“Autoimmune diseases,” per the Wikipedia article on same, “arise from an inappropriate immune response of the body against substances and tissues normally present in the body. In other words, the immune system mistakes some part of the body as a pathogen and attacks its own cells.”
Analogizing from autoimmune disease to political government has its dangers — foremost among them the fact that any such analogy requires us to think of society as a sort of super-organism with its own interests separate from and superseding those of its constituent parts, people — but I don’t think the analogy is a poor one. If there really is such a thing as “the body politic,” the nation-state is to that body as lupus or multiple sclerosis is to an individual human body.
The most advanced stages of the disease are easily identifiable: Mussolini’s “everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” sums them up rather neatly. (more…)
Published today at CopBlock.org is an article by William N. Grigg on the Orwellian irony in the slogan of police in the United States, “To protect and serve”. He overviews lawsuits in New Hampshire and other states which suggest that some police believe civilians to have an active duty to protect and to serve them.
Since the news broke earlier this week that Beverly Mutrie was being sued by officers wounded in the raid on Cullen Mutrie’s residence in Greenland, I have wondered what made the plaintiffs believe that this lawsuit could be considered legitimate. Commentary in the Union Leader acknowledged that Beverly Mutrie is not currently facing any criminal charges connected to her son’s alleged oxycodone distribution. Unless police care to provide evidence that she had direct knowledge of ongoing criminal activity, this case seems like quite a reach. Cullen Mutrie and Brittany Tibbetts were accused of selling opiate pharmaceuticals out of their house, which was owned by Ms. Mutrie. Does evidence exist that Ms. Mutrie had knowledge of a drug ring, or is the emotional weight of a murdered police officer and wounded SWAT units being used to extort a mother grieving the loss of her child? It is an awful shame that anyone had to experience violence on the April evening of the botched raid. It is unfortunate that so many, especially in law enforcement, fail to recognize how the system manufactures opportunities for crime profiteering, which the state then powers a war to desist.
Your “Duty” To Protect and Serve the Police
by William N. Grigg
Tom Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society has this to say about the Ademo conviction:
