Defund the Police: What's in a Word?

Many Americans who are not decidedly left of center politically are criticizing the choice of "defund" to capture what should be done about police departments that have strayed so far from "To Protect and to Serve."

Of course it is an obvious case of the turning of tables.

It has long been a favorite tactic of conservatives, combining their social conservatism with their professed fiscal conservatism (that never applies to their pets, such as defense contractors and the military budget) to withhold or withdraw funding from anything they don't like.  So they want to defund Planned Parenthood, public broadcasting (PBS and NPR), the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, public health research on gun violence, and "failing" public schools.

Indeed, this is the way they approach government agencies they dislike.  They want to defund the Department of Education to the point of abolishing it.  Likewise for the EPA.

This is their overall approach to government.  Steadfastly denying the role of government as a proper agent of the people, doing our bidding for the benefit of American society (recall the phrase "promote the general Welfare" from the preamble to the Constitution), they want to shrink it.

How?  "Starve the beast."

Nothing, perhaps, captures the sentiment underlying "defund the police" better than "starve the beast" - because so many of us are currently seeing that American policing is a great beast, or at the very least employs far too many officers whose behavior is beastly, working in departments that do little or nothing to prevent or restrain such behavior.

Defund the police.  Starve the beast.

Don't like the word?  Does it conjure up a lawless America?  How can we be a nation of laws if there is no one to enforce those laws?

Do you prefer "reform?"  Fine.  Maybe that is correct in concept, but what about in execution?  Reformers - in this nation so much given to holding tightly to the status quo - are consistently frustrated in their efforts, forced to settle for the most modest incremental changes.

This simple fact leads to "defund" and even "abolish."

So let us return to the question: how can we be a nation of laws if there is no one to enforce them?

But before we ponder the answer to that question, we must examine the premise.  Should this be a nation of laws?  Or must this be a nation of justice?

We must focus on becoming a nation of justice.  And then we can decide what laws promote justice, and how the enforcement of laws must be conducted so that it, too promotes justice.

We are so very far away from that.  Incremental reforms of policing in America are not the answer.  When you are wrestling with a beast, you cannot settle for trimming its whiskers to make it look less threatening and think you have accomplished something.