now says are the primary ways the coronavirus is spread.

The George Floyd demonstrations are both understandable and a constitutional right unless they devolve into riots and destruction. But not only are the believe-the-science scolds not criticizing the protest marches, they are supporting them.

Science changes over time as we learn more, which is why one has to be careful in proclaiming that an issue is settled science.

Its the blatantly political nature of believe the science that has so many people questioning and even doubting the claims. Because when liberals admonish people to believe the science, what they are usually saying is shut up and do as youre told.

Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.

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Liberals: Which 'science' are we supposed to believe? | TheHill - The Hill

The polarization of American life, the withdrawal of liberal and conservative Americans from one another, has generated a poisonous distillation on both sides. In separating into geographic-distinct enclaves, into heartland and metropole, our factions have become steadily worse versions of themselves deprived of the leaven of perspective, hardening into self-caricature, losing the democratic capacities that a more diverse and fluid political atmosphere can teach.

The poisoning on the right helped give us the Trump presidency, which speaks to the alienation of conservative America from the corridors of wealth and power the sense across rural and exurban America that our great cities are alien, their inhabitants dangerous, their elites grasping and malign without speaking effectively to anybody else.

Trumps administration is Washington-based performance art for Americans who know the capital primarily as a television backdrop, a festival of lib-owning and deep-state bashing and as of last night, bizarre tear-gas-and-the-Bible photo ops that doesnt even try to master the government it notionally runs. His reeling, staggering style of governance once blackly comic, now deadly serious and disastrous reflects not just the incapacity of its leader but also the insularity of his coalition, which doesnt encompass enough of Americas diversity to claim a real democratic mandate or include enough of the administrative talent that it would need to competently rule.

But the riots engulfing Americas cities arent just a testament to Trumps mix of provocation and abdication. They also reveal how the Democratic coalitions distillation into a metropolitan formation, a liberalism of the global city, has created deep pressures inside the liberal coalition, fissures that can widen with the right cascade of shocks.

The coalition of the liberal city is a high-low coalition, an alliance of highly educated urbanites, service workers and the underclass, inhabiting the same geography but very different social spaces, sharing a common political opponent but lacking a common way of life. The weaknesses of the conservative coalition are reversed for liberals. Instead of uniformity, there is Balkanization. Instead of chauvinism against outsiders there is suspicion against neighbors. Instead of a pious Christianity thats too often distant from the stranger and the orphan, there is a pious liberalism that depends on the cheap labor of immigrants and the surveillance and harassment of the poor.

Above all, the liberal city lacks a middle the ballast of a substantial middle class, the mediating institutions of old-fashioned machine politics, the cement of shared religious and cultural institutions. Instead, its mediating institutions are the cops, the public schools and welfare bureaucracy, and the professional-activist class. None of these groups have broad legitimacy. The cops are distrusted from below and from above increasingly regarded by the cosmopolitan class as distasteful mercenaries, a necessary evil to protect gentrifications gains. The schools and welfare system are stagnant yet resilient, constantly resisting attempted reinventions by elites whose own families rarely use them. The activists portray themselves as spokesmen for their race or class, but their main task appears to be running consciousness-raising sessions to salve the uneasy consciences of white elites.

In place of any broad legitimacy, the liberal city relies for public order on wealth and entertainment, surveillance and prison sentences, pot and video games, elite guilt and lower-class forbearance.

This is a decadent-but-sustainable arrangement under normal circumstances, but the coronavirus has exposed its weak points. Take away schools, pools, sports and movies and suddenly the infotainment complex is reduced to Zoom and Netflix and claustrophobia sets in. Tell people to wear masks and the surveillance camera doesnt seem like such a threat. Close the colleges and suddenly the activist cohort and its more radical pupils are set idle. Put cops to work enforcing social distancing and their authoritarian temptations are magnified and then all you need is a particularly brazen injustice to light the spark.

Now that its been lit, the liberal coalitions claim to represent order against Trumpian chaos or political competence against right-wing fecklessness is burning day by day. And the torching of its credibility has happened fastest among the white and woke. As public officials, white progressives lack both credibility with aggrieved protesters and full control over their own overzealous cops. As supposed custodians of public health, theyve proven unable to sustain social distancing requirements when its someone other than disreputable conservatives challenging them. And as ostensible champions of facts and reason, theyve been as quick as any Southern sheriff in the 1960s to blame outside agitators, false flags and even foreigners for their own misgovernment.

But worse than progressive officials are the young white radicals, anarchists and antifa and would-be Tyler Durdens, who have decided that the suffering of black communities is an excellent justification for a frenzy of white-on-white (or, sometimes, white-on-immigrant-owned-business) crime. One of the most striking trends of the last few years, the studies showing that white liberals are increasingly angrier about racism than the average black American, has reached its consummation in the spectacle of peaceful black protesters remonstrating with white kids who just want to loot, burn and fight.

Perhaps the logic of polarization will eventually help restore stability. Perhaps whatever flailing or cruel response Trump eventually gets goaded into will reunite the liberal cities against the right-wing president. Perhaps we can return to a world where Nike mouths radical slogans but nobody loots their stores.

But weve seen what happens when you pull back that surface, and we know whats underneath: the grinning skull beneath the liberal citys skin.

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Crisis in the Liberal City - The New York Times

About a month ago I wrote that the federal Liberals massive gun ban could include hundreds of thousands of shotguns (perhaps as many as two million) that are popular with hunters, not just the assault rifles the government claimed.

No, no, no the government scoffed. We would never take away bird guns.

The prediction that their seizure plans included shotguns (and not just military-style firearms) wasnt just my guess.

I dont know much about the mechanics of guns. Ive never owned a gun. Dont expect I ever will.

My interest in firearms is purely political: I dont trust any government that doesnt trust my law-abiding neighbours to own guns.

But I know lots of people who know plenty about guns. And many of them said the way the Liberals had written their May 1 confiscation order focusing on the size of a guns muzzle, rather than muzzle velocity or projectile type meant hundreds of thousands of shotguns could be scooped up by police along with the scary-looking guns the Liberals claimed to be after.

Now it has been discovered that since May 1, the Liberals and RCMP have indeed been adding lots of shotguns to the ban.

Worse yet, they have not been telling gun owners or the public. Presumably some hunters are going to find out the hard way that guns they thought were legal, arent any more.

This fall, they will go out to their favourite duck blind and end up getting arrested for possession of a prohibited weapon.

Not only was the ban proclaimed by order-in-council (a form of government decree), rather than after a debate and vote in Parliament, ever since the list of prohibited firearms has been rapidly expanded in smokescreen!

If you didnt know better, youd wonder whether the Liberals realize their firearms dictate isnt as popular as they claim, so theyre sneaking around cramming as much in as they can under the cloak of the pandemic.

Firearms organizations claim over 300 additional models have been prohibited since May 1, but you have to be very alert to know which ones.

The official list of newly banned guns is part of the FRT (Firearms Reference Table). But the original list of 1,500 models was lumped in with guns banned before May 1. And now the addition banned models are lumped in with the first 1,500, plus the older banned models.

Hmm, you might think the government was being deliberately underhanded.

Naw!

To make matters even worse, the firearms outlawed after the May 1 ban have been made illegal retroactive to May 1.

So they are already illegal and you may own one without even knowing its banned.

Which brings me back to my prediction that you might go out to shoot geese this fall and come back in a paddy wagon.

As a crime-reduction strategy, the Trudeau governments gun ban will, of course, be utterly useless. It bans legal guns owned by law-abiding Canadians, when most crime guns are brought to the country illegally and wielded by drug dealers and gang members.

But while the ban will achieve nothing beneficial, it will increase the mistrust gun owners have for the police, especially the Mounties.

Gun owners are the kind of people who used to be the most supportive of the police. Their sons were the young people most likely to want to go into the police. But no longer.

If the police aid the Liberals in their deviousness, gun owners will lose faith in the impartiality of cops.

The bans arbitrary, deceitful, intrusive assault on law-abiding Canadians may play well with ignorant enlightened Liberal voters in downtown Toronto and Montreal, but it will undermine the rule of law elsewhere.

Continue reading here:
GUNTER: Liberals and RCMP have been quietly adding to the gun ban list - Toronto Sun

The tragedy of the riots sparked by George Floyds death was brought home by a distraught elderly black woman interviewed by the local ABC affiliate in her ruined south Minneapolis neighborhood.

These people did this for no reason, wept Stephanie Wilford, who lives in an apartment next to where shops were looted and burned Friday night. They went straight to . . . every store over here that I go to. I have nowhere to go now and I have no way to get there because the buses arent running.

The violence is not going to bring George back. George is in a better place than we are. Im going to be honest, I wish I was where George was.

But liberal agitators dont care about Stephanie and the poor urban communities that have been destroyed in the four-day orgy of self-congratulatory violence they sanctioned.

They are too busy dreaming up fantasy scapegoats.

Videos abound on social media of shadowy figures, dressed in black, systematically smashing store windows, but not looting, cutting through fences outside police stations, but not pushing the fences over softening defenses for the rioters.

These are the domestic terrorists who have hijacked peaceful protests across the country. Attorney General Bill Barr described them in his Saturday press conference as outside radicals and agitators [who] are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate and violent agenda.

In many places, it appears the violence is planned, organized, and driven by anarchistic and far-left extremists, using Antifa-like tactics.

This is why Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison pretends that the external agitators in Minneapolis riots were Trump-voting white supremacists, because the former DNC deputy chairman is one of those in his party who has normalized Antifa as a useful part of the political process.

See his Twitter feed of January 2018, when he posed for a selfie at a bookstore holding Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook and wrote: I just found the book that strikes fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump.

No wonder he and the rest of Minnesotas Democratic leadership are trying to offload blame for their persistent policing failures.

Invariably, it is cities run by soft-on-crime Democrats where police forces betray the people they are supposed to protect.

The Minneapolis police force is the creature of a city that has had Democratic mayors for almost 50 years.

As former Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News over the weekend, Dont elect progressive Democrats if you want to be safe.

All you need to know about Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is that he made the decision for police to evacuate the Third Precinct station, allowing it to be overrun by rioters and burned to the ground.

For four nights, criminals ransacked his city and terrorized its residents while the police were nowhere to be seen.

Instead of nipping the violence in the bud, Frey set a terrible precedent, allowing the contagion to spread across the country.

Brick and mortar is not as important as life, he blithely told a press conference Thursday night as the city burned.

Its just property, say liberals who have never known a life without plenty. But the property they dismiss so easily can be a lifes work, like the sports bar in Minneapolis into which Korboi Balla, a black firefighter, had poured his life savings. It was destroyed a few days before he was due to open this week.

Stores and businesses are a communitys lifeblood, and many will never come back, causing more misery for the most vulnerable.

In any case, the policing vacuum also unleashed terrible violence.

There are videos all over social media of mobs chasing defenseless people, knocking them unconscious and kicking them in the head as they lie on the ground. Looters punched a store owner in the head and beat her with planks of wood in front of her husband. A man reportedly trying to protect his store with a sword was beaten senseless.

Bad people exist. Thats why the vulnerable need police forces, which, for some perverse reason, progressives keep trying to disempower.

With five months left until the election, Democrats are trying to capitalize on mayhem and disharmony to make President Trump look bad.

But he is the avowed law-and-order president who vowed Saturday: My administration will stop mob violence, and well stop it cold.

Just as the 1968 riots led voters who were worried about social disorder to choose Richard Nixon as president, the 2020 riots are likely to play in Trumps favor.

Four NYPD cops were almost burned alive when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at their car over the weekend. Another officer was smashed in the face with a brick. On Saturday night alone, 33 cops were injured in pitched battles with anti-police protesters.

NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan described it as an organized attempt to attack police with bottles, bricks, Molotov cocktails and brass knuckles.

Considering the mortal danger they faced, the officers restraint was remarkable.

At one point, when two police SUVs were surrounded by protesters trying to block their passage, cops decided not to be sitting ducks for another Molotov and gingerly drove though the mob.

There were no reports of serious injuries, but that didnt stop Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from demanding the cops be brought to justice.

Unlike in Minneapolis, the NYPDs forceful action stopped the city from being ransacked and burned to the ground and probably saved lives.

But instead of thanking them, Gov. Andrew Cuomo slams their behavior as disturbing and wants to investigate them.

Shame.

It took a pandemic for the CNN audience to cotton to the fact that Chris Cuomo is a vainglorious chump.

Maybe it was the tone-deaf back-slapping routines with his brother, the luv gov, that did it, with nary a mention of all the nursing-home deaths that could have been avoided.

Or maybe it was his hypocrisy instructing viewers to wear masks while famously refusing to wear one himself when he actually was infected with COVID-19.

Either way, Fredo lost 50 percent of his audience in the last two months. Now they know; its unlikely theyll come back.

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Nationwide George Floyd riots are the price of liberalism: Devine - New York Post