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Thread: Guardians vs. Warriors

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    Default Guardians vs. Warriors

    http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion...licexxxml.html

    Interested in the discussion here - working on a counterpoint to this.

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    I think it's all semantics. Guardian, warrior, sentinel, sheepdog, are all synonymous for the same thing. Sure a warrior can be a person with ill intent, but our societal concept is not, that being a warrior in a democratic society.

    I remember in the marine corps we had the tactical concept called "fighting the three block war" Basically the idea was that as a junior leader you might in one block be providing humanitarian assistance in a permissive enviroment, in another you might be conducting intelligence gathering by talking to locals in a semi permissive enviroment, and in the third block you could be in full combat operation. I think the same holds true for the police.

    Greg Quaresma

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    To some extent it is, however there is a clear, and concerning, bias with which the whole "Guardians" thing is front loaded. It also appears not clearly thought out the deeper you peer under the first - political - layer.

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    I think a soldier follows orders and a police officers needs to take decisions on his own for his own safety and the safety of those he must to protect. The education of an police officer has to be military style with a big dose of psychology, calmness and verbal convincing .

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    I've been contemplating about what it means to be a warrior in recent weeks so I have a few thoughts about this topic. "Warrior" is a term that is somewhat difficult to define because each culture and era has a slightly different take on it including how it is used today. My definition that I've settled on is someone who has specialized combative training, occupies a unique and distinct sub-cultural group in society that is empowered by that greater society and is bound to a code of ethics. So are police warriors? If we go by my broad definition than yes they are warriors. Police are taught defense tactics, arrest and control, how to use various weapons ranging from batons to long guns. Police are often a sub-cultural group and members form various fraternal organizations, frequent certain establishments and carry themselves in a way that is unique and identifiable even out of uniform. Society has given law enforcement officers a unique trust and empowers them to do things no one else can. Society also provides the training for this to happen. Finally police have a very unique code of ethics based on the law and a high level integrity. They are held to a higher standard than most citizens and they face stiffer punishment for breaking those ethics. Breaking the code of ethics can get an officer fired, arrested, in the case of perjury keep them from doing vital part of their job, ostracized from the group or even killed. There is often very little forgiveness from society or the sub-cultural group if the code of ethics is broken.

    I think where it gets very confusing is that a police officer's role is beyond simply that of a warrior. They are expected to be a guardian when the worst this world has to offer shows its head and the innocent are victimized. They are expected to be a civil servants when politicians or people need them in that capacity. They are expected to be medics when people are hurt. They are expected to be paper pushers when someone needs a report for insurance claims. They are expected to be a mental health worker when someone is in an unsafe place in their head. They are expected to be friendly when someone asks for directions to the nearest restaurant and then turn it on from 0 to 100 when something bad happens. People always complain that there is never a cop around when you need one but if a highly visible officer is having lunch in a Panera Breads people say all cops ever do is take breaks when they should be fighting crime. The funny thing is when you get looser with the definition of warrior as they do in various dictionaries all of the above things make it even more clear that policeare warriors and warriors first.

    One who is engaged aggressively or energetically in an activity, cause, or conflict: neighborhood warriors fighting against developers.

    a person who has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics.

    a man engaged or experienced in warfare; broadly : a person engaged in some struggle or conflict <poverty warriors>

    This isn't really polished thought but just some ramblings that have been going through my head.
    Christopher Covington

    Daito-ryu aikijujutsu
    Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryu heiho

    All views expressed here are my own and don't necessarily represent the views of the arts I practice, the teachers and people I train with or any dojo I train in.

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    Mr. Covington, great post. While trying not to diminish or denigrate you musings I gave up trying to figure out who, what, or why.
    I've gotten to the point where "I am what I am. I do what I do."
    Simplistic I know, but much less confusing.
    Tony Urena

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    I also think that it is great all what Chris wrote, honest thoughts of his experiences, also your post in The Active Shooter and you, the wonderful thread by Kit, both live in another world, maybe not so strange for other americans, who are used to keep weapons, as it is allowed in your Constitution, but it is a very strange world for europeans who are not used to the military or police surroundings. It very interesting, thank you for sharing !

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    Sadly Carina I don't think Europeans are immune, lest we forget incidents like Anders Breivik who racked up a body count worthy of multiple shooters, and of course Charlie Hebdo attest.

    Chris, great post, and one of the problems I have with the mindset apparent in this article is that as the logic is drawn to its inevitable conclusion, even she acknowledges police officers must possess the skills of a warrior. In many cases the ONLY way to protect, and the best way, is with warrior skills.

    Warriors make the best Guardians. There is a lot more to this, but don't have time to go more in depth now.

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    Kit,
    It appears to me that the whole idea of making the police into some kind of “guardian” of society this opinion piece eludes too is an attempt to “pacify” the police, per se. To make them more “politically correct”. It does seem hypocritical that the article states the police need to move away from this so called warrior culture, but yet when it comes time to do warrior stuff, then its okay.

    While I think that there should be a greater push to develop this warrior mindset in American law enforcement, I think that the truth is that that mindset is the exception rather than the rule. I think Charles Remsberg called them the 5%ers? I also think that the whole idea of the guardian brings about ideas of a defensive mindset, and not a mindset set about prevailing in a possible deadly force situation.

    Also thinking about the idea of Warriorship as a calling, and being a guardian a role you fill as a warrior?

    A couple ideas from Hunter Armstrong,

    http://exemplarpath.com/call-to-action/
    http://exemplarpath.com/2014/12/the-...nd-of-warrior/
    Last edited by gquaresma; 28th January 2015 at 01:44.
    Greg Quaresma

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hissho View Post
    Sadly Carina I don't think Europeans are immune, lest we forget incidents like Anders Breivik who racked up a body count worthy of multiple shooters, and of course Charlie Hebdo attest.
    Hello Kit

    The perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks had a narcissistic personality disorder.
    I knew you would mention in your reply the Charlie Hebdo attest, but I think this a completely other issue, the weekly magazine was provoking the muslim fanatics, they also did that to the Catholic church, and the Vatican just denounced, a normal way if you think that somebody is not respecting your believes. Charlie Hebdo should have known, because nine years earlier the publication of drawings of Muhammed by a Danish newspaper brought a wave of protests, at that time in Iraq, two thousand demonstrators called for a fatwa authorizing the assassination of the cartoonists.
    So I think we should respect other religions and believes, most of all if they are fanatics like in this case.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hissho View Post
    http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion...licexxxml.html

    Interested in the discussion here - working on a counterpoint to this.
    Well, I think the author was unwise to quote Plato without giving some context. Plato had little time for democracy and the training regime for guardians was such that they were pretty old by the time they had finished. The philosopher kings ruled the guardians and the auxiliaries did every thing else, everyone being intensely happy with the pay grade in which they found themselves -- the whole operation being propped up by slaves. The philosophers ruled a society that was similar in some ways to Japan in the Edo period, with no movement across the four ranks of samurai, peasants, craftsmen, merchants, and the non-human or semi-human remainder.

    I also think that 'warrior' is too heavily romanticized and culture-laden to be of much use in this discussion. The term is rather like 'samurai': a term that martial artists sometimes like to use, but which is too tied to a particular epoch in Japan to be of much value. I taught a graduate seminar once and asked my students -- all Japanese pursuing their further education studies after work and doing their doctorates in management -- about their view of bushido and the warrior ethic. Half the class believed they were upholders of bushido values and reeled off the virtues that bushido is supposed to uphold, but the other half had no time for such ideas, believing that they were too close to wartime militarism. This half of the class were all company employees or ran their own businesses; the other half -- the warriors -- were exclusively bureaucrats working for the local or central government.
    Peter Goldsbury,
    Forum Administrator,
    Hiroshima, Japan

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    Carina - won't get into the issue over "shouldn't have provoked them.." I think that is akin to blaming the victim for rape or domestic violence. I'll stick with the comment that it does happen in Europe - for the same widely varying reasons it does in the US.

    Professor - I'd agree that the best discussion would involve perhaps too much contextual bases to be useful in the kind of way this article was intended. I remember reading something from - I think it was Dr Friday - who described the Bakufu as "kind of a warrior union." Put together with the historical contexts of bureacracy, a highly litigious society (medieval Japan, that is), brought a chuckle when juxtaposed with modern American law enforcement....

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    Quote Originally Posted by Hissho View Post
    Carina - won't get into the issue over "shouldn't have provoked them.." I think that is akin to blaming the victim for rape or domestic violence. I'll stick with the comment that it does happen in Europe - for the same widely varying reasons it does in the US.
    Hi Kit,
    We are going away from the original thread, but just wanted to reply to your answer:
    Of course isolated cases happen also in Europe, fortunately there are seldom, because we are not allowed to own firearms except for having a hunting licence.
    As for your example, I disagree, I’m not defending the solution of conflicts by violence, but I also think that we should respect other religions .

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    Greg

    Yes I too have had some interest in where Armstrong is going with the Exemplar thing in terms of Ethos.

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    I just saw this: http://www.aol.com/article/2015/01/3...6pLid%3D606535 It looks like the gun was a fake and no one got hurt thankfully but it can happen even in Europe.

    Stay safe everyone,
    Chris
    Christopher Covington

    Daito-ryu aikijujutsu
    Kashima Shinden Jikishinkage-ryu heiho

    All views expressed here are my own and don't necessarily represent the views of the arts I practice, the teachers and people I train with or any dojo I train in.

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