The Washington Post:
The Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association, which has publicly supported Ward, said Thursday that it did not stand by people who it described as arming themselves, breaking into publicly owned buildings and intimidating and harassing local residents and officials.
“These men and women are asking for change, and we support their right to challenge our government to make change,” the association said in a statement. “However, we do not agree with or support any citizen or elected official who would advocate for change in a manner that includes illegal action, threats of violence, or violence against any citizen of the United States.”
You can read it all for yourself, but I don’t need to know any more than this in order to form an opinion and make a judgment. This is a terrible position statement, and it would have been better for them never to have spoken of the matter than to say something like that.
Take that statement as it is, because it doesn’t need context in order to understand it. ” … we do not agree with or support any citizen or elected official who would advocate for change in a manner that includes illegal action, threats of violence, or violence against any citizen of the United States.”
Ever, under any circumstances, for any reason. Or so we may conclude, since they provided no qualifiers, stipulations, conditions or caveats. Unfortunately, we live in a democracy rather than a constitutional republic, where 51% of the people can vote to impoverish the other 49% for their own benefit.
So what if it was worse than mere wealth redistribution (which is theft)? Suppose America voted to sacrifice every fourth male child born on the final day of each month in a bloody sacrifice to the gods of football? And what if it was commonly accepted practice to appease the sports heroes in our broken society? Would it be okay with these Sheriffs to opposes such actions with violence, or should it be only with protests? What would the Sheriffs do? Would they actively engaged in baby confiscation, or protection of the baby confiscators because that was the law?
But we would never do something like that in America, you say. Or would we? Do we?
