Wrong attitude

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson

Springfield's men in black are returning.
The city's new police commissioner, William Fitchet, says members of the department's Street Crime Unit will again don black, military-style uniforms as part of his strategy to deal with youth violence.
Fitchet's predecessor, Edward Flynn, had ditched the black attire as part of an effort to soften the image of the unit. Flynn left Springfield in January to become the police chief in Milwaukee.
Sgt. John Delaney told a city council hearing Wednesday that the stark uniforms send a message to criminals that officers are serious about making arrests.
Delaney said a sense of "fear" has been missing for the past few years.

There is a world of difference between "respect" and "fear." Given the shenanigans that occur in public life from the White House to City Hall, it's pretty clear our dear leaders aren't too concerned with maintaining respect. Why should they be, when their ever-more militarized police departments and civil-liberty-ignoring courtrooms can enforce fear? The saying "you can't fight city hall" is more true by the day, whether the stakes are your property, your Constitutional rights, or even your children.

But fear, like respect, can be discarded when circumstances warrant. It's a shame Americans don't read the FULL Declaration of Independence more often...

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."