"If you see something suspicious, report it"

That's the mantra of Progress "we don't encourage self-help" big government.  So what happens when you report it?  You get called a basket case:

Earlier this month, The New Republic posted an article by Stanford law professor Richard Thompson Ford on the Zimmerman trial. As noted by my co-blogger David Bernstein and Michelle Meyer at The Faculty Lounge, this article included some factual inaccuracies. Most notably, the article (as originally published) contained the following sentence:

. . . Zimmerman was an edgy basket case with a gun who had called 911 46 times in 15 months, once to report the suspicious activities of a seven year old black boy. (emphasis in original)

As written, this sentence contained three errors: 1) the 46 calls were not all to 911, some were to a non-emergency police number, 2) the calls were made over several years, not 15 months, and 3) Zimmerman called the police to report that a young boy was unattended by an adult and was concerned for the boy’s safety, not to report that the child was engaged in “suspicious activities.”

The New Republic has finally (on the second try, presumably because of high profile public shaming) corrected the story.

The New Republic has corrected Richard Thompson Ford’s Zimmerman piece:

This article has been corrected. Zimmerman called various law enforcement officials 46 times, not just 911, as originally stated. He made the calls over an eight-year period, not over the course of 15 months, as originally stated. The original sentence also cited a call Zimmerman made about a seven-year-old boy; the clause has been removed as it implied that Zimmerman was reporting suspicious activity. It appears that Zimmerman made the call out of concern. We regret the errors.

You can see the list of Zimmerman’s calls here, and it hardly suggests he was an “edgy basket case with a gun,” as the piece still asserts. And of course, there’s the glaring error of treating Zimmerman – who would count as a “diversity hire” at any law school in America — as an honorary “white” for purposes of raising the race issue

So just like with 911 - when seconds count, the Police are minutes away - the "if you see something suspicious, report it" will only be used against you.  It sure looks like there's very little upside, and a whole lot of downside there.

Well done, Progressives, attacking the social cohesion that used to bind us together!  But hey, at least you got a fleeting and temporary frisson of moral preening.  It's almost like it's an example of the Tragedy of the Commons!