“The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.” — Elbert Hubbard
Ignorance: A lack of knowledge or information; an adjective describing an individual who deliberately ignores or disregards important information or facts.
Have you ever read a news article about individuals in “responsible positions” that rankles your sensibilities midway through the article? If not, perhaps I am the only one afflicted with a stupidity alarm, which goes off almost immediately when I read things that defy human logic, and it’s especially bad when I assume the individual has to possess some modicum of intelligence.
A case in point occurred in a recent article I ran across covering the remarks made by a supposedly educated individual participating in a round-table discussion on the subject of “Best Policing Practices.”
The subject individual is the campus director of community relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and once worked as an assistant district attorney. Please allow me to relate his exact quotes, so you can grasp the obvious product of our higher education system.
”I don’t think Target or all them other places, them big box stores that have insurance, they should be using justification, the fact that people steal from there as justification to start engaging in aggressive police practices, right?”
He went on to explain why police are using high rates of theft at retail businesses as an excuse for excessive policing.
“I go to these meetings and that’s what they throw up there on the table, ‘Look at where all the crime is happening, at the East Towne and the West Towne Mall, and the Wal-Marts and Targets, that’s where crime is happening, that’s why they have to focus so much … they do that all the time to justify why they’re going to over police our children.’ ”
This individual is certainly entitled to his opinion, but even so, it doesn’t give me warm feelings about the university environment or the future of public safety. While his use of the English language may be a bit lacking, his reasoning is that since businesses carry insurance, theft should be allowed and law enforcement should not use crime as an excuse to pick on the children.
Again, it’s only an opinion, but it seems there is something terribly wrong with this entire scenario. Ignoring the fact that there is a difference between right and wrong, it seems we must have failed at some point, whether in the home, church or school to educate some people, and especially this former assistant district attorney, of that basic principle.
I have to believe he’s trying to convince others it is society’s right to commit theft (no matter what age), and then rationalizes the argument because businesses carry insurance to protect from theft. I guess with the same logic, individuals looting and burning down businesses are also to be condoned. Oh, but wait, didn’t that happen not too long ago in Baltimore and wasn’t it another “officer of the court/mayor that directed it be allowed." Hum, maybe ignorance is contagious after all. But, I digress.
I still find it extremely difficult to grasp that such an adult wouldn’t understand that theft protection is a cost to a business resulting in higher prices for what they sell. But then, perhaps by his reasoning, if businesses overlooked theft they could eliminate the cost of clerks to deal with cash and carry, since it would all be carry. Ah, but then they would probably still expect someone to bag their merchandise.
I apologize if I’m being flippant about this, but this is another cut away at the moral and ethical fiber of our country. It’s possible this is just another biased misfit playing to an audience, but in consideration of the humiliation and criticism our law enforcement is besieged with today, the issue becomes dreadfully serious.
It’s time we get serious about correcting the downward spiral of this great country!
Ciao, Baby