My wife, who has an excellent sense of what is going right and wrong in our country, but who is reluctant to write her thoughts down, has insisted to me for some time that the FBI should be abolished.  I, being not shy about expressing my thoughts in written form but more skeptical about such a seemingly rash move, have always answered, Yes, but what do we replace it with?  Lately, I have come to believe that no replacement might well be better than either retaining the agency as is or replacing it.

Steve Baldwin's article from the American Spectator of November 20, 2017, titled "Should the FBI Be Abolished?," makes an excellent case for doing just that, as well as offering cogent suggestions on how to fill the resultant void.

The FBI has become a left-leaning, self-serving, mean-spirited organization.  Nowhere is it likely to be viewed as a humble, hardworking group of law enforcement individuals, though there well may be many fine agents in the ranks.

Baldwin cites numerous examples of the bureau's heavy-handed actions: Ruby Ridge, Waco, and other massacres, as well as the the horrible lack of action, even though fueled with intelligence.  The Ft. Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, who murdered thirteen U.S. military personnel, and the Tsarnaev brothers who planted bombs at the Bostom Marathon, killing three pedestrians and injuring hundreds, were known to the FBI, but the intelligence was not acted upon.  We have also become accustomed to the bureau's political interference in such matters as the Trump/Russia collusion nonsense and the James Comey/Hillary Clinton email farce.

Much as the world of advertising flourishes by creating unnecessary problems that can be solved only by using a newly invented product or service, this power-crazed organization has gone so far as to designate or create over three thousand laws defined as federal statutes, thus requiring the FBI to enforce them.  Every state in the union has law enforcement agencies capable of handling these illegalities.  The individual states seem more likely to cooperate with one another in battling crime than they are to work with a federal agency intent on its own glorification to the exclusion of the state agencies.  There are federal organizations such as the Treasury Department, the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and others that can manage crimes that require a centralized approach, but we can live without the FBI.

A grassroots effort is needed to eliminate an organization that is now doing more harm than good.  Let's get that ball rolling.  It will make my wife smile.

Image: National Archives.