REAGAN IS GROOVY, KILL THE PIGS.

A.J. Delgado has an item at National Review called "It’s Time for Conservatives to Stop Defending Police." She really goes off on the fuzz, man -- she's even outraged by the recent NYPD killing of Eric Garner, which is the first time she or any conservative I can think of has expressed outrage over cops killing an unarmed black citizen. She also claims that "the Right is waking up to this reality" in part because "the Tea Party’s emphasis on constitutionalism has refocused attention on the Bill of Rights."

If I believed this, I'd book tickets for the 2016 GOP Convention so I could catch the posters of Reagan saying "Kill the pigs," and the Chicago-'68-style riots. Forgive my lack of faith, but if you know Delgado's work, and the conservatarian movement in general, you will have already guessed what really animates her: she's moving to reverse decades of rightwing law-and-order advocacy not on humane grounds, but on big-government grounds -- because the cops have "generous salaries and ridiculously cushy retirement pensions covered by the taxpayer," etc.

But Delgado's not a good enough writer to leave her hand untipped. You may notice at the bottom of the article a disclaimer: "EDITOR’S NOTE: This piece has been amended since its initial posting." In the current version, Delgado warms up the crowd thus:

For decades, conservatives have served as stalwart defenders of police forces. There have been many good reasons for this, including long memories of the post-countercultural crime wave that devastated, and in some cases destroyed, many American cities; conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (“Dirty hippies being arrested? Good!” is not an uncommon sentiment.)

That kicker was even more interesting in the original:

...conservatives’ penchant for law and order; and Americans’ widely shared disdain for the cops’ usual opponents. (A hippie being arrested is something people from all walks of life are usually happy to see.)

So much for Constitutionalism! Still more interesting is a passage that appears in both versions:

Conservatives are rightly proud to have supported police officers doing their jobs at times when progressives were on the other side.

This is the heart of the whole wretched thing. They still want the parts of police brutality they've always wanted: Physical intimidation of their enemies, and a vicarious feeling of butchitude. They just don't want to pay for it.

UPDATE. I think I may have found some source material for Delgado's anti-cop animus: From an April 2014 edition of The Free Thought Project:

Bundy Ranch Woke Up Conservatives to Police Abuse

Cliven Bundy, role model! I'd say he's got a pretty effective anti-police posse himself -- it's called the Militia Movement.

UPDATE 2. My Cali buddy Ben Thompson sends this lovely New-New Conservative image:

He's a hippie, Hippie Ronnie; that John Birch brain, that G.E. face...

In comments, swkellogg is succinct on Delgado: "A change in embouchure will still only get one note out of a dog whistle."

A few other commenters get to a Delgado claim I skipped over: namely that conservatives are also newly-sensitized to police brutality (besides cop-on-hippie, that is, as well as cop-on-unpersons to be named later) because "cell-phone cameras are having a tremendous impact... It’s easy to dismiss eyewitness claims of police brutality, but a lot harder to ignore evidence such as a video of a man suffocating to death." Jay B ain't buying that at a discount: "Bull Connor EXISTED in real life," he informs Delagado. "The historical record of cops killing unarmed people unnecessarily is so endless... that it literally takes the world's most obtuse person to not recognize that heavily armed agents of the state OFTEN ABUSE THEIR POWER." "It wasn't being insulated from heavy interaction with the police that made it easy for conservatives like you to dismiss eyewitness claims of police brutality," adds mortimer2000. "It was, and still is, your ingrained race and class prejudice, coupled with an authoritarian desire to see harm come to people you disdain."

Should also include some of Delgado's commenters for balance: "Progressives have co-opted the police and soon they will do the same to the military." "They have become storm troopers for liberals. BasicLly anti Bill of Rights." Plus a bunch of them claim that if a cop shot their dog, like a cop in Delgado's story shot someone's dog, they would kill the cop. Yeah, these are useful foot-soldiers for the Cause. (Funny thing, the only time in 33 years of citizenship I ever saw one of New York's Finest cock his pistol was when some homeless lady's German Shepherd stood up and bared its teeth at him. Having been bitten by a German Shepherd, I think the cop did right.)