A common argument between conservative and  liberal is whether more and tougher law enforcement is the best approach to reducing crime, or whether some societal/governmental intervention is appropriate. In other words, conservatives say society can merely expect personal responsibility, and enforce the law when that fails. Same for gun crime, same for exploitative mortgage-sales practices, and same for terrorism---"Liberals want to use psychotherapy."

For Professor Gates, it would have easily avoided a problem to be subservient and polite, ignoring his feeling of being oppressed. This is what Chris Rock humorously advises in this video clip: NYPD Training Video

But advice to the individual is not sufficient sometimes. Advising our citizens to not discriminate on the basis of race (Emancipation, Brown vs. Board) was provably inadequate (lynching, Jim Crow) thus the Civil Rights Act.

So let's keep clear which topic we mean. Definitely a bad idea to shout and gesture at a policeman who has his weapon drawn and pointed at you---see Charles Blow's story of that in today's NYT. But do we have to defend a cop arresting someone who is by definition in his power (or he couldn't apply those handcuffs) just because the citizen was loud and abusive?

I don't think we need to include race---this kind of heavy-cop thing happens to white people plenty. But it does happen to blacks more often, so my liberal view is that the uneven distribution implies continuing (informal) racial profiling. And my civil-liberties view is that police have plenty of advantages, beginning with society's sanction, and including communication and transport, strength in numbers, authorized weapons and other tools, and plenty of special laws concerning attacks on them. Do we need to codify kowtowing?