But this double assassination is also a moment of clarity about how thin the line in any society is between order and anarchy. America is full of Brinsleys who no longer abide the norms of civilized behavior, if they even know what those norms are. They need but the slightest excuse to take justice into their own hands and go on a rampage.A war between the police and urban blacks is not something that anybody could really want. A return to the chaos of urban America 1965-1979 is really not such a good idea.
Especially in urban America, the police walk that line between civilization and mayhem every day. Yet since the Garner and Brown episodes, the progressive leaders in New York and Washington have talked and behaved as if the police are society’s main problem.
They have honored with joint public appearances and private meetings such racial agitators as Al Sharpton who want to stop the “broken windows” policing that has done so much to reduce crime in poor minority neighborhoods. Mr. Holder has sent federal agents to second-guess grand juries and “reform” local police as if he assumes these police chiefs and prosecutors are biased. The New York City Council staged a “die-in” as fallen victims of police.
And progressives have failed to denounce protestors who have disrupted civic life, rampaged through stores, and even assaulted police who tried to arrest law-breakers. All of this has contributed to a public climate of suspicion and hate against police in which a man like Ismaaiyl Brinsley can in his deranged mind think it is justified to stalk and execute two cops on the beat.
New York’s police certainly believe this, as they turned their backs on Mr. de Blasio in an astonishing show of contempt when the mayor visited the hospital where the slain officers were taken. This is what happens when a mayor who is responsible for public order treats Al Sharpton with more respect than he does his own police force. The progressive campaign against police must stop before it has even uglier consequences.
So it might be wise for Holder, Obama, de Blasio, and Sharpton to shut up on all of this stuff and quit inciting people -- ostensibly in support of disaffected urban black youths -- to loot, destroy, and murder. But we all know they won't, even though that is a path guaranteed to lead to more disaffected urban black youths dying at the hands of other disaffected urban black youths, as we already see today.