Category Archives: Law

UPDATED: Self-Defense Honored In Egypt (Reader Horrified By Hoppe)

Feminism, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Middle East

Not a word has the non-libertarian mainstream media said about the spontaneous order that has sprung from the disorder in Egypt. I’m referring to what Hans-Hermann Hoppe calls “the private production of defense”:

“Private-property owners, cooperation based on the division of labor, and market competition can and should provide defense from aggression.” (http://mises.org/journals/scholar/hoppe.pdf)

No sooner had the chaos erupted in Egypt than individuals acted to protect their families and private property.

Volunteers formed neighborhood watch groups to patrol the streets. They also set up checkpoints to stop criminals and mischief-makers from gaining access to private property.

Having endured the disparaging comments of an American policeman while he was fingerprinting me when I applied for my firearm license—I was amazed by the response of the Egyptian military to an armed, proactive citizenry:

“‘The military encourages neighborhood youth to defend their property and their honor,” the army said in a statement.

Honor is central to the macho Arab culture. “It is better to die with honor than live with humiliation,” goes an Arab saying. It is considered cowardly to fail to protect one’s kin and possessions. These, naturally, are timeless truths and values that transcend culture and religions. But men in the US have been neutered (often by their left-liberal women). Some liberal men would sooner see their homes robbed and their women imperiled than abandon pacifism. The most the typical Western man will do to defend hearth and home is to dial 911… and wait… and wait… . (And when tragedy strikes, they become eloquent spokespersons for everything but self-defense.)

There is almost nothing more immoral and unnatural than a liberal male.

As night follows day, the progressive policies enacted by such people lead to a regressive society.

UPDATED (Feb. 2): To the “contemplationist” who is horrified by Hoppe: I’m a minarchist as was Nozick, but I’m also a big Hoppe fan. Hoppe’s writings don’t horrify me; they delight.

UPDATED: Healthscare Halted?

Constitution, Democrats, Healthcare, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Law, Natural Law

“I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate,” Judge Roger Vinson writes. “Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.” (http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=40520) District Judge Roger Vinson hails form in Pensacola, Florida. He sided with 26 suing states.

Will those Senators who’re up for re-election in 2012 bring themselves to vote with their lower-chamber colleagues to repeal the thing? Will the same representatives admit that forcing an individual to purchase a product is wrong, and certainly beyond their mandate?

I doubt it. They’ll tell us that the (Rousseauist) common good, as defined by the state, takes precedent over the common man. We have not heard the last from Obama’s advancing Politburo Of Proctologists.

UPDATE: Vinson’s is really a beautifully written and reasoned Decision. It cleaves to the Constitution. Keith Olbermann’s proxies have begun to tarnish Judge Vinson as a judicial activist, whatever that means. Do these sound like unfair proceedings?

Both sides have filed strong and well researched memoranda in support of their motions for summary judgment (“Mem.”), responses in opposition (“Opp.”), and replies (“Reply”) in further support. I held a lengthy hearing and oral argument on the motions December 16, 2010 (“Tr.”). In addition to this extensive briefing by the parties, numerous organizations and individuals were granted leave to, and did, file amicus curiae briefs (sixteen total) in support of the arguments and claims at issue.

“… I conclude that the individual mandate seeks to regulate economic inactivity, which is the very opposite of economic activity. And because activity is required under the Commerce Clause, the individual mandate exceeds Congress’ commerce power, as it is understood, defined, and applied in the existing Supreme Court case law….”

AND:
The individual mandate is outside Congress’ Commerce Clause power, and it cannot be otherwise authorized by an assertion of power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. It is not Constitutional. Accordingly, summary judgment must be
granted in favor of the plaintiffs… ”

Also adjudicated was the state plaintiffs objection “to the fundamental and ‘massive’
changes in the nature and scope of the Medicaid program that the Act will bring about. They contend that the Act violates the Spending Clause [U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1] as it significantly expands and alters the Medicaid program to such an extent they cannot afford the newly-imposed costs and burdens. They insist that they have no choice but to remain in Medicaid as amended by the Act, which will eventually require them to ‘run their budgets off a cliff.’ This is alleged to violate the Constitutional spending principles set forth in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 107 S. Ct. 2793, 97 L. Ed. 2d 171 (1987), and in other cases.5 Under Dole, there are four restrictions on Congress’ Constitutional spending
power: (1) the spending must be for the general welfare; (2) the conditions must be stated clearly and unambiguously; (3) the conditions must bear a relationship to the purpose of the program; and 4) the conditions imposed may not require states ‘to engage in activities that would themselves be unconstitutional.’ Supra, 483 U.S. at 207-10. In addition, a spending condition cannot be ‘coercive.’ This conceptional requirement is also from Dole, where the Supreme Court speculated (in dicta at the end of that opinion) that ‘in some circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which ‘pressure turns into compulsion.’ … If that line is crossed, the Spending Clause is violated.”

[SNIP]

Left-liberals believe a judicial activist is someone who reverses precedent. Republicans think a judicial activist is someone who disobeys the President. That’s the sum total of how the two parties relate to the law.

UPDATE II: Bouncing Off the Walls In Arizona (Barack & ‘The Big Lie’)

Barack Obama, Communism, Crime, Fascism, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

If The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf were indeed Jared Lee Loughner’s preferred pamphlets—then we also know this about the young man responsible for shooting six people to death and wounding 12 “outside of a Tucson, Arizona, grocery store”: He is consistent on matters ideological.

Left-liberals like the former White House communications director Anita Dunn (of the Mao Moment) will tell you that their communist heroes share nothing with fascism’s icons. Not true.

“For many decades,” wrote Ayn Rand, “The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property.”

On the other hand, Loughner, who shot US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, through the head, also liked some good stuff: Animal Farm and We The Living.

And Loughner’s penchant for this YouTube Disturbia portends anger, alienation, even pain.

UPDATE I: SHAPING THE NARRATIVE. Intoning on CNN, Donna Lemon was keen to shape this crime as a function of the hot-bed of political hatred that Arizona has allegedly become. Pima County AZ Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has furnished the necessary hyperbole:

“But again I’d just like to say that when you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain people’s mouths about tearing down the government, the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I believe has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

Expect this impetus to gather momentum. “Our Overlords Who Art in DC” are worried sick about their own asses. To wit, Speaker John Boehner has suspended the people’s business: a vote to repeal the hulking healthcare bill. Instead, our sovereigns are likely to follow this crime with a rash of laws guaranteeing their safety against The Great Unwashed—at a great cost to said Unwashed.

The Great Unwashed will go along. Fishermen brave treacherous seas to do a job that is the most dangerous on earth, bar that of farmer (Boer) in South Africa. But, no, our elected representatives must be shielded from the vagaries of their relatively easy jobs. Sacred Cows.

Murder is the ultimate evil. Using the political process to steal from some subjects and give to others is also evil. Let us not discount that moral imperative.

What else to expect:

• Draconian security around The Sacred Cows. If one of them deigns to grace the local store again, it will be with a security detail that’ll shut down the store and the suburbs around it.

• Some kind of harm to law-abiding gun owners. No crime against an official can go without doing damage to citizens’ right of self-defense.

• A renewed war on all things Arizona, including on the eminently reasonable immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070.

UPDATE II (Jan. 9): “THE LEFT CRANKS OUT THE BIG LIE.” Via Larry Auster:

Remember when President Clinton blamed Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995? Remember when conservatives were blamed for the supposed rash of black church burnings in the late 1990s? Now conservatives and supporters of enforcing U.S. immigration laws are being blamed for the mass murder in Tucson yesterday.
This is the Big Lie, which Hitler, one of its top practitioners, defined as a lie so colossal that “no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.” And here is the particular form that the Big Lie takes in the current instance: falsely blaming one’s target for the very thing that you are doing to him.
The left, through its wild charge that “conservative hatred” is responsible for the Tucson mass murder, is spreading hatred of conservatives. The left is actually doing to conservatives what it falsely accuses conservatives of doing to liberals. That is the Big Lie.

AND:

“The media have not bothered to mention some of the more ‘rude and crude’ comments our esteemed ‘Genius in Chief’ Barry has made over the past couple of years. Lines such as, ‘If they bring a knife to a fight, we bring a gun,’ or, ‘We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back,’ [‘Rosa Parks could not be reached for comment’], or his remark that middle-class white Americans ‘cling to guns and religion and dislike of people who are different,’ or, most recently, his shocking comment to Hispanics that they should look at Republicans who oppose amnesty as their ‘enemies’ whom they should ‘punish.’ Naturally, the media do not suggest that Obama has been planting hatred of white conservatives in the hearts of liberals and minorities.”

TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em

Barack Obama, Government, Homeland Security, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Terrorism

This week’s column had been titled “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” After all, it is about The Transportation and Security Administration. Thankfully, writers have editors. The following is from “TSA Solution: Name ‘Em And Shame ‘Em,” my new, and newly named, WND.COM column:

“… If Michelle Obama had experienced a gut reaction to the ordeal inflicted by her husband’s administration (begun under his predecessor) on travelers and their tots — she was not letting on. The First Lady, as you know, is in touch with her gut — and the gut of every kid in the country. The FLOTUS of the fat-based initiatives ‘cares’ enough to decide what America’s bloated babes will ingest, but not enough to weigh-in when their bodies are being invaded by state workers. …

… It’s safe to say that the moms of the Fox News Blond Squad were with The FLOTUS. One of these interchangeable females implied that the interminable complainers at the terminals were no more than an insignificant group of noise-makers. Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of that squadron, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol. Her sympathies, she said, go out to TSA workers.

Yes, ‘It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.’ On a more cheerful note, let me suggest a theme song to perfectly capture the TSA’s mission and mien. I give you the hip hop band ‘Three 6 Mafia'”: