For nearly two months, television news coverage and social media feeds have been flooded with images of protesters taking to the streets in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. The images have prompted widespread concern, including among many conservatives, who have called for a restoration of law and order, particularly after outbursts of vandalism and violence.
But it is important for conservatives to take a step back and remember that the brazen acts of lawlessness we have witnessed are largely the work of small groups of looters and other radical opportunists seeking to take advantage of protests. With noteworthy exceptions, most of the protests and most of the protesters have been lawful and share common ground with conservatives on important principles, including ensuring equality under the law and protecting everyone’s civil liberties, no matter their background.
If conservatives fail to acknowledge some of the ideological ties we have with social justice advocates on the front lines of today’s protests, we will be missing an opportunity to build and expand the conservative coalition and, more than that, promote healing in our nation at a time when it desperately needs healing.
Indeed, many of the demands being made by protesters of good faith — including bans on chokeholds, reform of criminal laws that have led to mass incarceration, and prompt release of bodycam footage in cases of alleged police misconduct — are not only reasonable but reflect the bedrock conservative belief that government must be limited, for when left unchecked it can become intrusive and even tyrannical.
As author and philosopher Ayn Rand once put it: “It cannot be repeated too often that the Constitution is a limitation on the government, not on private individuals — that it does not prescribe the conduct of private individuals, only the conduct of the government — that it is not a charter for government power, but a charter of the citizens’ protection against the government.”
Ultimately, the job of enacting reform and enshrining the principles of civil liberty and justice in law falls to our elected leaders. But as a starting point for productive discussion, conservatives should consider some of the specific policy prescriptions that the social justice movement is seeking. In doing so, conservatives might be surprised to find that these policy prescriptions are often driven by the same desires our own movement has to limit the dangerous accumulation of power by the state.
Let’s take them one by one:
- Militarization of police. Military-style Special Weapons and Tactics or “SWAT” teams, armed with assault rifles and tear gas, first hit the scene during the civil unrest of the 1960s, often with tragic results. Conservatives and Black Lives Matter activists both agree SWAT teams have no place outside the military.
- No-knock warrants. A brainchild of the Nixon administration, “no-knock” warrants featuring battering rams and SWAT teams have a long history of resulting in deaths of innocent people. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky sponsored a bill to end no-knock warrants on the federal level after Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African American woman, was shot and killed by Louisville police in a no-knock raid.
- Civil forfeiture laws. Civil forfeiture laws require only “reasonable ground for belief of guilt” as a precondition to the state’s seizure of a targeted individual’s assets. There need not be even a court arraignment, let alone a conviction of the individual. These laws violate fundamental protections embodied in our Bill of Rights, including the Fifth Amendment’s promise that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
- Qualified immunity. Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana has introduced legislation to reform controversial standards that currently make it nearly impossible for victims of unconstitutional government abuses to seek recourse through civil suits, even when those abuses are demonstrably willful and malicious. The bill would promote both government accountability and sound policing.
Of course, bans on dangerous arrest methods such as chokeholds and kneeling on a suspect’s neck or back should also draw uniform support across the political spectrum.
It is entirely consistent for conservatives to simultaneously reject antifa’s opportunistic, anarchistic, and violent attacks on America, its culture and its history, while still embracing the core message advanced by the Black Lives Matter movement — that African Americans must be treated fairly and justly by the police, free of unlawful and racist brutalities.
Viewed through this lens, distinguishing the true core message that black lives matter from anti-American calls for revolution, the tragedy of Floyd’s killing could serve as a point of commonality for conservatives and liberals. It is the anarchists, with their perverse desire for discord, who want Floyd’s killing to be a source of division. But the rest of us, people committed to an equitable and just society, should not permit these subversive forces to have their way.
No just or rational person on either side of the aisle could possibly defend what Derek Chauvin did, and, in fact, no one does. Both sides of the aisle should be insisting on real reform now.
Stephen Meister is a lawyer in New York City and a published author.
