Bob Schwartz

It is historically and philosophically strange that Republicans and their supporters make such a big deal about law and order as a patriotic imperative. Of course many of the extreme law and order types don’t seem much like historians or philosophers.

The British worried that the American colonists were getting much too independent and too insistent on their rights. At the last British National Convention (BNC) held in the colonies, speaker after speaker demanded law and order, lest the colonists start getting ideas and moving into the British neighborhoods.

Okay, there wasn’t actually a BNC. But the British did fear change and a loss of control, did look down on the inferior colonists, and did use law and order as a chief weapon to maintain the status quo.

So the next time you hear the law and order pitch, know that these Republicans would have been on the side of the British rather than on the side of our fighting founders. Kind of un-American, don’t you think?