The Purpose of the Police

Part 1

They live in a quiet house, on a shady little street, in a town barely big enough to occupy space on a map. They are the family from which all honest political philosophy begins. I didn’t make them; they made me, and indeed, have made almost everyone. Those civilizations which flourished let them be, and those that didn’t, perished quickly. This is the story of how a constable came to stand guard on their sidewalk.

Down the shady little street came a stark and shady character. He broke the quiet along with the window when he entered the family’s home. The children cried. The crook laughed. The father asked what he wanted. The crook departed with a good deal of money and a few things more that could be turned into money.

Like gum stuck to his shoe, the crook took the peace which had covered the family like a warm blanket.

This peace is the difference between a house and a home. You can buy and sell houses. You can’t buy and sell homes. Familial comfort is the type of comfort which drove the Israelites in their search for Eden. There are many gardens and many houses in the world, but homeland and home cannot be found in just any of them. Home is where I belong to the walls as much as the walls belong to me. When you buy a house, you acquire property. When you find a home, it acquires you.

The constable came because the peace of the home was no longer secure and it was his charge to secure it. A philosopher (I believe it was Dr. Kreeft) once insisted that the purpose of all the armies and all the airplanes, all the markets and all the money, all the feedlots and all the farms, was to ensure that a family could sit down to dinner and share a laugh. Only laughter ought to break the quiet of the little house. That is the logic of the constable.

Only peace should enter the home. That is the purpose of the police.

(To be continued…)