It’s astonishing given the racial and partisan polarization over Michael Brown’s killing and the refusal of a grand jury to indict his killer. But the subsequent furor over the killing of Eric Garner seems to be operating in exactly the opposite direction. Here’s Ross Douthat:
[I]n this case, unlike the non-indictment of the Ferguson cop, the shocked/troubled response to the non-indictment has spanned the partisan divide. (For a range of views from people in various ways on the “right,” I recommend reading Sean Davis, Russell Moore, Pete Wehner, John Podhoretz, Rod Dreher, Glenn Beck, Peter Suderman, and even the not-exactly-a-civil-libertarian Andrew McCarthy.)….
[G]iven a landscape like ours, where the police are clearly quite well armed, police work seems to have become (by historical standards) very safe, crime rates are still falling, and the police seem to be dealing out death at an increasing rate … well, then you have a situation where generalizing to potential policy reforms from Eric Garner’s death, or other cases like it, makes a lot more immediate sense.
You hate to see a life sacrificed to make these not-exactly-new facts manifest across the political spectrum, but sometimes that, and more, are necessary.
