The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial for the ages on Aug. 14 in which it blamed the chasm between the almost all-white Ferguson, Mo., police force with the town's majority black population partly on benefits of public employee unions.

fergusonAccording to Rupert Murdoch's newspaper flagship, Ferguson's police force is 94 percent white because cops "get lifetime job protections and generous retirement benefits."

The Journal opined:

"One result is that police forces often turn over more slowly than the demographics of the communities they serve. Ferguson shifted to a majority-black population over the last decade but 94% of the cops are white, which may have contributed to municipal mistrust."

Left unsaid was the effectiveness of police recruiting in black neighborhoods.

The paper also said: "Police contracts also build in bureaucratic privileges that would never be extended to other suspects."

The Journal relied on the old conservative public union bogeyman to explain events in the St. Louis suburb. What's next? Will it trot out tax cuts, deregulation and repeal of ObamaCare as the solutions to the Ferguson unrest?

The paper gave a gentle slap to the "militarization" of the nation's law enforcement corps, saying, "sniper rifles, black armored convoys and waves of tear gas deployed across Ferguson neighborhoods are jarring in a free society."

It got that right.