F@ck the Police

I take my nine year old son out for a walk every now and again, usually a few times a week. The walks are opportunities for casual talk, and a topic that came up a few months ago was the slogan "f@ck the police" painted on a walls by some left leaning anarchist. My son found it distasteful. Why would anyone paint such a message? The police are our friends. They keep us safe.

While I'm not particularly fond of graffiti messages, I took the opportunity to tell my son that the police are not always our friends. The police enforces laws, and some laws are stupid. People can get caught up in uncomfortable situations for no good reasons at all, and a situation like that may have been behind the impulse to paint that message on a wall.

I don't think my son got the idea right away, and I didn't have any good example at hand, so the message remained largely unexplained until a few days ago when a police constable was kind enough to demonstrate clearly for our son what the message entailed. We were stopped and harassed by the police for our mere intention to draw some fresh air down by the beach. The experience was very uncomfortable, our liberties plainly and clearly violated by the arbitrary enforcement of a stupid law.

Then there was the news on TV two days later of people being arrested and fined for playing dominos with friends, another clear example of mindless harassment. That seems to have cemented the message in my son's mind. To my surprise and joy, I heard him utter "f@ck the police" before he rolled over laughing for the sheer idiocy of it all.

A life lesson richer, my son is now well on his way to become a libertarian, just like his father. As the saying goes: every cloud has a silver lining.

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