Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City and political fellow traveler of our president, Barack Hussein Obama; our attorney general, Eric Himpton Holder, Jr.; and our (well, to be more accurate, somebody’s) Race-Hustler-in-Chief, the Reverend Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr., recently had the opportunity to learn exactly what dealing with a Band of Brothers really means.

Apparently this group of comrades are slow learners.  Particularly Rev. Sharpton.  Back in 1991, as Sharpton was preparing to lead a protest through Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York, a drunken man named Michael Riccardi stabbed him.

Although Sharpton (either generously or with a cynical view toward favorable press coverage) requested leniency for Mr. Riccardi, he wasn’t quite so lenient with the NYPD.  Sharpton filed suit against New York City, alleging that the many police present had failed to protect him from his attacker.  In December 2003, he finally reached a $200,000 settlement with the city just as jury selection was about to start. 

Apparently he continues to expect that very same police department to defend him to their deaths, just so he can keep suing them.  That’s a positive indication that he hasn’t learned anything.

As for including de Blasio in the group, he, too, regularly insults New York’s finest, while simultaneously expecting them to protect him from all and sundry threats.

Obama and Holder aren’t usually protected by the members of the NYPD, but they do have personal protection details.  The FBI is charged with protecting the attorney general, and the FBI, too, is part of the law enforcement culture.  This view can be applied without too much of a stretch to the Secret Service, but probably not to Obama’s caddies.

The phrase “band of brothers” usually references the uniformed military forces.  But the bonds of that same band of brothers are also on display within the ranks of the New York Police Department and elsewhere, judging from the thousands of mourners from police departments all over the United States who were present at the recent funeral of Officer Rafael Ramos.  The concept of a band of brothers extends to more than just the police force of a single community.  The concept of law enforcement is one of maintaining stability within a culture, not just simply the enforcement of certain legislation.  In a commonly accepted misattribution, George Orwell is often quoted as describing the relationship between people such as the four gentlemen first mentioned above and those they mock and gratuitously slander:

People sleep peacefully in their beds only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

This is not to remind those being protected by the police, troopers, Border Patrol, FBI, and Secret Service agents and the military of what they owe to these men and women.  It is rather to remind the “Fab Four” that the members of those same groups are owed some loyalty and respect from those being protected. 

They should also realize that they form the largest band of brothers that has ever existed, and it is within their power to remind Obama, Holder, de Blasio and Sharpton that their ability to “sleep peacefully” could come to an abrupt halt, with little or no warning, should that loyalty from these four (and a similar amount of respect) for these “rough men” not be forthcoming.

Jim Yardley is a retired financial controller and two-tour Vietnam veteran who writes frequently about political idiocy, business and economic idiocy, and American cultural idiocy.  Jim also blogs at http://jimyardley.wordpress.com/ and can be contacted directly at james.v.yardley@gmail.com.