Liberty

... I found myself reading an analysis of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Wagner's The Ring that is actually surprisingly good and even somewhat applicable to current events.  UPDATE: And by some odd coincidence, here's another.

FreedomSight warns us about the War on Drugs, and in particular, about some experimental programs to medicate drug users, with the medication blocking the effects of illegal drugs. While this sort of thing has obvious benefits for someone using them voluntarily, in order to quit, the state of the drug war forces us to consider the possibility of compulsory use of such drugs.

The report is scary. Modern psychology and pharmocology make possible, through advanced drugs, things that would once have seemed science fiction. We cannot allow the principle of liberty to be eroded in this arena. We are only free inasmuch as we can choose not to be drugged at the behest of the state without adverse consequences for such a choice.

A shackled teacher's aide tried to explain her predicament to a judge through tears Friday. Vacationing from Riverton, Wyo., Hope Clarke said she had been rousted by federal agents at her cruise ship cabin door at 6:30 a.m. She was put in handcuffs on a bench warrant for failing to put away her marshmallows and hot chocolate while staying at Yellowstone National Park last year.

The catch? Clarke said she had to pay the $50 fine the same day for the federal offense of improper food storage before she was allowed to leave the park. Nonetheless, a warrant claiming she had not paid went into the federal law enforcement database. Back in the United States from Cozumel, Mexico, on Carnival's Fascination cruise ship, Clarke was awakened, cuffed, turned over to federal marshals and brought to court in leg shackles and short-shorts.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Outerbridge conceded there were some "discrepancies."

Arrested and jailed over a $50 fine which she paid... all based on "improper food storage"? What kind of idiots thought this one up?

The relevant lesson here is that laws are enforced by men with guns. Whatever your goal might be, if it's not important enough to be enforced at gunpoint, then you damn well should find some mechanism other than a law. Laws are for important stuff.

Terrorism: When asked if the United States would be attacked by terrorists within the next year, 88.2 percent said yes. Meanwhile 64 percent of police commanders said they received training and other resources from the federal government to combat terrorism, while only 42 percent said their departments participated in terrorism-response simulations.

Now, part of this is just simple paranoia; it's their job to be paranoid, and there are well-publicized attempts. I have no doubt that terrorist attacks against the US will manifest; indeed, I feel they already have, in the DC sniper incident. Islamofascist terrorism does not require official affiliation, which is one of the reasons it can be so hard to stop. So, this isn't really surprising; it's only the "within the next year" that has any significant doubt.

Homeland Security: When police commanders were asked if they observed more cooperation between federal and local agencies, 69.8 percent said yes. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents stated they found the color-coded threat matrix an effective way of informing the public of terrorist threats. When asked if the process of arming commercial airline pilots is too burdensome, 53.6 percent of the police executives answered yes.

The downside to this category is that "more cooperation" does not necessarily mean that the anti-terrorism forces are more effective. And, of course, there is the civil liberties issue of allowing intelligence operatives and techniques to be used against our own citizens with no evidence of criminal behavior. But, as police chiefs, they are not expected to worry overly much about that possibility.

Gun Control: With regard to private citizens owning firearms for sport or self-defense, 94 percent of the respondents supported civilian gun-ownership rights. Ninety-six percent of the police chiefs and sheriffs believe criminals obtain firearms from illegal sources and 91 percent revealed they hadn't arrested anyone for violation of the so-called "waiting period" laws. When asked if they opposed citizens obtaining concealed-weapons permits, only 34 percent said yes.

Those are some damn good numbers, although not at all unexpected.

War on Drugs: Forty percent of police commanders surveyed said they believe marijuana should be available for medicinal purposes and 62.6 percent said they've seen an increase in the abuse of prescription drugs such as Oxycontin and other Schedule II drugs. A mere 17 percent of police commanders believe the war on drugs has been successful.

These numbers, on the other hand, are surprising. And gratifying. These are the people who are tasked with enforcing the drug laws, and who have to deal with the drug addicts if they turn violent. Despite this, 83% say the drug war has failed and 40% support legalization of marijuana for medical purposes.

This is a good page to bookmark for future reference, folks.

Its justification for existence was weak 70 years ago, but advances in technology since then have eliminated whatever arguments remained. Central planning didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it's not working for us. The FCC is now an agency that does more harm than good.

Consider some examples of bureaucratic malfeasance that the FCC, with the complicity of the U.S. Congress, has committed. The FCC rejected long-distance telephone service competition in 1968, banned Americans from buying their own non-Bell telephones in 1956, dragged its feet in the 1970s when considering whether video telephones would be allowed and did not grant modern cellular telephone licenses until 1981--about four decades after Bell Labs invented the technology. Along the way, the FCC has preserved monopolistic practices that would have otherwise been illegal under antitrust law.

Declan (of PoliTech) makes the case for deregulating the airwaves. He's got some excellent points. The FCC has certainly done more harm than good, and it's imposition of "speech codes" have been responsible for suppressing our right of free speech for years. And no, I'm not talking just about the Janet Jackson incident, or even the "seven dirty words" that you can't say on the air... there's a lot more to it than that.

The FCC, for example, is hell on small, independent ("unlicensed") broadcasters. Try to run a small radio station just for fun, without getting permission, and they will be all over you. They're all over the commercial interests, too, chasing those profitable fines:

Clear Channel Communications Inc. (CCU.N: Quote, Profile, Research) , the biggest owner of U.S. radio stations, on Wednesday admitted to airing indecent material and will pay a record $1.75 million penalty to settle all existing complaints.

The company, which has run afoul of indecency limits several times for the antics of disc jockeys, also agreed to take steps to prevent further such incidents, including formalizing its zero tolerance policy and training employees.

The Federal Communications Commission had already proposed almost $800,000 in fines against the radio giant and was investigating more than a dozen other incidents. It also had several other complaints against the company's stations but the settlement wipes the slate clean.

"We didn't agree that all the complaints were legally indecent, but some clearly crossed the line and for those we have taken full responsibility," Andrew Levin, Clear Channel's chief legal officer, said in a statement.

What we have here is called a "chilling effect".

A common factor in American politics is the idea of a "silent majority" as a significant, sometimes even dominant, factor in American politics. These are the people who don't get worked up about politics; they go to their jobs or take care of their families and vote according simple, almost subliminal criteria: who they like, who they trust. The issues of the day are factors in that opinion but not necessarily dominant ones; the silent majority judges the whole range of issues on feel rather than analysis.

Some would say this is ignorance in action; others would say that it is prone to tyranny-of-the-majority. But I would say it's something else -- something that many Americans grasp in principle as the foundation of peaceful coexistance. I'll call it minding your own business. Which is to say, you don't bother someone unless they are bothering you. You don't try to stop them from doing what they want to do; you don't try to take their money for some cause; you don't interfere with how they want to spend their time or develop their land. You mind your own business, and everyone else does the same, and only where "your business" intersects "my business" do we need to interact.

That may be in activities that we both choose to conduct in public -- such as driving. Traffic laws, in the abstract, define a framework for interaction. That definition is a public good. We are better off having a set of rules that everyone agrees to operate by. It's more efficient to define the rules ahead of time than to argue about whose fault a particular crash really was. Particular rules may be poorly thought out or poorly implemented, but having a basic framework is better than not having one. (For the anarcho-capitalists: private roads can implement private rules just as easily; go build some and come back when you have).

But for activities that don't threaten someone else's life and health, we tend to fall back on the basic principle of leaving each other alone. And this principle extends to politics. I believe that the "silent majority" in America, the people who aren't vocal about politics except at the polls, and even the growing number of people who don't vote at all, are practicing this principle. They don't see a need for government to become involved in their lives, and so they don't involve themselves in politics.

Unfortunately, that leaves the political discourse to two groups of people: people who have something more that they want government to do, and people who want it to be a lot less involved. The average American doesn't see the thousands of regulations that businesses need to follow, doesn't see the large tax bill taken out of his paycheck, and doesn't see the need to change anything. It's not really interfering with his life, so he doesn't feel the need to interfere himself.

Most advocates for liberty are those who have had government interference in their lives. Maybe they have tried to run a small business, and noted with dismay the huge number of regulations imposed upon them. Maybe they were audited by the IRS at a young and tender age. But they have felt the heavy boot of government in their lives, and so they respond in kind.

But most people have the government interference carefully shuffled out of sight. Draw the taxes out of the paycheck, so that most people's interaction with the IRS comes only once a year, and many people get money back. "Hey," they think, "the government gives ME money!" Impose the regulations upon businesses, which can hire accountants and lawyers, then pass the cost along to the customer hidden in the cost of goods they buy. Do whatever is necessary, in short, to make government interference in the average person's life invisible.

Most people feel they are left alone by government, and so they leave it alone in turn. But it's interesting to look at what happens when that isn't the case.

Take security measures at airports. Everyone who has gotten on a plane since 9/11 has been searched more closely than before -- in many cases, substantially more closely. Government has interfered in lives directly. And people respond -- by getting angry at abusive security guards, by demanding armed pilots rather than intrusive searches, by creating such a public uproar over CAPPS-II that it's been renamed and reshuffled to avoid the attention.

But many things that don't interfere are, in practice, just as stupid and intrusive. They get ignored because they aren't on most people's radar screen.

For years, politicians have assumed that the "silent majority" supports the government status quo. After all, if the people wanted something different, they would vote differently, right? Since they elected us, they must support us. If they aren't voting at all, well, it means they support us enough not to want us out of office.

But that assumption is wrong. Silence is not support and silence is not consent. Silence means leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone. But leaving the government alone until it infringes upon your personal liberty is no longer enough.

While the media is roaring around trying to find some alleged snug of Mr. Kerry?s and trying to determine which safety magazines President Bush read on his weekend drills at Dannelly, real issues are being ignored. Americans get so caught up in the salacious, the slanderous and the silly we forget we have a nation to rescue: our own.

Decades ago, a question punctuated a popular late-night newscast in Chicago: "It's 10:30," the anchor would say. "Do you know where your children are?" It was a reminder to parents that anyone younger than 17 was supposed to be off the streets and obeying a citywide curfew -- one that remains in effect today.

"If you're 16 or younger, you belong in the house, not standing on a street corner," says Chicago police spokesman Pat Camden whose department caught 40,335 curfew violators last year.

You've got to wonder about this sort of thing. What sane person could condone treating a human being this way -- putting them under legal risk of incarceration for simply being out of doors at night? What sane person considers issuing over 40 thousand curfew violation citations in a single year to be a useful activity for the police? Shouldn't they be chasing real criminals?

This is just another case demonstrating that being a minor in the United States as just another way of saying "second class citizen".

A real pound pooch trained by police to sniff out banknotes helped authorities confiscate more than $39,000 in cash Thursday from a man at a London train station. The dog, one of 25 trained by British police to detect the scent of ink in bank notes, singled out a man carrying the 23,900 in British pounds at the Euston train station, authorities said.

The man ? whose identity has not been released ? allegedly could not explain why he had the money. He was released but the cash was confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act. The effort was part of Operation Payback, a four-year program between police and Customs officials designed to attack the proceeds of crime by impounding illegal cash and assets. Since the Proceeds of Crime Act took effect in December, police have confiscated more than $60.1 million.

Wait a minute here. "Illegal cash"? Where's the crime? Unfortunately, the US has similar laws regarding large amounts of cash; the motivation is obvious.

He wears a baby-blue spandex jumpsuit and shiny gold panties, gloves, cape, boots and goggles. He wields a giant, metal-cutting circular power saw. Who is Angle Grinder Man? He is Britain's self-styled "first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type person." That's who. For those not familiar with industrial machine tools, an angle grinder is the saw best suited to cutting through plates of steel, such as, say, the wheel clamps that authorities use to immobilize illegally parked cars in London. And Angle Grinder Man offers his "free clamp-removal service" to "all good, decent law-unabiding people" who would rather fight back than pay to have their cars released. All a clamped motorist has to do is call AGM's hotline and out comes the roadside rescue superhero to saw through the brace and release the car.

British newspapers love him. Taxi drivers are talking about him. And apparently he is for real.

Now this... THIS is the way to resist an oppressive government!

How does this work in a real world environment? In Tulia, Texas, it was recently discovered that an undercover cop named Tom Coleman gave false testimony in 38 drug-related cases. According to USA Today " Coleman worked alone for 18 monthsı. He kept no written records, wore no wire, filmed no video, produced no other witnesses or corroborating evidence. No drugs, paraphernalia, or money was seized during the arrests."

In much the same way I spent time in denial before I could even see the circumstances of my life let alone diagnose them as unhealthy, many Americans are in denial as to their own lives. They don't see the threat of the loss of liberty as imminent because it's been creeping up on them gradually for years, and they're not afraid because they've not been directly or physically threatened. But if I was abused in my own small relationship, then by the same definitions, American citizens are being abused in their relationship with the government.

The debate has always existed, especially among anarchists and libertarians, about the level of effectiveness when becoming involved in the process of government. In other words, does it really do any good to attend a city council meeting; or a school board session; or a regular conference of the local county commission? Can you, as an individual, effectively fight City Hall?

We've all heard about the frog in the kettle. Turn the heat up under him gradually enough and he'll sit there until he boils to death. It's become the most common metaphor to describe our gradual loss of freedom. We never ask, "Who's turning up the heat under us froggies?" because the answer is so obvious. It's government, of course. And it is. But there's something else that's causing the heat to rise and freedom to evaporate into air. It's going on in all three stories above and in daily life around us. Call it the Quisling Effect.

Ronald Reaganıs reminder that the Fourth of July is a celebration of independence, not dependence, still resonates today. We celebrate not only our political independence from England, but also our independence from the feudal notion of loyalty to King and Crown. We celebrate victory by the American colonies over a government that taxed them too much and sought too much control over their affairs. We also celebrate the Founding Fathers themselves, and the great principles contained in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

Every year, about this time, we start seeing all of the advertising, news stories, editorials, etc., and hearing all manner of conversation about the upcoming holiday. The name of which, it seems, few people care to remember. OK, sure, everyone knows that the name of the holiday is Independence Day. Then why is it that that isn't what they say? Why is it that that isn't what they write?

I hear it on the radio and on TV. I read it in the newspapers ? in ads and articles. I hear it in party invitations, and conversations among people talking about what they'll be doing.

"TheFourthaJuly"

And I ask myself, "What's up with that?" Doesn't anyone care anymore about the meaning of this day? Is it so unimportant, that it's now referred to as just another ordinal day on the calendar? Does it say something about our appreciation of our rights and liberties, that we can't be bothered to mention the name of the holiday which, more than any other, stands for the ideals of a nation "conceived in Liberty"?

This is a very good point that deserves mention. Today is, in fact, the 4th of July: Independence Day. It's the day we sent this letter to King George and took our place on the world stage, for better or worse... mostly for the better, I think. It's the day our nation, hardly even a nation yet, began to change the world.

That's something to celebrate, but it's also something to remember. What were the offenses for which the American people took up arms against the King of England? I will highlight a few that seem especially relevant:

1. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
2. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
3. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation
4. For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states
5. For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury

Why did I choose those examples? Here's a key:

1. Medical marijauna laws, passed by the states, have been ignored by federal enforcement agents;
2. DEA, BATFE, FAA, EPA, IRS...
3. The United Nations, particularly the International Criminal Court.
4. Waco, Ruby Ridge, and countless others. Federal agents can shoot innocent people and burn down their homes with complete impunity.
5. The laws have substantially narrowed the "qualifications" for a jury trial, and judges routinely ignore attempts to invoke that right.

Looks like our government has a pretty good start, and I wasn't even trying very hard. I'd like to encourage the Senators and "Representatives" who claim to represent the people from their Washington, DC enclave to go for the complete set. Go on. Take the rest of that document as a to-do list. I dare you.

On the Fourth of July we celebrate our nation's birth, announced to the world some 228 years ago through a remarkable document: the Declaration of Independence. In that document the Founders set forth both the reasons that impelled them to independence and, more important, the moral vision that has inspired us, and millions more around the world, ever since. Individual liberty, secured by limited government: that is its essence. Too often today, however, government is not serving liberty but is at war with it, telling us that it knows best, that it will decide for us.

The National Review brings us some excellent commentary on the true meaning of Independence Day, originally written by the Cato Institute.

The Hobbesian Conservative continues to misunderstand and misrepresent the Liberterian philosophy.  Libertarians do not oppose the existance of government; they merely feel it should be minimized, to fulfill only the essential function of public safety -- which is exactly the role you are describing as having failed here.

The understanding that government, no matter how large, cannot effectively enforce the rule of law by means other than the voluntary compliance of its citizens is fundamental.

Minimal government is not no government.

And even a very large government will not prevent the collapse of civilization under sufficient pressure.  There is no reason to believe a libertarian government would do noticably worse in this scenario, at least with regard to the maintenance of public order.  (The question of aid and charity is separate).  There is reason to believe that a libertarian government would have a populace much better prepared to support themselves in a crisis of this type without the social safety net many in modern society have come to rely upon.  Because libertarians believe that government cannot solve every problem, they prefer to find their own solutions.  Even to the collapse of civilization.

It's easy to knock down straw men, but please don't label those scarecrows as Libertarians.

Read and enjoy... but don't forget that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Garry Kasparov is moving from chess into Russian politics, seeking to oppose Vladimir Putin.  Kasparov is calling for street demonstrations in opposition to Putin's regime.  Are there protest babes in Russia?  I expect we'll find out.

... over in the Life, Liberty, Property community.  And they've got the first Carnival of Liberty up.

Or rather, in a simple Flash animation.  Wow.  Very impressive.  Hat tip to Pass the Ammo.

The Supreme Court has ruled (Kelo v New London) that the government can seize your property by law, and sell it to another private party, for no better reason than wanting more tax revenue ("promoting economic development... persuant to a development plan") from that property than you are currently paying them.  This is clearly contrary to the Constitutional langauge regarding the eminent domain power in the 5th Amendment: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." 

As Scalia put it, we are "free at last, free at last..." from the Constitutional chains that bound our government, that is.

And didn't someone else try that "centrally planned economy" idea recently? And fail miserably?  I'm seeing red...

• SaysUncle
• No Quarters
• Smallest Minority
• SCOTUS Blog
• Libertarian Party statement
• Clayton Cramer
• Countertop Chronicles (and more)
• Washington Post
• Ravenwood (No permalink, scroll down)
  
• FreedomSight has quotes from the dissent
  

UPDATE: I will make the following prediction: there will be people who simply refuse to surrender their property.  They will make their stand and force the police to kill them or remove them by force.  Are these people criminals?  Insane?  Or are they just the latest canary to die?

CenterDigit has some thoughts on the concept of Voice vs Exit: that is, whether it is better to have a voice in decisions or to have the ability to remove yourself from a decision unilaterally. In a nutshell, it's the difference between a market and a government.  And it's a very powerful point.  My own thoughts along those lines were expressed in Governing By Consent, which can be viewed as a way to formulate a government that operates by three principles: Entry, Voice, and Exit.

Entry: The power (indeed, requirement -- no default choice) to choose which government to join, and which laws you will consent to have enforced upon you.

Voice: The power to affect the behavior of the government which you have joined, by proposing new laws and advocating for their adoption.

Exit: The power to withdraw your consent from a specific government or specific laws to which you previously agreed.

... but primarily in the selfish mode; in order to advance their own economic interests they are willing to commit commercial muggings, patent extortion, licensing malfeasance, and just plain anticompetitive action.  I've never really seen them as evil on the same scale as a totalitarian government. 

But it seems that excessive greed does lead to the Dark Side.