If men were angels.

There is a very disturbing video that is making the round on the internet. It is an actual video of a Texas highway patrolman being shot and killed by a 72 year-old man who was being stopped for not wearing his seat belt. The patrolman cannot be seen, but the shooter can and the patrolman’s death can be heard. The website it NOT workplace friendly due to sexual content surrounding the site and the sounds are chilling; be warned. Click HERE for the video.

The shooting of a 92 year-old woman by police during a raid on a suspected drug house brought this to the fore. The immediate assumption was that the cops had shot an obviously innocent person. Until it came out that she had shot and wounded three of the police before herself being shot.

The shooting became a cause celebre especially among the Libertarian side of the political spectrum, partly because the police had a no-knock warrant for the house. What seems to have Libertarians riled up is that no-knock raids are very often associated with drug busts and Libertarians despise the illegal drug laws.

The Web site Patterico’s Pontifications brought this subject to my attention, and I followed a number of links to become familiar with the subject. I was interested in the comments that followed the posting. What I found interesting and extremely offensive among the responses was the dismissal of the crime and a focus on the seatbelt laws.

I have nothing against the police officer, but he died doing something valueless and counterproductive that should not be what law enforcement is about. It should be about public safety — protecting people from external dangers, not their own safety equipment choices — enforcing public morality as in not harming others (good vs. evil), enforcing court orders to protect, not take away, free citizens’ rights.

If he had at least shot the man aiming a rifle at him I might acknowledge some value in his final actions. While undoubtedly the officer was brave and held off firing either due to decency or shock (many people freeze when confronted with aggression), police officers in free countries should not be enforcing helmut or seatbelt laws. These laws should be struck down.

Then I realized what this reaction reminded me of. It was the Muslim reaction to 9/11 and its aftermath.

The larger American community is asking why the Muslims community is not expressing more outrage at the horrific carnage that their co-religionists are committing throughout the world. Instead, after a pro-forma denunciation of whatever murders have been committed by Muslims, we get immediate cries or racism and discrimination against Muslims. See the Six Imams story as a perfect example.

However, we have to look no further than Patterico’s blog to see exactly the same reaction by our Libertarian friends. “Too bad, he’s dead; now let’s talk about the evils of seatbelt or drug laws.”

I once had sympathy for Libertarianism as some people had sympathy for Communism. As an ideal, it may have some merit. The only problem with either philosophy is people. As Madison said in Federalist #51: :If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." But human history testifies to human infallibility, human desire for dominance and human evil. We live in a fallen world in which neither Libertarianism nor Communism will lead to any result except a state of nature, red in tooth and claw, and one in which the compromises found in a representative republic may be the best we can do.

Libertarians pretend that there was once a time when men were left alone to govern themselves for the most part and want a return to that state of freedom. But it is a freedom that never was and never will be. They dream of Utopia and will deliver a Dystopia in which 72 year old men in old cars shoot and kill a young husband and father to avoid a traffic ticket.