No conservative on earth should feel comfortable with the way the Ferguson PD has been operating for years, even according to their own documents. . . .
“We can do better than our response to the Ferguson DOJ report. And our country deserves better from us [conservatives].”
— Conservative Leon H. Wolf at the ultra-conservative “Red State” blog
Pictured: the man who led one of the country’s most incompetent, brutal and clearly racist police departments in America. Even a writer at the ultra-conservative “Red State” blog has begrudgingly arrived at the conclusion that Ferguson P.D is racist and brutal, which could have been discerned the first night that Ferguson P.D. reacted with tanks and war gear to what started as clearly peaceful protests.
Writing at http://www.redstate.com–about as conservative of a blog as you’ll find–Leon H. Wolf has a genuinely fair and balanced take on Attorney General Eric Holder’s DOJ report on Ferguson.
Wolf took the time to actually read the 102-page report by Holder–imagine that, reading something for yourself to draw you own conclusions–and came to conclusions that shocked his conservative sensibilities:
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It’s unfortunate, the way news is consumed and interpreted in the age of twitter. Everyone feels tremendous pressure to form an opinion quickly and state it loudly and with certainty. Once this has been done, people are highly resistant to changing their minds and they become impervious to new evidence, often dismissing out of hand outright facts just because they are reported by a given source (e.g., “the media is untrustworthy” or “you can’t trust the Holder Department of Justice”).
“Perhaps nowhere has this phenomenon been more obvious (or regrettable) than in Ferguson, Missouri, in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown.
“Interpreting the news out of Ferguson has become a part of ideological tribalism in which, if you are a conservative you stand for the Ferguson PD and if you are a liberal you stand against them.
“Thus, liberals have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that “hands up, don’t shoot” never happened.
“Conservatives, on the other hand, have become highly resistant to assimilating information that strongly suggests that the Ferguson PD – as with many other municipal police departments in the country – truly is out of control, in that it recklessly violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of Ferguson and does so in a manner that has a clearly disproportionate impact on minorities.
After laying out five points that disturbed him about the Holder’s findings in Ferguson, Wolf writes as part of his conclusion:
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“Until we, as a people, are willing to understand and address the problem, it will never get better. Until we are willing to hold our municipal officials accountable for using the police force to suck money out of people’s pockets instead of legitimately protecting the public safety, the problem will get worse. But most importantly, until and unless we are able to emotionally detach ourselves from the horrible Michael Brown situation and see that what has been exposed, even according to the (probably whitewashed) FPD records, is a travesty, there is no hope for improvement.
“And I categorically reject and condemn the claim that this report or President Obama’s comments upon it led to the shooting of those two officers in Ferguson. Like everyone else, I deplore and condemn these acts of unjust violence. But the fact that they occurred does not mean that the truth behind the report caused them. It is possible to condemn unjust and oppressive policing and also the unprovoked murder of police, and it is indicative of societal sickness caused by excessive partisanship that makes us unable to see that.
“We can do better than our response to the Ferguson DOJ report. And our country deserves better from us.”
Now, if only the Rev.(?) Al Sharpton would read the report without his blinders on . . .
And if only Obama and-or Hillary had the stomach to denounce and condemn the Rev.(?) Al for all the reckless damage he has done for so long. (Not to mention MSNBC, the liberal propaganda answer to conservative propaganda Fox News. Don’t get me started on hyper-partisan news networks and the damage they do.)
It irks me to no end that Al Sharpton constantly quotes and evokes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was something that Sharpton just isn’t, and that is a justice fighter who fought for justice and fairness with the biblical tenet of reconciliation as the ultimate end to the justice fight.
People will be honoring and reading and listening to the words of the great preacher King Jr.–who knew his Bible and could hold his own with the greatest theologians of his time–long after Sharpton, a man of zero biblical and theological depth, is forgotten.
Ultimate reconciliation is what King, Desmond Tutu and so many other Christian and Jewish justice fighters envisioned.
Al Sharpton fights for justice for minorities and the poor by traveling in limousines and business class.
I don’t think King and Tutu and those of their integrity did it this way.
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*And then there was the wrong-headed reaction from Franklin Graham, who hasn’t helped matters and doesn’t seem to understand the theological value of reconciliation himself. He would do well to spend a week on the streets of Ferguson with all the peaceful clergy working for reconciliation there, who slug away for justice and racial equality but don’t get the headlines that Al Sharpton gets.
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