You babble. Honorable soldiers, honorable police officers, honorable teachers, honorable governors, honorable mothers and honorable fathers know the difference between abuse of power and honorably exercised power.
Take your cheap, anarchic shots. People like you are the problem. Here we have a clear example of abuse of power you you take a shotgun blast at all exercise of power.
It’s the hard work of distinguishing between abuse of power and honorable exercise of power (which all mothers, fathers, policement, soldiers, business owners have to exercise) that makes a society healthy.
Office Lopez abused power. Some others covered for him. He deserves to have the book thrown at him. But only if it is possible for honorable police officials to do that, honestly and honorably, can proper law enforcement take place.
It was the same in the particular period when “feudum” was the label. I’m a hell of a lot more hardheaded and unomantic about it than you are. You are the romantic because you limpwristedly wave your hand at the problem instead of analyzing it.
I want honor and loyalty and virtue and decency in my government today and I have studied carefully how this has and has not functioned under various systems of political and social and economic organization in the past. And among the worst of those systems are a number of the post-1500s systems. One of the best is post-1500 (ours, from 1750-1900 or thereabouts).
But grandiose dismissals like yours are part of the reason we are in the shape we are in. People don’t want to do the hard work of distinguishing the good from the bad. It’s easier to broadbrush.
What the heck are you talking about? Of course honor is needed in public service. Feudalism is not generally a word used to describe honorable governance. No one uses it for that.
Per dictionary.com...
feu·dal·ism (fyÅÅd'l-Äz'É™m) n. A political and economic system of Europe from the 9th to about the 15th century, based on the holding of all land in fief or fee and the resulting relation of lord to vassal and characterized by homage, legal and military service of tenants, and forfeiture. A political, economic, or social order resembling this medieval system.
As you can see it is a term used to describe a system where by one class of people owns and controls the land and the underclasses support and server them. Also the upper classes are mutually supporting through various bonds of loyalty. This perfectly describes a a system where by cops have the ability to abuse regular citizens. The citizens have only a feeble ability to address grievances and the other members of the over caste mutually protect each other. Sure the IDEA of honor and what was rampant in the medieval system but that does not change that if a Lord abused a peasant the peasant had little or no recourse and the other Lords would help him cover it up.
That is what I said. I have no idea what you are talking about with "you take a shotgun blast at all exercise of power." or "You are the romantic because you limpwristedly wave your hand at the problem instead of analyzing it"
I am not talking about all use of power or authority. I was simply stating that a use of power by a protected class of people can be likened to Feudalism by the standard definition of the word. Trying to flower things up with honor is irrelevant to my point. It is not about "honor and loyalty and virtue and decency". My point was not about those concepts. It is about the rule of law and accountability. Without those 'honor' and 'loyalty' only mean what the ruling class decides they mean.