Opinions

Jenkins: Only fools -- or worse -- chant for death of cops

This was supposed to be a warm and fuzzy Christmas column. Unbridled joy. Elves. Kids. Sugar plums and cookies. You know, to fit the season. Then, I saw a chilling video of useful idiots in what major news outlets called a "peaceful" protest in New York City chanting: "What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"

That got me wondering: Who are we?

The New York City goons calling for murdering cops were frothing at the deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner of Staten Island, New York. Brown was shot dead attacking a police officer. Garner was an overweight, asthmatic petty criminal with coronary disease who died of apparent heart failure at a hospital after resisting arrest for selling illegal cigarettes. Grand juries that saw all the evidence -- not just media accounts -- refused to indict officers in either case.

Somehow, this sorry pair is a cause celebre among those whose political agenda requires they peddle the noxious insanity that this nation's police are murdering people -- mostly of color -- with impunity; that grand juries of ordinary citizens cover for them.

These are people down on this country; people more than willing to tell you the problem always is America; that no matter the circumstance, this country is wrong. Of course, none of that even begins to make the first lick of sense.

It's the holiday season, so let us be honest: There is so much right with the United States that it boggles the mind. Everybody but us seems to know that.

We are blessed to live in a country of boundless opportunity, with rock-solid institutions, property rights and the rule of law, with a Constitution focused on protecting individuals, not a sovereign or the privilege of class. It is a country of constant self-examination and real progress in civil and individual rights.

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Why do people so often risk everything to come here? They are seeking the chance to better themselves, to improve their circumstances, to bolster their family's fortunes and chart the course of their own future.

It is a powerful draw. When they walk across deserts to get here, or crowd into tiny boats to chance dangerous ocean currents, or simply step off an airplane and hide here in plain sight, most are seeking the chance to succeed.

The want opportunity -- the chance to pursue enlightened self-interest. The idea of upward mobility, of starting with nothing in a virtually classless society and being able with luck and hard work to make something of yourself for the first time, must be intoxicating.

What better place to do that than right here? We are an educated nation of gizmos, technology, science and entrepreneurship We are a nation of arts and history and engineering and medicine. We are religious, or not so religious. We are diverse; a nation of charity; a nation of caring. We work hard. We play hard.

This nation is so successful at offering success that our poor -- with cellphones, cars, apartments, cable TV and welfare -- likely would be rich in poorer parts of the world.

A measure of that success: Hordes of Americans are not sprinting across our borders in the dead of night to escape into Canada or Mexico. You do not see them crowding aboard small boats to set sail for some distant land. For the most part, we live safe, even uneventful, lives. We do not have secret police knocking on our doors at night and hauling us off to camps or unmarked mass graves.

The police, so happily and enthusiastically vilified by the left, are not lining up people and shooting them. The left and their media pals would have you believe cops spend their time gun in hand, blood in their eyes. They leave out the part where officers routinely defend our rights and our lives without using force.

Cops do make mistakes in split-second decisions; no one is perfect, but it is far-fetched -- even deranged -- to believe they conspire to murder people of color, no matter what the Al Sharptons say. Moreover, cops do get prosecuted and imprisoned when they screw up, just like the rest of us.

We are many things in this great country, but what we most certainly are not is a nation that calls for the murder of police officers for doing their jobs -- and we should condemn those who do.

Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.

The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com

Paul Jenkins

Paul Jenkins is a former Associated Press reporter, managing editor of the Anchorage Times, an editor of the Voice of the Times and former editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.

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