A return to the sources:
making sense of Minnesota.
Recent events in the United States have prompted me to think about how the moral climate of our country has changed during my lifetime. As a child in the 1970s I was interested in the same type of TV shows and news stories that interest me today. My favorite show was The Streets of San Francisco, which chronicled the cases of a veteran homicide detective, Lt. Mike Stone, played by Karl Malden, and his young, college-educated partner, Inspector Steve Keller, played by Michael Douglas in his first major role. The chaos of recent months has brought back memories of one episode in particular.
In “License to Kill,” aired December 5, 1974, viewers were introduced to Steve Keller’s predecessor, played by Murray Hamilton, who had partnered with Mike Stone for nine years. In this episode the former partner is now an ex-cop who is obsessed with avenging the murder of his own son by a hitman. At the end of the episode, the ex-cop tracks down and corners the hitman. While the hitman is on the ground pleading for his life, the grieving father and former police detective points a gun at the hitman’s head and is about to pull the trigger. Karl Malden’s character, Lt. Mike Stone, shoots and kills his friend and former partner of nine years in order to stop him from executing the man who murdered his own son.
In my lifetime we have gone from that moral climate to a moral climate in which large segments of the public and many political leaders appear indifferent to the value of human life, provided that the life in question involved political sympathies different than one’s own. In my formative years the public understood that the police were obligated to defend even the lives of murderers, who could only be punished after due process and a fair trial. Now the killings of people for driving away slowly from a law enforcement officer, or filming a protest, or uttering controversial political views at a college forum, can elicit attitudes of indifference or even celebration from both politicians and millions of Americans.
In the Renee Good case the video shows that she was not driving fast enough to have killed an officer or to even have seriously injured an officer. In the Alex Pretti case ICE officers used physical force as a first resort, tackling Pretti without even an attempt at deescalation. In the ensuing confrontation ICE officers continued shooting even after Pretti was motionless on the ground. America has come a long way from Lieutenant Mike Stone.
Each act of violence has been followed by a cascade of lies. The most glaring example of this is the Alex Pretti case, in which the Secretary of Homeland Security proclaimed that Pretti attacked Ice Officers and the head of Border Patrol asserted that Pretti intended to “massacre” ICE agents, only for this claim to be refuted by multiple videos showing that he did not assault officers. In the Renee Good case President Trump accused Good of attempting to run over the ICE agent without even commenting on the slow speed at which Good was driving. Dishonest minimization of official violence is not patriotic, or American, or conservative. It is simply wrong.
Our legal system is based on the Judeo-Christian moral principle that each human life is sacred. A person’s right to life does not disappear or diminish when he or she expresses a contentious political opinion, or films a protest, or even when a person refuses a lawful command of a police officer. A motorist who fails to stop for a police officer may be guilty of a crime, but that crime is not punishable by death. As a criminal defense attorney I frequently view police body camera videos. I can attest that police officers routinely handle much more violent confrontations than either the Alex Pretti or Renee Good incidents without ever drawing their weapons.
As American citizens, it is important to remember that our bedrock moral and constitutional values do not change with each Presidential Administration. Donald Trump may have altered current political realities, but he cannot repeal “Thou shalt not kill.” And with Trump in his final term conservative deference to him is becoming increasingly illogical. In 1920 Warren Harding successfully campaigned on the slogan of a “return to normalcy.” What the United States needs now and in the years ahead is a return not merely to normalcy but to first principles. Anyone my age or older remembers how Ronald Reagan conducted himself in a way that commanded respect even from his most ardent opponents. That is true strength, and it is what American voters should insist upon.