How many cops are there in New York city?

Two New York City cops assassinated. Are the leftists who have been screaming for dead cops going to accept culpability?

• http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/20/report-nypd-cops-shot-in-ambush-attack/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/12/13/al-sharpton-leads-thousands-in-saturday-march-on-washington-dc/ Remember when these same people were blaming Sara Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords?

• Answer:

  Glenn - It is ironic. You are right and it is because you are right that "leftists" should not accept culpability. The analogy you drew to the shooting of Rep. Giffords is logically irrefutable. The "leftists" were wrong then and to suggest that they are "culpable" now is to accept their argument. There is in conservatism an irreducible premise that the individual is first responsible for his - or her - own actions. Burke said, "I know of no method of indicting a whole people." Rightly so. To articulate a philosophy that seeks to nurture civic virtue it must encourage individual responsibility. You cannot have it both ways. The person who pulled the trigger is responsible for one thing. Those who were protesting and calling for dead cops are guilty of something else. They were, let us be assertive, morally odious, politically inconsistent and socially irresponsible. These things are serious enough and must be judged on their own merits. "Leftists" - and frankly you should be more precise in your definition and perhaps less sweeping in your assertion - operate from the premise that society corrupts man, and assume that man, totally free, is man totally reasonable. The protesters who were calling for dead cops undermined their own argument by making it. Such barbarism run lose makes a better case for live policemen than does any pro forma admission of collective guilt for a dead one. It may be cathartic to say to the"Leftists" that they are hypocrites - and certainly in this case they demonstrably are. However, to be consistent with your own views, it will have to suffice that they undermined their own argument by making it as they did. Best, Drot