Respecting the Law

OUR ESTEEMED BUT a bit beleaguered Attorney General Mr. Sessions, speaking to a bunch of cops, said to them that respect for law enforcement is the basis for safer communities, or something like that. True, but bland. Leave it to a southern conservative with just a smidge of racism in his background to offer rock solid but boring, banal platitudes. but we mustn't complain. At least Mr. Sessions, unlike his boss, didn't tell the nation's cops to start beating up accused criminals upon apprehension, much to his credit. Actually, more is needed than respect for law enforcement, to obtain safer communities. Not merely respect for law enforcement is necessary, but, more deeply, respect for the law, that ornate platform elevating the human species above the rest of the animal kingdom, as a wise man once said, elevating us above savagery and barbarism, which is exactly where we'd be, without law. Then, there is respect for civilization, or the idea of civilization, from which law cometh, the idea that a large number of fundamentally fearful and often violent animals can cooperate to build an organized and productive society, in which violence is kept to a minimum. Hell, the human race only killed one hundred million people in military combat during the last century. That isn't too bad. It could have been worse, although its hard to imagine how.. Is stone age civilization more peaceful? Not according to the plains Indians of the old American west. Not according to their documented behavior. Stone age or high tech, humans are often violent in large groups, ironically, because it is those large groups, and the cooperation they foster, which permit our very existence.