From Freedomain Radio: The Sunset of the State. [Note: this excellent YouTube video runs for over 9 minutes.](hat tip to Manfred S.)
From Jest: Where Occupy Wall Street Headlines Come From.[Note:Hilarious]
From the Wall Street Journal: Court Rules Health Law Is Constitutional. [Note: the interstate commerce clause is made of elastic and can be stretched to cover almost any situation.]
From ABC News: Your TV, Radio Will Be Interrupted Today, Wednesday. U.S. Emergency Alert System gets first national test at 2pm Eastern.
From the Guardian: Charlie Hebdo front cover depicts Muslim man kissing cartoonist. French satirical magazine does not hold back in latest issue despite firebomb attack after printing Muhammad cartoon.
From PJ Media: Tea Party Taboo: The Atheism of Ayn Rand.
And the bizarre headline for today....From Huffington Post: Babatunde Omidina, Nigerian Actor, Freed After 25 Successful Bowel Movements.
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
My weekly column for Future of Freedom has appeared: The American Nightmare That Is Civil Asset Forfeiture. Please visit this highly recommended site. Click here.
The American Nightmare That Is Civil Asset Forfeiture
by Wendy McElroy
Being innocent does not matter. Not being arrested or convicted of a crime is no protection. With amazing ease, the government can take everything you own. And to recover it, you must prove your innocence through an expensive and difficult court proceeding in which a severely lowered standard of evidence favors the government. This is civil asset forfeiture.
Russell and Patricia Caswell of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, know the process well. For the last two years they have battled to keep the motel that Russell’s father built in 1955 and at which Russell has worked since childhood. The couple assumed ownership of Motel Caswell in the 1980s, and viewed the asset, worth approximately $1 million, as their retirement plan.
In the past 20 years, the Caswells have rented out approximately 125,000 rooms. Of the renters, about .05 percent have been arrested for crimes. As “good” citizens, the Caswells have meticulously reported any suspicious activity on the part of renters to the police, including possible drug use.
Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Justice is in the process of confiscating the motel without any compensation, through civil forfeiture, because it was used in the commission of a crime. The local police with whom the Caswells actively cooperated for years are the ones who reported them to the federal agency. Why? Because, under a policy known as “equitable sharing,” the Tewksbury police department stands to gain as much as 80 percent of the value of the seized property.
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
Hat tip to David Hart who refers to the following quote as classical liberal Richard Cobden's "I had a dream" speech.
COBDEN: But I have been accused of looking too much to material interests. Nevertheless I can say that I have taken as large and great a view of the effects of this mighty principle as ever did any man who dreamt over it in his own study. I believe that the physical gain will be the smallest gain to humanity from the success of this principle. I look farther; I see in the Free-trade principle that which shall act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe,—drawing men together, thrusting aside the antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace. I have looked even farther. I have speculated, and probably dreamt, in the dim future—ay, a thousand years hence—I have speculated on what the effect of the triumph of this principle may be. I believe that the effect will be to change the face of the world, so as to introduce a system of government entirely distinct from that which now prevails. I believe that the desire and the motive for large and mighty empires; for gigantic armies and great navies—for those materials which are used for the destruction of life and the desolation of the rewards of labour—will die away; I believe that such things will cease to be necessary, or to be used, when man becomes one family, and freely exchanges the fruits of his labour with his brother man. I believe that, if we could be allowed to reappear on this sublunary scene, we should see, at a far distant period, the governing system of this world revert to something like the municipal system; and I believe that the speculative philosopher of a thousand years hence will date the greatest revolution that ever happened in the world’s history from the triumph of the principle which we have met here to advocate. I believe these things: but, whatever may have been my dreams and speculations, I have never obtruded them upon others. I have never acted upon personal or interested motives in this question; I seek no alliance with parties or favour from parties, and I will take none—but, having the feeling I have of the sacredness of the principle, I say that I can never agree to tamper with it. I, at least, will never be suspected of doing otherwise than pursuing it disinterestedly, honestly, and resolutely.
----Richard Cobden, Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P., ed. by John Bright and J.E. Thorold Rogers with a Preface and Appreciation by J.E. Thorold Rogers and an Appreciation by Goldwin Smith (London: T.Fisher Unwin, 1908). 2 volumes in 1. Vol. 1 Free Trade and Finance. Chapter: FREE TRADE. XX. MANCHESTER, JANUARY 15, 1846.
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
On Father's Day, I think of my dad.
He was a simple man in a world that devalues simple human beings. It is not fashionable to be a common man who loves his family, is a good neighbor and friend, a decent human being. My father quit school in the 6th grade during the depression because *his* father had died and he was the only male left in the family to make a living. But I never heard him complain about the choice forced upon him.
Gordon Albert McElroy loved his wife, his children, and classical music (especially opera). I never saw him commit an unkind act or speak a hurtful word. He went to work every morning; he gave honest labor for every cent he made, returning at night with candies hidden in his coat for his son and daughter to find as they launched themselves at him; he sang Irish ballads to his wife while she cooked dinner and whistled better than anyone else I've known; his best friend was a gay man who loved opera as much he did and gave me singing lessons for free; at Christmas, he made being poor okay by giving us lots of *small* presents...playing cards, crossword books...books of all kinds, bags of peanuts, seeds to grow in pots to plant outside in Spring.
More than anything else, he wanted a better life for his children and nothing, except death, stood in the way of that goal. My greatest regret in life is that he will never know how profoundly he succeeded. Dad died abruptly of a heart attack when I was ten and I will never be able to tell him how deeply he has impressed my life, how much I loved him and love him still. What I know of kindness, decency, honesty, compassion, art, forgiveness...the best part of me I learned from him as a child. I hold him inside me like a spark around which I put my arms.
On this Father's Day (and every other), I love you, Dad. You are alive in me.
Your Wendy
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
Auberon Herbert, Part 1, Part 2 Yet to be posted
by Wendy McElroy,
Originally published by the highly recommended Future of Freedom Foundation
In his periodical Liberty, (May 23, 1885), the quintessential American individualist-anarchist Benjamin Tucker wrote of his British counterpart Auberon Herbert, “I know of no more inspiring spectacle in England than that of this man of exceptionally high social position doing battle almost single-handed with the giant monster, government, and showing in it a mental rigor and vigor and a wealth of moral fervor rarely equaled in any cause.”
Auberon Edward William Molyneux Herbert (1838–1906) was born into the ruling class. As the son of the 3rd Earl of Carnarvon and brother to the 4th earl, Herbert attended both Eton College, which has traditionally been called “the chief nurse of England’s statesmen,” and St. John’s College, Oxford. He ran unsuccessfully for Parliament as a Conservative and later served as a Liberal in the House of Commons for Nottingham in the early 1870s. There, his sympathy for working people was evident through the support he rendered to fellow-politician Joseph Arch in the goal of forming the National Agricultural Labourers Union. Upon meeting the individualist philosopher Herbert Spencer in 1873, however, Herbert became cemented in his decision not to seek reelection. In an essay posthumously published in his book The Voluntaryist Creed (Oxford University Press, 1908), Herbert explained Spencer’s impact upon him:
As I read and thought over what he taught, a new window was opened in my mind. I lost my faith in the great machine [government]; I saw that thinking and acting for others had always hindered not helped the real progress; that all forms of compulsion deadened the living forces in a nation; that every evil violently stamped out still persisted, almost always in a worse form, when driven out of sight, and festered under the surface. I no longer believed that the handful of us however well-intentioned we might be spending our nights in the House, could manufacture the life of a nation, could endow it out of hand with happiness, wisdom and prosperity, and clothe it in all the virtues.
Herbert fully embraced the radical individualism Spencer expressed in his brief work The Man versus the State (1884). In the Illustrated London News (February 15, 1936) English author G.K. Chesterton wrote,
Herbert Spencer really went as far as he could in the direction of Individualism.... He left only the gallant and eccentric Auberon Herbert to go one step further; and practically propose that we should abolish the police; and merely insure ourselves against thieves and assassins, as against fire and accident.
Herbert also began to argue vigorously against the privileges of his own class. His book A Politician in Trouble about his Soul (1884), issued by the prestigious Chapman and Hall, who also published Charles Dickens, was dedicated to “The Workmen of Nottingham,” In the dedication, he wrote, May the day come, for us and for every other nation, when the politician, as we know him at present, shall be numbered amongst the fossils of the past, when we shall cease to desire to rule each other either by force or by trick, when we shall dread for the sake of our own selves the possession of power, when we shall recognize that there are such things as universal rights....
Published by mainstream periodicals such as Nineteenth Century, The Humanitarian, and Fortnightly Review, Herbert became the most influential British libertarian of his time. Today, however, he is perhaps best remembered for popularizing Voluntaryism — a political tradition maintaining that all human interaction should be voluntary and rejecting the initiation of force. The only justification for force is self-defense, including the defense of property.
The role of government
To the extent there is debate about Herbert’s beliefs, the focus is generally upon whether he was an anarchist. He consistently rejected the label. He wrote,
My charge against Anarchism is that it sees many forms of crime existing in the world, and it refuses to come to any settled opinion as to what it will do in the matter. If it says it will do nothing, then we must live under the reign of the murderer...; if it says it will have some form of local jury, then we are back into government again at once.
By contrast, “[in] voluntaryism the state employs force only to repel force — to protect the person and the property of the individual against force and fraud; under voluntaryism the state would defend the rights of liberty, never aggress upon them.”
In short, Herbert believed defensive force and the protection of property were legitimate roles for government or “a central agency.” The government would be financed solely by a “voluntary tax.” Payees would gain the privilege of voting; nonpayees would not have the franchise but could set up their own associations. Herbert doubted they would do so because the benefits of a “central agency” would be apparent to all. Thus, he called himself a “governmentalist” and, in 1879, once more attempted to join the House of Commons but failed.
The focus on the anarchism question loses the true importance of the man. During decades of toil for liberty, Herbert was one of the most influential anti-war voices in England; he was an eloquent and unique advocate of the working man; he acted as a foil to the emerging power of socialism; and, he argued against the worst aspects of 19th-century American libertarianism, including its rejection of capitalism, especially in the form of rent and interest. Although it is speculation, Herbert’s presence at the head of British libertarianism may have been what kept that movement on course in terms of embracing sound economic theory.
The foundation of Herbert’s political convictions was “the rights of self-ownership” which “express the limits of rightful and wrongful action.” These were the natural rights that a person had over his own body and the products thereof (property) against which no one else could properly aggress. Since they were based in man’s nature, these rights were possessed in equal measure by every man. Herbert declared, “If we are self-owners (and it is absurd, it is doing violence to reason, to suppose that we are not), neither an individual, nor a majority, nor a government can have rights of ownership in other men.”
“The way of force and strife”
Herbert argued with particular vigor against the idea of majority rule, saying that “what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.” Regarding the phrase “the good of the greatest number,” Herbert exclaimed,
There never was invented a more specious and misleading phrase. The Devil was in his most subtle and ingenious mood when he slipped this phrase into the brains of men.... It assumes that there are two opposed “goods,” and that the one good is to be sacrificed to the other good — but ... liberty is the one good, open to all, and requiring no sacrifice of others; this false opposition (where no real opposition exists) of two different goods means perpetual war between men — the larger number being for ever incited to trample on the smaller number. I can only ask: Why are 2 men to be sacrificed to 3 men? We all agree that the 3 men are not to be sacrificed to the 2 men; but why — as a matter of moral right — are we to do what is almost as bad and immoral and short-sighted — sacrifice the 2 men to the 3 men?... [Liberty] does away with all necessity of sacrifice.” (Free Life, July 1898)
Herbert expressed his rejection of majority rule and “tribalism” through his active opposition to war. In the introduction to the 1978 edition of The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, the philosopher Eric Mack observed,
Following Spencer’s distinction between industrial and militant societies, Herbert continually emphasized the differences between two basic modes of interpersonal coordination. There is the “way of peace and cooperation” founded upon respect for self-ownership and the demand for only voluntary association. And there is the “way of force and strife” founded upon either the belief in the ownership of some by others or the simple reverence of brute force.
War was the pure expression of “the way of force and strife.” Herbert’s anti-war sentiments had a long history. Like many British aristocrats, he had held commissions in the army and served in India; in letters home, he criticized the British occupation. During the Prusso-Danish war (1864), he spent time observing action near the front line and was subsequently decorated by the Danish government for rendering aid to the wounded. He also directly observed the American Civil War (1861–1865), of which he wrote, “I am very glad that slavery is done away with, but I think the manner is very bad and wrong.”
In the 1870s, “jingoism” swept England in reaction to the Russo-Turkish War. Jingoism is extreme patriotism coupled with an aggressive foreign policy. The term came from the chorus of a popular pub song: “We don’t want to fight but by Jingo if we do/We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too/We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true/The Russians shall not have Constantinople.”
When the jingoists organized anti-Russia rallies in Hyde Park, Herbert became a driving force in organizing anti-jingoist ones. His anti-war stance was not only visceral from having witnessed the savagery of war, but also ideological. Mack explained,
Herbert repeatedly took anti-imperialist stands. He consistently called for Irish self-determination. In the early 1880s, he opposed British intervention in Egypt as a use of the power of the nation to guarantee the results of particular speculations. And, later, he opposed the Boer War.
Herbert was also cognizant that wars benefited the ruling class at the expense of common men, who were overwhelmingly the ones to fight and die .
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
Dumbing Down the Charge of RapeOriginally posted this morning at the Freeman Online. TO LEAVE A COMMENT please click here. I will be visiting the comment section of this article several times today to respond.
On April 4 the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) instructed every college and university that accepts federal funds directly or through student loans – that is, virtually every institution of higher learning in the country – to use the “preponderance of the evidence” standard when adjudicating on-campus accusations of sexual harassment and sexual assault rather than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard used in criminal courts.
College administrators have long been criticized for not respecting the due-process rights of accused students during such adjudications. Now the OCR wants administrators to go even further. The stakes are high for an accused, who is typically male. His academic career, reputation, and future job prospects can be shattered by a guilty verdict. But more than this, it is common for the police to become involved during or after an adjudication. Thus the accused risks criminal charges for which the college process can constitute supporting evidence.
Under OCR policy, students accused of serious crimes will be judged by the civil court standard of proof according to which a plaintiff’s evidence need only “tip the scales” rather than the higher criminal court standard according to which a defendant must be proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, a student accused of sexual assault will be judged by the same lawsuit yardstick used to assess whether he was responsible for a fender bender or back rent.
Protecting Hypothetical Victims
A common argument for lowering the standard of proof is that it’s necessary to encourage future victims to come forward. In other words, when the due-process rights of real persons are pitted against hypothetical future victims, the hypothetical victims win.
Mainstream feminism deserves much of the credit … or infamy for this change. In the 1990s mainstream feminist groups began to actively promote use of civil courts in sexual assault cases. The Listening Ear — the oldest all-volunteer crisis center in America — distributes the pamphlet “Pressing Charges in Civil Court” (pdf), which advises, “The civil court is an alternative to criminal charges.” It is a way to impose penalties on an accused’s pocketbook and reputation even if the accusation is not supportable in criminal court. This is now an accepted practice.
Moreover, because criminal and civil courts are based on distinct paradigms of law and address different matters, an accuser can pursue both approaches without tripping over double jeopardy.
Different Standards
Criminal law deals with offenses deemed to be committed against “the people” and justifying punishment by imprisonment, at least in more serious cases. Thus due process and high standards of evidence are required.
Civil law deals with wrong against individuals, including breaches of contract and torts. Civil penalties are generally financial and are intended as restitution. Thus a far lower standard of proof and due process exists.
“Pressing Charges in Civil Court” notes the lower standard as a particular advantage in rape cases, which often amount to “the defendant’s word against the plaintiff’s … with no other witnesses.” Another advantage: “[A] civil case does not require a unanimous [jury] decision in favor of the plaintiff”; civil jury trials only require only nine of 12 jurors to agree. Moreover, “civil court allows you to sue any third party … for contributing to the rape.” For example, an employer who did take a prior complaint seriously could be liable. The purpose here is not merely to deepen the pockets of defendants but also to “force” third parties “to take sexual assault more seriously.”
The pamphlet cites “successful” civil court cases dating from the mid-1990s — the time when the practice of lowering standards and “believing the victim” began to gain traction, especially academia.
The trend will not change easily. For one thing, the accuser is not the only beneficiary. Another beneficiary is the adjudicating authority itself. College bodies that sit in judgment of students accused of sexual assault have been officially freed from the restraints of hard evidence. Authorities tend to jealously guard their own power.
College has just become more dangerous for males.
For more commentary, please visit www.wendymcelroy.com
From CNN (May 13): U.S. interviews 'hostile' bin Laden widows, with Pakistan officials. (Note: this has to be the stupidest headline ever. Of course they are hostile to Americans who shot their husband and other friends/family members behind their own eyes. Of course they are hostile to those who shot one of them in the leg while she was trying to protect her husband. Of course, as kidnap victims now imprisoned, they are hostile. Did the U.S. expect they would 'bake a cake'?]
Three of Osama bin Laden's widows have been interviewed by U.S. intelligence officers under the supervision of Pakistani's intelligence service, according to sources in both governments. The women -- who were all interviewed together this week -- were "hostile" toward the Americans, according to a senior Pakistani government official with direct knowledge of the post-bin Laden investigation and two senior U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. The eldest of the three widows spoke for the group.
From the Los Angeles Times (May 12): San Bernardino County man dies after deputies use Taser to subdue him (Note: His crime? He ran a stop sign. Father of victim calls it 'murder'. I do too.)
[Father] said witnesses told him that the deputy slammed his son to the ground. His son was Tasered about eight times by two deputies, said Jack Kephart, who dismissed assertions that his son was combative with the deputies.
From the Raw Story (May 11): NPR joins AP in demanding visual proof of Osama bin Laden’s death. (Note: these photos are bound to leak. Obama has already shared them with various Senators, etc. But it is interesting to see the ultra-liberal NPR making such a high-profile demand of Obama.)
From Orange County Register (May 10): Some Orange County lifeguards make over $200,000. (Note: Able to retire with 90% of salary after only 30 years of work at as early as age 50.)
From the Huffington Post (May 10): For Jobless, Florida Set To Become Stingiest State In America. (Note: I think this will become a trend; I don't see how states can avoid such spending rollbacks.)
A bill awaiting Republican Gov. Rick Scott's signature will cut unemployment taxes on businesses by reducing the maximum benefits for people laid off through no fault of their own to 23 weeks. That's three fewer weeks than the standard 26 weeks provided by nearly every state for the past 50 years. And as the unemployment rate falls, benefits will diminish.
For more commentary, visit www.WendyMcElroy.com.
by Wendy McElroy, originally published on the Mises site
As the crazed election season approaches and straw hats are dusted off, it is prudent to remember what the 19th-century American anarchist Henry David Thoreau called "the business of living."
Although most libertarians know Thoreau through his short essay "Civil Disobedience" (1849) or, perhaps, through his short book Walden, Or Life in the Woods (1854), the vast majority of Thoreau's work dealt with nature — with flora and fauna — rather than politics. His writing reflected a deep commitment to the business of living. He gloried in wandering the woods and fields surrounding his home. No detail was too small for his journals to record: a broken blade of grass, a few berries hidden behind a leaf, a new tone to a bird call, the movement of an insect. A pure and simple joy in life leaps out of Thoreau's journals, which were lauded in their day.
No one in his intellectual circle, which included Ralph Waldo Emerson, seemed to think Thoreau's political writing would stand the test of time. After Thoreau's early death, his sister Sophia sorted his uncollected works into multiple volumes to be published through Ticknor and Fields. Thoreau's political essays were held until last, and they appeared in a volume entitled A Yankee in Canada with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers (1866). The volume included "Civil Disobedience," which was sandwiched inauspiciously between "Prayers" and "A Plea for Captain John Brown."
Had it not been for a young crusader for Indian independence named Mohandas Gandhi, the essay might have remained just an oddity in among Thoreau's writings on nature. Gandhi read "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" (one of the essay's various titles) while he sat in a South African prison for the crime of nonviolently protesting discrimination against the Indian population in the Transvaal. The essay galvanized Gandhi, who wrote and published a synopsis of Thoreau's argument, calling its "incisive logic … unanswerable" and referring to Thoreau as "one of the greatest and most moral men America has produced."
Largely through Gandhi, Thoreau's essay gained such powerful admirers as civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. Thus, Thoreau's politics took a strange and circuitous route back home, where it became one of the most influential political tracts ever written by an American.
No one would have been more surprised than Thoreau himself, to whom the business of living was immensely more important than politics.
And I believe he would have objected to the retitling of his famous essay as "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience." Thoreau did not consider resisting the state to be a duty that people must assume. Quite the opposite. He considered the only true duty, which every man owed to himself, to be the business of living as deeply and honestly as possible. It was only when living honestly came into conflict with the law or other expressions of authority that it became necessary for people to take a political stand.
Thoreau's famous act of civil disobedience — the refusal to pay a tax that supported war — was not the act of a determined political dissident, although he had spoken out against war before. His one night in jail came about only because the state literally knocked on his front door in the form of a tax collector. At that point, when looking the state in the face, Thoreau had to make a choice.
He believed the Mexican-American War was immoral: it violated both his sense of decency and his theory of rights. As long as Thoreau was not forced to participate in this "evil" by supporting it, he seemed content to go about the business of living — of enjoying nature, family, and friends. Participation in the oppression of others, however, was where Thoreau drew a hard line, because it went against his duty to live honestly.
When Thoreau was released from jail, he immediately went on a berry hunt with a swarm of young boys. No bitterness. Thoreau simply returned to living deeply without missing a beat. This post-jail quest for berries occasioned my favorite line from all of Thoreau's writings: As he tramped the trails in search of juicy treasure, Thoreau found himself standing on a high point in a field. He gazed about at the continuous, sprawling beauty that surrounded him and observed "the State was nowhere to be seen."
It is far more difficult today than in Thoreau's time to find places where the state cannot be seen. But, perhaps, this makes it far more important to try.
For many people, the state disappears in the conduct of their private lives with family and friends, where the bonds of affection and trust have nothing whatsoever to do with government law. Other people lose themselves in hobbies like raising animals, in work about which they are passionate, or in acts of charity that no one mandates.
In his berry-picking insight, I believe Thoreau to be correct. There is no duty to confront the state except when it seeks to make you an active accomplice in the oppression of others. Those who stand up against the injustice of others are to be applauded, but they should not do so at the expense of their primary duty: to live deeply and honestly. This duty involves pushing back or walking away (when possible) from the areas of life in which the state commands jurisdiction. Make space, instead, for the ones that allow you to say "Here, the state is nowhere to be seen."
For more commentary, visit www.wendymcelroy.com
Obama also gets his facts wrong when he dismisses any comparison to the Daniel Ellsberg case. See this discussion by Brian Doherty.
From KARE 11 (April 19):"Mn/DOT to test driver's 'mileage tax'." (Note: yet another way to part you from your money. Get more efficient at preserving .10 cents for your family and the government will get more efficient at snatching it.]
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is looking for 500 people to test technology that could someday be used to collect a mileage-based user fee. Mn/DOT anticipates a fee on road usage might someday be necessary as more fuel efficient and hybrid cars are on the road, decreasing revenue from the gas tax.
From Oregon Live (April 14): "Jury awards $82,000 after woman is arrested when asking police for a business card." (Note: although I sympathize with the verdict and hope it reins in the arrogant brutality of the police, it is the taxpayers who will pay the settlement and they are innocent of wrongdoing. Make police individually responsible for their acts.)
A Multnomah County jury awarded a 33-year-old woman $82,000 Thursday, saying they wanted to send Portland police a message: Hand over a business card the next time a citizen asks for one. Several jurors who spoke to The Oregonian after the verdict in Multnomah County Circuit Court said police weren’t dealing with an urgent or dangerous situation...when Shei’Meka Newmann questioned what she thought was an unnecessarily rough arrest of a fellow MAX rider. It would have taken only a few seconds for an officer to hand Newmann a card, jurors said.
From CNN (April 18): "For schoolchildren, where's the water?" (Note: mild dehydration said to affect children's ability to learn. Is this the new food police crusade? If they want to improve children's ability to learn, how about improving the teachers?]
For more commentary visit Wendy McElroy.com
The Al Jazeera article referenced is an excellent opinion piece by Lew Rockwell on the uprising in Egypt. The information about Murray Rothbard's estate is in Lew's bio note at the bottom. BTW, I believe Lew inherited only the rights to Murray's works, not to any other financial aspect of the estate...but I could be wrong.
For more commentary, visit WendyMcElroy.com
The it over which so many vacillate is capital punishment -- the sanctioned execution of those convicted of a crime punishable by death. Laws vary across America, with about two-thirds of the states permitting capital punishment, usually in aggravated murder cases, while the others either ban or do not authorize it.
On a federal level, the death penalty attaches to a wider variety of 'crimes' including treason and espionage.
Intense debate surrounds this issue.
Perhaps the most vigorous one revolves around the possibility (or inevitability) of wrongful convictions causing the execution of innocent people. High-profile campaigns by organizations like the Innocence Project ensures that this line of argument will remain active; the Project uses DNA testing to exonerate convicted criminals. To date, 266 convicts have been exonerated, including 17 on death row.
Within libertarianism, capital punishment remains a point of unsettled theory. Libertarians generally agree on the imprudence of granting government the power of life and death but this important concern is not a fundamental one. The question of capital punishment would also confront a private justice system.
Could a private court properly deliver a death sentence?
To rephrase the question: can you justly kill a stranger who has done you no personal harm and who poses no immediate threat to others? This is what a courtroom does when it sentences an already imprisoned man to die.
If capital punishment is proper, then it is based on the right of self-defense, the right to kill another person who uses deadly force against you. Once the threat of deadly force has gone, however, courts – or, more broadly, a legal system – take over. If people were permitted to personally execute yesterday's aggressor in his sleep, it would become impossible for third parties to tell victims from perps. A third party might well come to the defense of the aggressor, killing the victim-vigilante in the process. Thus, one role of a proper court system is to provide the public objectivity that prevents society from resembling a Hobbesian war of all against all.
In short, if an individual has the right to personally kill another during deadly aggression, then he can properly delegate that right to a private court.
But what of the aggressor and his rights? The 19th century classical liberal Herbert Spencer believed rights could be alienated through acts of aggression. For example, by murdering, a man stripped himself of the humanity required to claim a reciprocal right to life and, so, he reduced himself to the level of a base animal. The 20th century Austrian economist Murray Rothbard argued that an aggressor forfeited rights to the extent that he had violated them himself.
The foregoing case for free market capital punishment is counties away from conclusive. The imposed brevity of discussion means that far more is unexplored than touched upon. Moreover, capital punishment raises many troubling and unresolved questions. For example, if it is proper to kill an aggressor, why not just hideously torture him for months instead? After all, the imposition of pain is a lesser punishment than death.
Conclusion
For libertarians, however, capital punishment may remain a theoretical football.
The government is in charge of all aspects of the death penalty and this one fact presents an insuperable barrier to advocacy. It is not merely that the encroaching state cannot be trusted with power; it is, as the Innocence Project spotlights, that the system is rampantly bureaucratic and inefficient.
In an increasingly militarized and militant society, capital punishment is likely to expand both in definition and application. In Louisiana and Florida, the death penalty covers aggravated rape. Connecticut includes drug trafficking that results in a death. Alabama will execute you for airplane hijacking.
As definition and application expand, it becomes increasingly dangerous for the government to have the institutionalized 'right' to execute.
In short, whether libertarian theory can embrace capital punishment is a fascinating debate but, in the current reality, there is only one practical answer: ban the procedure.
For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.
And now Janet Napolitano wants to stomp on the corpse of American spirit to make sure it doesn't come back to life like the dead body in the closing minutes of a horror movie. What a horror it would be for the all-consuming state if Americans found their self-respect and independence once more.
CBS News reports, Janet Napolitano Urges"Next Stage" of Airport Screening. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will urge 90 nations to heighten their aviation security measures today to include screening devices that could prevent terrorists from bringing plastic- or powder-based explosives onto the plane. Not content merely to oppress America's own citizens, Napolitano wants to internationalize U.S. insanity. All corners of the globe are to snap-to and remove their shoes for American statism. If they don't, if they balk at making kids undergo 'child porn' scanners....well, then they will be endangering American citizens! Sounds like grounds for military invasion to me. Or, at least, grounds as valid as the invasion of Iraq. Let's roll! I am a non-American. I am planning all future trips so that I do not need to have stop-overs or any contact with American airports; my travel agent tells me that the most 'popular' request she receives is" can I avoid setting foot on American soil?" Because setting foot in America -- even to shuffle from one security area to another within the airport -- is degrading and frightening. Now the U.S. wants to make every airport an American one and make residents of other nations pay the price for its empire building in Iraq and Afghanistan. American atrocities in and occupation of those nations has made the U.S. a target of unprecedented hatred worldwide; the response of Americans has been unprecedented paranoia that encourages the pat down of children and the exposure of their genitalia in scanners. You people are f***ing INSANE!
And here I start to back off... Most of my family is American and, so, I cannot say"reap the whirlwind yourself!" because I know that most Americans are decent people. I know this from personal experience. But why, oh why are you tolerating and even endorsing the brutal empire-building that causes such hatred? Why are you willing to cyber-strip your own children to pacify an ever increasingly total State?
Leave the rest of the world alone. Do not convert the globe into your own personal insane asylum. America go home!
For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.
For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.
HOMESCHOOLING A HOPE FOR AMERICA is a collection of articles taken from The Voluntaryist, a newsletter with a libertarian outlook which has been published since 1982. The anthology has been assembled by Carl Watner (from many of his past articles, as well as those of others), and contains an original Foreword by John Taylor Gatto.
This anthology argues against government education in a unique way. One who advocates voluntaryism opposes government schools, not because he opposes schooling but, because he opposes coercion, which is to be found in government taxation, compulsory attendance laws, and in the monopolization of public services. Most of us would agree that there should not be any state religion; that religion should not be supported by taxation; and that people should not be compelled to attend religious services. Why shouldn't the principles of voluntaryism in religion apply to education?
All government depends on the cooperation and/or tacit consent of the majority of its citizens. When the state could no longer use government churches to legitimize its rule of the divine right of kings, some other institution had to be found that would induce consent among the masses. Government schools became the chosen instrument to produce good citizens for the state. Indoctrinate the young: then they will support the state for the rest of their lives.
America is at a cross roads of cultural and economic disintegration, yet voluntaryists believe that there is hope. It is to be found in home schooling. Rather than cursing the darkness, parents can light one small candle of wisdom and learning and pass it along to the next generation."Ages of experience testify that the only way society can be improved is by the individualist method; ... that is, the method of each one doing his best to improve one." This is the quiet or patient way of changing society because it concentrates upon bettering the character of men and women as individuals. As the individual units change, the improvement in society will take care of itself. In other words, if one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
Ordering Information - Softcover, 247 pages. $20 postpage paid. Send silver, gold, cash, check or money order (payable to The Voluntaryist) to P.O. Box 275, Gramling, SC 29348
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For almost two decades, Hollywood has tried unsuccessfully to turn Ayn Rand’s 1100 page classic Atlas Shrugged into a feature film with actresses ranging from Angelina Jolie to Charlize Theron to Faye Dunaway. John Aglialoro, the entrepreneur who 17 years ago paid $1 million to option the book rights, is tired of the futility and is taking matters into his own hands. He’s announced that he is financing a June 11 production start in Los Angeles for the first of what he said will be four films made from the book. Aglialoro, who had a hand in writing the script by Brian O’Tool, is taking on this ambitious plan with an unproven director, and is weeks away from production without stars to play Dagny Taggart, Hank Rearden, John Galt and the other roles. For full story, click here.
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How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. ... What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
There are two principal demands that governments make: your taxes and vote. (Of course, there are many other 'demands', such as military service, send your children to school, have a drivers license, etc., but many of these are ancillary to the primary means of government survival, which is the collection of taxes.)
Now, of these two principal demands, taxation carries criminal sanctions: pay your money or we imprison your body and/or confiscate your property. However, as yet in most nations of the world, failure to vote in government elections carries no penalty.
Governments, like all other hierarchical institutions, depend upon the cooperation and, at least, the tacit consent over those whom they exercise power. In other words, government soldiers and police can force people to do things they don't want to do, but in the long run - in the face of adamant opposition - such coercion is either too expensive or too futile to accomplish its goals of subjugating entire populations. It is far simpler to motivate people to do what you want them to do, rather than forcing them to do it by pointing guns at them all the time. As Boris Yeltsin supposedly said,"You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it long."
Educating generations of parents and children in government schools and teaching them to be patriotic and support their government in political elections is one of the fundamental ways governments garner public support. Citizens are taught that it is both their right and duty to vote. But all this is done with an ulterior motive in mind. As Theodore Lowi, in his book INCOMPLETE CONQUEST: GOVERNING AMERICA pointed out:
Participation is an instrument of [government] conquest because it encourages people to give their consent to being governed. ... Deeply embedded in people's sense of fair play is the principle that those who play the game must accept the outcome. Those who participate in politics are similarly committed, even if they are consistently on the losing side. Why do politicians plead with everyone to get out and vote? Because voting is the simplest and easiest form of participation [of supporting the state] by masses of people. Even though it is minimal participation, it is sufficient to commit all voters to being governed, regardless of who wins.
Not voting in government elections is one way of refusing to participate; of refusing to consent to government rule over your life. Non-voting may be seen as an act of personal secession, of exposing the myth behind"government by consent." There are many reasons, both moral and practical, for choosing"not to vote," and they have been discussed in my anthology, DISSENTING ELECTORATE. To briefly summarize:
Truth does not depend upon a majority vote. Two plus two equals four regardless of how many people vote that it equals five.
Individuals have rights which do not depend on the outcome of elections. Majorities of voters cannot vote away the rights of a single individual or groups of individuals.
Voting is implicitly a coercive act because it lends support to a compulsory government.
Voting reinforces the legitimacy of the state because the participation of the voters makes it appear that they approve of their government.
There are ways of opposing the state, other than by voting"against" the incumbents. [And remember, even if the opposition politicians are the lesser of two evils, they are still evil.] Such non-political methods as civil disobedience, non-violent resistance, home schooling, bettering one's self, and improving one's own understanding of voluntaryism all go far in robbing the government of its much sought after legitimacy.
As Thoreau pointed our,"All voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, ... . Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it." So whatever you do, don't play the government's game, Don't vote. Do something for the right.
For more commentary, please visit WendyMcElroy.com.
SO GOLDMAN Sachs, the world's greatest and smuggest investment bank, has been sued for fraud by the American Securities and Exchange Commission. Legally, the case hangs on a technicality. Morally, however, the case may turn into a final referendum on the greed-is-good ethos that conquered America in the '80s - and in the years since has aped other horrifying American trends in spreading across the Western world like a venereal disease. When the globe was engulfed in the flood of defaults and derivative losses that emerged from the collapse of the US housing bubble two years ago, few understood that the crash had its roots in the lunatic greed-centred objectivist religion, fostered in the '50s and '60s by ponderous emigre novelist Ayn Rand.
And, then, the bashing continues unabated. Of all the valid criticisms you can level at Rand and Objectivism...Goldman Sachs?
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The Lancet's editor was also pressured to postpone publication until a date"after critical fundraising meetings" for several women's advocacy groups. "Activists perceive a lower maternal mortality figure as actually diluting their message," he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. Advocacy can sometimes get in the way of science."
"The U.N. has a track record of inflating disease figures to keep the aid money flowing, so I'd probably place more faith in the figures which show a lower disease burden," said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London think tank."This is yet more confirmation that whoever paints the most apocalyptic picture gets the most cash, even if they have to manipulate and spin the data."
The Lancet editorial on the study
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