Yesterday, Father Ernesto continued his discussion on Kuhn and a changing paradigm shift. He will continue that tomorrow with a small discussion on post-modernism and how that has impacted our view of truth. However, he brought up an event from 1946 nicknamed the McMinn County War. There is no recent comparable event, but it is certainly true that there still continues to be a strong feeling in America about being against unfairness. A recent case is happening right now in the State of Arizona.
As you know, Arizona has passed some of the strictest laws regarding illegal immigration. The Supreme Court recently upheld part of their laws when they declared that it was perfectly proper for a state to insist that businesspeople check on the citizenship or visa status of all their employees under penalty of a severe fine. Other parts of the law, including allowing the police to request proof of citizenship either after an arrest or when there is “reasonable” suspicion are still held up, particularly the part that allows the check for almost any reason. The fear is that a climate is created that will be unfair to Latino citizens, who will be presumptively considered illegal and/or criminals while the likelihood of the same happening to non-Latinos is close to nil.
Recently Tucson had an example of that. On 5 May, a Tucson SWAT team served a search warrant on the house of a person who was thought to be engaged in cross-border drug dealing. Because of that they went in with a SWAT team, according to the video clip released by the sheriff. When they entered, they saw a man with a rifle. The police state that 71 shots were fired, not one of them from the person holding the rifle. The person holding the rifle was hit by only 22 of the shots. That means that 49 of the shots went zipping around the house. At this point, two stories emerge. However, the key points are that the man killed was a Latino, was a Marine combat veteran of Iraq, NO drugs were found in the house, and there was a wife and a child inside. What has added fuel to the situation is that there are recorded 911 calls from the wife begging for medical attention for her husband. SWAT claims that medical personnel were not called in because there was a physician’s determination that a person was unlikely to survive those shots. What both sides agree on is that they let the man lie there and die with no attempt to give any medical aid. To say that the Tucson community is inflamed is an understatement. You can read part of the story from KGUN9, one of the local stations and also here. The story has now gone international as an example of how the USA is a Wild West country with police who are barely under control.
As with most stories of this type, there are two versions of what happened when the SWAT team went in. Everyone agrees that the man was holding a rifle. Everyone agrees that he did not fire it and the police now state that the safety was still on the rifle. In other words, the man reacted like a typical well trained Marine. You have protection in your hands, but you do not fire until you have correctly identified the threat and unless there really is a threat. The safety is kept on to ensure that there is no accidental misfire. Unfortunately, it appears that the Tucson police approach is somewhat different. What is interesting to Father Orthoduck are a couple of things.
First, the arguments have not broken into the typical conservative vs liberal arguments. In fact, Oath Keepers (an organization that is clearly not liberal) is planning a memorial protest march on Memorial Day for what they feel is tantamount to murder by police. This is a case in which gun-rights advocates are on the same side as civil rights advocates. Gun-rights advocates are very adamant that a person has the right to be armed inside his own home, even to rifles and bullet-resistant vests (which the man killed was NOT wearing) and to not take for granted that just because someone yells police that this means that they are police. They are also adamant that it is police responsibility to refrain from shooting a person, even if that person has a weapon in their hands. They must be given a clear opportunity to lay the weapon down as the person had the right to not trust until he had visual identification of the intruders. They call this a police over-reaction and a clear violation of Second Amendment rights. Civil rights advocates have questioned some police SWAT methods for a long time and clearly question the decisions to fire and to not give medical aid. They also state that this is precisely the danger of Arizona’s approach towards Latinos and an example of the racial bias that those laws breed. It is odd to find those two groups on the same side. But the reason that Oath Keepers is being cited is that all Oath Keepers must either be active-duty, veterans, or members (active or retired) of a police force. This is somewhat like the McMinn situation.
Second, follow the first link that Father Orthoduck gave you and read the comments, though some will be hard to read. One side is the side I cited above. The other side is basically the side that the police are rarely, if ever, wrong. Look carefully at the arguments, because they embody some of the effects on USA society of the publication of Kuhn’s paper and of post-modernist philosophy. Count up how many of the comments contain reasoned arguments and statements and how many of them simply say (on whichever side) that this is an example of the other side’s rampant hatred of … [fill in the blank]. That is, how many of the comments argue (without saying it this way) that the other person’s view of this incident is simply because they are a [fill in the blank: a liberal, a conservative, a police hater, an anti-gun advocate]? How many of the comments argue that the other person’s interpretation of the event is simply a reflection of their worldview and not the result of any reasoned analysis? This of course, implies that the writer of the comment is the reasonable and rational one.
You see, both “paradigm shift” and “worldview” came into the popular lingo of this culture and into the popular belief, and have deeply affected conversation in the USA since. In fact, it has almost done away with conversation and dialogue turning us into a nation that is at times almost schizophrenic.
Father Ernesto will resume his topic tomorrow.
Having been the victim police acting on racism AND having known people who were fooled by “police” who were not police, I have issues about people rushing into a house yelling police with guns drawn. Anyone can go to a t shirt store and get hoodies or shirts which say SWAT or Police or even FBI–or even make them themselves. And it seems to me that shooting someone who is merely HOLDING a gun is a reaction that is way overboard (in Vietnam soldiers in a WAR were not permitted to fire unless fired upon!!)–that being said, I have a niece who is a police officer in the Atlanta area and one of her fellow officers was killed while in uniform knocking politely on a door asking the whereabouts of a person to serve a warrent–gun holstered and badge clearly apparent. I do not have a solution to what seems to me to be a spiraling out of control of violence–each incident either of the killing of a law enforcement officer or the killing by police of an innocent driving the situation into ever increasing level of tension. But I must say that the duly constituted authority has the moral and ethical duty to be careful, dispassionate and to maintain not just the letter but the spirit of the law. WHen law stoops to the level of evil, where do good people go for help?