I awakened from the dream, knowing it was just a dream but
feeling the intensity of the emotion that it produced in me. I was a policeman
again, in a small office, in a small town with a couple of other officers when
three people came in. They were strangers in town and as it turns out, they
were activist/actors, on a mission to challenge law enforcement and to prove
that police were enemies of freedom.
They had a story and each actor played their roles well. I don’t remember what the pitch was, but in
my dream, I recognized the play early in the performance and I, and the other
officers, were on guard. Other law
enforcement professionals recognize the phenomenon; your mind is suddenly on
alert from some subtle cue, and suddenly “things just don’t seem right”. It’s hard to explain to the inexperienced,
but it is a kind of intuition that operates deep in the subconscious. For the
police, your life depends on this intuition.
The story told by the visitors was intended to cause the police
to overreact and their plan was each of the “players” would be then be “mistreated”
in some way that would engender sympathy and support for their “cause”. With a
clarity not often present in dreams, I saw that each of these (two men and a
woman) had a different view of just exactly where the line is drawn between
civil order and individual freedom, but they all agreed that the status quo was
too “extreme” in favor of social order and, in their view, too “hostile” to
individual liberty.
The details of the “play” are a bit fuzzy now, and probably
unimportant anyway, but as I lay in the pre-dawn darkness, I was keenly aware
that this dream reflected a deep truth that reflects a present reality in our
culture. There are people who understand
and adapt to the notion that some individual freedom is voluntarily placed in
subordination to maintain civil order based upon shared values. There are
people who believe that the system favors order at the expense of liberty (in
varying degrees). Then, there are those on the other hand who believe that
excessive focus on liberty has threatened, and is destroying order (also, in
varying degrees). The “activists” occupy the fringes at both ends of the
spectrum. The three activists in my dream all felt that social order was
oppressive and that the freedoms of the individual were insufficiently
appreciated. I remember knowing in my dream that these actors did not all agree
as to what a “perfect” society would look like but that their “mission” in life
was to promote their view that police were the visible manifestation of all
that was wrong with our government and our system of laws.
The dream played out with all three being arrested (which
they intended) but in a different manner, and for different reasons than they
had planned. The other officers and myself conducted ourselves in a manner that
was completely unexpected by our “visitors” (as would happen when prior intel
would permit the officers to inject an element not foreseen by the antagonists).
Following some “dream-world drama”, and one of them nearly being killed in a “resist
arrest” move, all three were “unarrested” after being “schooled” on philosophy
and law. Some of my former students will nod knowingly, because they apprehend
that this is “how I roll”. Even in my dreams (some might argue ONLY in my
dreams) I am still “the professor”.
In my dream, as in real life, the failed “plan” of the activists,
and the subsequent manner of arrest, and the fact that one of them was almost
killed in the process, had unintended consequences. The experience resulted in one of the actors
having a complete change of heart and mind, the second one being seriously
intellectually challenged as to his underlying philosophy, and the third one
only hardening his heart and steeling his resolve to destroy the system; One “win” for the good guys, one “loss”, and
one “maybe”.
As I lay there deciding whether to get up or try to squeeze in
another hour of sleep, another recent
memory came to mind that seemed to illustrate and underscore the philosophical content
of the dream, and convince me to get up and write these thoughts down on paper.
A couple of days earlier, I was on Watts Bar Lake in my 28’ sailboat with my
good friend, a retired NYPD officer.
Eddie was at the helm as we motored back to the marina (the wind was
calm so there was no sailing back) and I was viewing the distant shoreline
through powerful binoculars. If I rested my elbows on the cabin roof, the
vibration of the engine and movement of the boat on the water distorted my
distant vision. Trying to eliminate all movement of my body by resting solidly
on the boat only transmitted the minor (but distinct) movements to the
binoculars, and as a consequence, the image of the far shore was too blurry to
be useful. But… if I stood steady on the
deck, and let my brain allow my body to compensate for the movement of the
boat, and absorb the vibration of the engine, then I was able to view distant
objects with clarity. My body became the “buffer” between the dynamics of the
boat moving through the water, and the static shoreline.
I think that the balance of order and liberty is like that. The
“boat” is the firm foundation of the law, rooted in history, tradition,
philosophy, and morality, and validated by the commitment of “we the people” to
that morality and our traditions. But
history shows that even in the best of times, there are minor imperfections,
and “vibrations” that are systemic. That is the “lake” that is life. It is
dynamic, fluid, and powerful. We try to
navigate through the waters of life towards some distant objective that we know
is there but that we cannot clearly see because of the instability of our
situation. We need a system to provide
some steady, predictable, mechanism to get us over, across, and through, the
waters but unless we are all “on board” we will not reach the destination. As
individuals, we must remain flexible, and “give” a little to the demands of the
water, and the realities of the boat, to get the clearest vision possible for the
future safety and security for all. The
solution for clearer vision, and a safer journey is NOT to get out of (or to
destroy) the boat!
In my dream, those three visitors saw “the boat” (the system
of laws and government) as the natural enemy of individual liberty. The police
were the visible representation of all that was wrong, and “oppressive” about
the system. The visitors wanted to destroy the system in order to arrive at the
same far distant shore as everybody else, but without the confining structure
and limitations that the system inevitably requires. In the words of president
Dwight D. Eisenhower, "A people that values its privileges above its
principles soon loses both." Fundamental principles of liberty are
balanced by fundamental principles of duty.
The system that was created and which we have struggled to maintain, is a
balance between the maximum amount of individual liberty that can be achieved
at the same time as the maximum amount of tolerance that must be extended to
the “vibrations” of our civic duties and responsibilities. In the words of esteemed
commentator and author Dr. Thomas Sowell, “"Tolerating imperfections is
the price of freedom."
The media in the last few months has carried a number of
stories of conflict between members of the public and the police, with whom
some citizens feel a strong sense of anger and fear. The police likewise feel a
sense of anger and fear at those citizens because we are caught in a classic “values
conflict”. The media capitalizes on the
fear and anger by refusing (in many cases) to be “fair and balanced” in their
presentation of the news. The result has been several police officers, and
several citizens killed. In at least one recent case, it seems clear that there
was an example of misuse of police authority and a blatant abuse of power. In other cases, careful review has shown that
the citizens acted in frenzied fury and out of (calculated?) misrepresentation
of the facts. The issue for everyone is whether, or to the extent, that the
machinery of government (the system) has pushed so hard for social order that it
has lost all tolerance for the individual rights of the community. The “balance”
between social order and individual freedom has been seriously compromised in
some communities. The great danger is that such a condition, if handled poorly,
will escalate to a national problem. Every
time the issue is approached from passion rather than reason, the players
resemble those in my dream: someone with a personal “axe to grind” whose notions
of individual liberty trump the necessity of lawful order. I fear that without
wise leadership, and a deeper understanding of, and appreciation for, the
dynamic tension between order and liberty, we will lose both. The “activists”
need to acquiesce to the ruling of the majority as to our national (historic) values
and the limitations of our tolerance of disorder.
-JAS- 2015
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