Take the initiative and treat people right

It's fairly common to hear people say that they treat people based on how the other person treats them first.  That if someone wants to be treated respectfully, they must show respect to them first.

On it's face, that is correct.  However, it puts the first person in a reactionary position.  They are depending on someone else to dictate their own behavior.

Let's consider some truths about the human condition.

If you treat someone as incapable, eventually they will behave as incapable.

If you treat someone as a criminal, eventually they will behave criminally.

People become that which they are treated.

Yes, people should earn respect by being respectful.  However, it is something that shouldn't be used as a criteria of initial judgement by one person of another.

By automatically assuming that someone must demonstrate respect you you before you to them, you have effectively placed a value on yourself that a supposed that you are more important or special or valuable than the other person and somehow, the other person must earn your good graces.

If all people are created equal, then we should assume no homage is due us before we behave in what we already know to be the right way.

In other words, we should each take the initiative to act right and treat other people right in the effort to show the world that you do indeed deserve respect based on your own display of behaving with respect.

No one inherently owes another person anything.  That is because no one is born more or less valuable than another person.

While I personally find police departments to be suspect and tools of government oppression, the individual people who become police officers, by and large, are people who believe they are being good people doing a job that inherently deals with other people at their worst behavior.  An unenviable position to be sure.

Not all cops are crooked or racist or abusive of power.  Not all people of various races, ethnicities or skin colors are criminals or hateful or beneath dignity.

For me, being libertarian means having ideals.  It means that I expect people to behave themselves and to be capable of behaving themselves as capable, responsible, reasonable, rational, good people.

We know, if we pay attention to life experience, that people will behave as they are treated and expected to behave.  Demanding that others must prove themselves to you before knowing anything about them is not a very libertarian way to be.