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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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As long as you have federal crimes you need someone to investigate them. And if it's not the FBI it's going to be someone even more political, like the local US attorney, or even more disliked by the right (any votes for giving the ATF more power?). It's like the calls to eliminate the IRS that don't realize that unless they want government spending limited to customs revenue, any other tax collector is going to be just as bad.

If someone discovers that the local police force is astonishingly corrupt and has just been taking money from the mafia in order to allow them to run their protection rackets and deal drugs with impunity, "But who will investigate crimes?" is not a meaningful response to the argument that the current police force needs to be replaced.

It's an argument in favor of firing corrupt people, not of disbanding the department entirely.

If the corruption is deep enough, the difference is probably negligible. Especially if the corrupt people are running the show.

Big parts of the right consider declining federal state capacity to be a good thing- either because they want to live in Montana collecting machine guns in peace, or because they live in places that would strongly benefit from capital flight.