When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s

by John Ganz

That phrase—“the thin blue line”—was Parker’s invention and the core of his philosophy of policing. On the one side were the forces of disorder, on the other was the public; in between them stood the police: “Between the law-abiding elements of society and the criminals that prey upon them stands a thin blue line of defense—your police officer.” Civilization itself was under threat by internal enemies. “Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome rose, then fell, as strength gave way to weakness, alertness gave way to complacency, and virtue gave way to corruption,” Parker explained to the National Automatic Merchandising Association in 1952 in a speech titled “Invasion from Within.” “It is interesting, and perhaps productive, to recall that the high walls of these civilizations were never toppled by barbarians from without. But the walls crumbled into rubble and the enemy poured through when BARBARIANISM within rotted the moral supporting timbers.