Quote of the Day (George F. Will, on ICE and the New ‘Loutocracy’)

“Minneapolis is today’s Birmingham. Citizens with smartphones are supplementing journalists in gathering facts. The administration requires an addition to the typologies of government: loutocracy.

“For a glimpse of what government of, by and for louts looks like, find on the internet the video, taken by a citizen in Minneapolis, in which a participant in the excitement of a melee — tear gas and other instruments for combating citizens — exclaims: ‘It’s like Call of Duty! So cool huh?’ Call of Duty is a video game, away from which some new agents were perhaps lured by the signing bonuses, some up to $50,000, that have fueled the agency’s breakneck expansion….

“Policing is a hard, dangerous profession. Done well, it demands of its practitioners discipline and judgment, and deserves from society a respect approaching reverence. The current administration, by erasing the distinction between police work and military operations — by allowing marauding ICEmen to pose as police — has grievously wounded the dignity of policing.”—Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George F. Will, “With This Loutocracy, Assume It’s Lying About ICE Until Proven Otherwise,” The Washington Post, Jan. 28, 2026