“Off the pigs.” Such was the heroic cry bravely sprayed on buildings and shouted at countless demonstrations, back around 1970.
If you lived through that ugliness and thought it was behind us, think again. If it was before your time, review the history and be warned. We could face a replay.
The bloodthirsty spirit of grievance, excused with revolutionary rhetoric, lingers in the body politic like a virus, going dormant but not going away, flaring periodically into violence. The Young-Bishop police shootings were an example. One shocking incident is not a trend. But it should warn us the pathology is still present and must be counteracted.
Was it in fact Raul Garcia-Gomez, the illegal alien from Mexico, who assassinated Officer Donnie Young and wounded Officer Jack Bishop on May 8? Evidence suggests it was. Did the killer snarl, “Off the pigs,” as he fired? Certainly his action screamed it.
“Off the pigs” declares open season on law enforcement. “Kill policemen” is the incitement, and the dehumanizing slang only makes it worse. The death-dealing is to be done with no compunction, in righteous retribution, lustily and with relish – which pretty well describes the way this coward ambushed Donnie and Jack, doesn’t it?
But this case is not just about those three men. It’s about all of us, America 2005. We need to ask ourselves where this death-virus came from, this attitude that if life hasn’t gone exactly your way, it’s all right to gun down a cop, then go home to your woman, then work your dishwashing shift, then run to your mother in L.A. – and then recross the border to sanctuary in Mexico.
If the virus fed on things we’ve been passively accepting, maybe even rewarding – and I believe it did – then all Coloradans have work to do. While the fugitive is hunted and the widow mourns and the wounded man heals, our body politic must also undertake some healing. Otherwise we miss the lesson of that bloody Sunday; we invite worse days to come; and we risk that Young may have died in vain.
The lesson of May 8 is threefold:
When I argued this in our TV debate, Post columnist Susan Barnes-Gelt chided me: “We must live on different planets. Safety is the number one issue for every urban politician, mayor and council. Our local media supports the police, as does the community.” Their support was evidenced by the turnout for Young’s funeral, she said – adding that no immigration policy on earth could have prevented this “senseless tragedy,” and shame on Congressman Tom Tancredo for suggesting otherwise.
Conventional wisdom agrees with Barnes-Gelt, but reality disagrees. Mayor John Hickenlooper, restaurateur and urban politician, has disastrously pushed cop control instead of crime control. His helpless pose on the sanctuary policy is pathetic. As for the media, they overblew the Ismael Mena, Paul Childs and Frank Lobato shootings. They are now back to overblowing the spy-files issue – and sympathizing with Lisl Auman. Denver police budgets, recruitment and morale are down. The murder rate is up.
We need elected officials and thought-leaders who unapologetically insist that America is good, that law is our protector, not our oppressor. That as a free people we have the option of working to change the law, but not of ignoring it. Unless these living truths are embodied in policy, renewed in every generation and imbued in every immigrant, liberty and order will die.
In their place will grow a deadly lie: that the law is an enemy, hence the lawman is a “pig” and the killshot a justified “off.” The virus that dealt death to Officer Young was incubated by this nation’s stubborn, purposeful neglect of democratic civics. Its effects will only worsen with time.
If we take warning now, Donnie will not have died in vain.
John Andrews is a Colorado fellow with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank. He was president of the Colorado Senate in 2003-04.
