Category Archives: Private Property

What’s Fueling The Fever Of Freedom?

Constitution, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Private Property, States' Rights

IMMIGRATION IS. When states stand up to the always-oppressive federal government, it’s a good thing. When issues loom large enough to bring about this necessary rift—necessary if freedom is to prevail—they deserve a closer look, if not, I would argue, our unreserved support. If gay marriage, yea or nay, prompted a state to secede; I’d be the first to cheer that state on.

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion on Friday “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

“It is my opinion that Virginia law enforcement officers, including conservation officers may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested,” he wrote.

Bring it on is what Cuccinelli is telling the federal government.

According to Lou Dobbs, interviewed by Megyn Kelly, “11 states are preparing to emulate Arizona. It is not what the Obama administration wanted; but it is exactly what the American people want,” he told the host of America’s News. Kelly says there are at least 18 states poised to follow Arizona on immigration and into a conflagration with the feds.

Now, you could challenge me as follows: “Mercer, you are not a proponent of majoritarianism. You’ve argued vigorously against democracy—even have a book due out that is a manifesto against raw democracy. Why are the people’s wishes okay in this instance?”

Because, as I’ve often said (most recently in this blog post), people have negative, leave-me-alone rights. Preventing a foreign invasion is perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,” in the words of the late philosopher, Robert Nozick.

Having delegated defense and policing to government, a people has a right to live free of the dangers that flow from being trespassed upon.

To the American Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson especially, secession was essential to the American scheme. Jefferson viewed extreme decentralization as the bulwark of the liberty and rights of man. Consequently, the United States was created as a pact between sovereign states with which the ultimate power lay. Sadly, it has progressed from a decentralized republic into a highly consolidated one.

The Constitution assigns the narrow function of naturalization to the feds. That small thing notwithstanding; I find it hard to fathom a founder arguing that the men and militia of a state should sit on their hands because a tier of tyrants (the feds) told them to (while their farms and nature reserves are trashed and their families endangered).

Neither should libertarians sit this thing out.

What’s Fueling The Fever Of Freedom?

Constitution, Democracy, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy, Private Property, States' Rights

IMMIGRATION IS. When states stand up to the always-oppressive federal government, it’s a good thing. When issues loom large enough to bring about this necessary rift—necessary if freedom is to prevail—they deserve a closer look, if not, I would argue, our unreserved support. If gay marriage, yea or nay, prompted a state to secede; I’d be the first to cheer that state on.

Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has ruled that “state law enforcement officers are allowed to check the immigration status of anyone ‘stopped or arrested.” According to FoxNews, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion on Friday “extending that authority to Virginia police in response to an inquiry over whether his state could mirror the policies passed into law in Arizona.”

“It is my opinion that Virginia law enforcement officers, including conservation officers may, like Arizona police officers, inquire into the immigration status of persons stopped or arrested,” he wrote.

Bring it on is what Cuccinelli is telling the federal government.

According to Lou Dobbs, interviewed by Megyn Kelly, “11 states are preparing to emulate Arizona. It is not what the Obama administration wanted; but it is exactly what the American people want,” he told the host of America’s News. Kelly says there are at least 18 states poised to follow Arizona on immigration and into a conflagration with the feds.

Now, you could challenge me as follows: “Mercer, you are not a proponent of majoritarianism. You’ve argued vigorously against democracy—even have a book due out that is a manifesto against raw democracy. Why are the people’s wishes okay in this instance?”

Because, as I’ve often said (most recently in this blog post), people have negative, leave-me-alone rights. Preventing a foreign invasion is perfectly within the purview of the “night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,” in the words of the late philosopher, Robert Nozick.

Having delegated defense and policing to government, a people has a right to live free of the dangers that flow from being trespassed upon.

To the American Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson especially, secession was essential to the American scheme. Jefferson viewed extreme decentralization as the bulwark of the liberty and rights of man. Consequently, the United States was created as a pact between sovereign states with which the ultimate power lay. Sadly, it has progressed from a decentralized republic into a highly consolidated one.

The Constitution assigns the narrow function of naturalization to the feds. That small thing notwithstanding; I find it hard to fathom a founder arguing that the men and militia of a state should sit on their hands because a tier of tyrants (the feds) told them to (while their farms and nature reserves are trashed and their families endangered).

Neither should libertarians sit this thing out.

Trash Will Trash

IMMIGRATION, Law, Nationhood, Private Property

Illegal aliens have deposited eight to sixteen million tons of trash in the last three years in Arizona’s once pristine wild-life reserves. These are the kind of individuals I want in my still blissful neighborhood. How about you?

We brought you the first of two hidden-camera documentaries compiled by the Center for Immigration Studied days before Fox News aired a segment about them.

Here’s the second heart-breaking episode. And these wonderful animals? What will become of them, if the tsunami of trash continues? Drug-courier vermin pass peacefully into this joke of a country, along with an armed escort. A Pinal Country deputy sheriff is shot in hot pursuit of trespassers. Poor sod; he imagines he still has country to defend.

UPDATE III: Demonizing Due Process (O’REILLY & O’BAMA SITTING IN A TREE…)

Barack Obama, Business, Justice, Law, Private Property, Republicans, The State

Rep. Joe Barton is being raked him over the coals by the Media-Congressional complex, his Republican colleagues included, for telling the truth: Big “O” muscled PB into handing over private property without due process—in contravention of “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and all that stuff.

Not only is this unconstitutional; it is also immoral. It further entrenches the shakedown ethos, and the perception that private property works and breathes at the pleasure of the politicos. This is a slush fund, a piece of which everyone along the Gulf will be clamoring for, presumably without the hassles of proving they have been harmed by the spill.

None of what I’ve said will strike those of you who respect private property and due process, including the neglected, necessary, legal imperative of mens rea, as particularly original.

The real newsworthy point to take away from this is how uncommitted Republicans are to these bedrock principles.

This is a replay of the Jim Bunning brouhaha and what the Wall Street Journal called his finest hour. For attempting to abide by the quaint principle of pay-as-you-go—a position not even the crooked Chris Matthews could condemn in its entirety—Bunning was treated like a leper (or an Afrikaner farmer) by the entire spectrum of idiots.

UPDATE I (June 19): ET TU, BACHMANN? Where is this Michele Bachmann? “Neutered” is the right word, via The Right Scoop.

UPDATE II: O’REILLY & O’BAMA SITTING IN A TREE… Bill O’Reilly is consistent here. Never before has he deferred to the limits the constitutional scheme imposes on central power, and he does not now break with that commitment to an overweening central government. (Obama should cut O’Reilly some slack and give him that prestigious interview he craves. O’Reilly is his friend.)

But Bachmann backpedals and disappoints. O’Reilly declares he is okay with Obama bringing down on BP the full force of the federal government; MB, who rightly objected, now meekly agrees. Sort of. She ought to have stuck to her guns in noting the usurpation of power and the violation of due process of which she previously warned.

From “PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”:

“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power, stress Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.’
Prosecutorial duties are dual. While acting as the plaintiff, the prosecutor must also take pains to protect the defendant’s rights.”

O’Reilly is like a Benthamite bureaucrat; he’s no truth seeker.

Since the GOP went out of business, Mark Levin has begun to speak truth to power (and phony populism). VIA The Right Scoop:

UPDATE III (June 20): So you still think the “GOP, RIP” can be reformed?

CNN:

Rep. Jo Bonner called on fellow Republican Rep. Joe Barton to step down as ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Friday following the Texas Republican’s controversial statements to BP chairman Tony Hayward on Thursday.
“Earlier this morning, Rep. Barton called me to offer his personal apologies for any harm that his comments might have caused,” said Bonner, whose district covers much of Alabama’s coastline.
“It takes a big person to admit they were wrong and I appreciated Joe’s call,” Bonner continued. “However, as I told him, I believe the damage of his comments are beyond repair and, as such, I am today calling on Joe to do the right thing for our conference and immediately step aside as Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“Joe’s comments were stupid and extremely insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of people who live along the Gulf Coast,” Bonner added.