Category Archives: The State

UPDATED: A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN

Canada, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Islam, libertarianism, Terrorism, The State, The West

“A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

He adopted the religion of peace and forthwith proceeded to shatter the peace of his countrymen.

In the waning months of 2014, Quebecer Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in the back, at Canada’s National War Memorial in Ottawa. Zehaf-Bibeau then stormed Parliament, but was dispatched by a sergeant-at-arms before he could do further harm.

The mother of the martyr, Susan Bibeau, is a “deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.” Mrs. Bibeau has done quite well as a Canadian bureaucrat, acquiring “homes in Montreal and Ottawa.” Her errant son told mommy dearest of “his desire to travel to Syria,” a fact she revealed only after the butcher’s bill came due; following Zehaf-Bibeau’s lone-wolf, wilding rampage on Parliament Hill.

Why would a convert to Islam want to travel to Syria? To visit the ruins? And why would a Canadian civil servant, who described her son as a misfit, not report Zehaf-Bibeau’s destination of choice to the authorities? In any event, it transpires that said authorities had been investigating Zehaf-Bibeau, but had yet to determine whether or not to confiscate his passport.

Before Michael Zehaf-Bibeau came another Quebecer called Martin Couture-Rouleau. Like Bibeau, Rouleau went to war with his countrymen upon converting to Islam. He rammed his car into two Canadian Forces members near Montreal, one of whom died of his injuries.

According to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Couture-Rouleau was known to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, and had been closely monitored. These authorities were confident that Couture-Rouleau and 90 other suspected extremists “intended to join militants fighting abroad.”

So what did the Canadian security apparatus do to forestall an attack on Canadian soil? First, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police staged an intervention. The Mounties tried to “talk Couture-Rouleau down” from his murderous mindset. Convinced that the therapeutic intervention succeeded, the Mounties then stopped monitoring him. Oh, and they also took away Couture-Rouleau’s passport. …

… The point here is not to belabor well-known, accepted outrages. Instead, I’d like to float a modest proposal. …

Read the complete column. “A Modest Libertarian Proposal: Keep Jihadis OUT, Not IN” is now on WND.

UPDATE (1/24):

Myron Robert Pauli: These idiots who say that America was attacked “from Afghanistan” or “from Iraq!!” – that would be true if missiles flew from there – but as it was, the US allowed people into this country (mostly Saudis – no Afghans or Iraqis on 9/11) who went to flight school in this country, boarded airplanes in this country, and even got visas renewed AFTER flying into buildings by the State Department. Security begins AT HOME and not stomping around Garbagecanistan propping up Malikis and Abadis and Kharzis.
Yesterday at 7:21am · Like

Myron Robert Pauli: Can the feds explain why when an American citizen with a biometric DoD identity card (myself) flies – to talk at a conference on Aircraft Survivability, no less – he is subjected to TWO nudie scans, TWO gropes, mass spectrometer of all carry on luggage, and one hour of interrogation ….. BUT when Umar Farouk Underpantsabomber flies to the US from Nigeria via YEMEN !!! and his dad calls the authorities on him, they let him on the airplane?????? These buffoons refuse to protect America while the government sends aid to ISIS-Sunni-“rebels” who are going at the non-threatening (albeit dictatorial) Assad and the late Khadaffi.
Yesterday at 7:26am · Edited · Unlike · 1

When Arms Of The State Wrestle, Citizens Rest

Crime, Government, Law, Regulation, The State

About the feud between the New York Police force and “Clintonian Mayor De Blasio,” Chris Rossini at Target Liberty has this to say: “[G]overnment vs. government battles should be cheered. The more they fight amongst themselves, the better off the rest of us are.”

The New York Times reports that as a result of the fight, the NYPD has been ignoring “low-level offenses” for the last two weeks: For the seven days ending Sunday, officers made 2,401 arrests citywide, compared with 5,448 in the same week a year ago, a 56 percent decline.

Hold on a second!!

Where’s the chaos?

Jeremy Bentham: Very Bad For Liberty, Indeed

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Law, libertarianism, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, The State

The following columns make derisive mention of utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The columnist (guilty) assumed (guilty again) that her readers, like many good libertarians (namely, natural-rights libertarians), would identify Bentham’s name as a synonym for statism and collectivism, to distinguish from liberty and individualism.

Libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett, I recall, particularly enjoyed this from “A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts” (7/6/2012):

“Why would George Bush care whether a judicial nominee can tell Blackstone from Bentham, when he can’t?”

“More of a Benthamite bureaucrat than a truth seeker” is from “PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT” (September 11, 2002).

Remember Reno!” (9/8/2006) equated Benthamism with legal excesses, whereby the law, “intended as a bulwark against government abuses,” had become “an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the ‘greater good’—the founders’ Blackstonian view of the law” having “been supplanted by a Benthamism that encourages ambitious prosecutors to discard a defendant’s rights.”

“‘Mad Dog’ Sneddon Vs. Michael Jackson” (7/5/2005) mentions once again the Benthamite notion of “the law as an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the ‘greater good.’”

The Library of Economics and Liberty expounds a little more about Bentham the utilitarian, whose “publications were few,” and whose foundational belief was “that all social actions should be evaluated by the axiom, ‘It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.’”

In a word, utilitarianism, and by extension, statism and collectivism.

Counter to Adam Smith’s vision of “natural rights,” Bentham believed that there were no natural rights to be interfered with.

Trained in law, Bentham never practiced, choosing instead to focus on judicial and legal reforms. His reform plans went beyond rewriting legislative acts to include detailed administrative plans to implement his proposals. In his plan for prisons, workhouses, and other institutions, Bentham devised compensation schemes, building designs, worker timetables, and even new accounting systems. A guiding principle of Bentham’s schemes was that incentives should be designed “to make it each man’s interest to observe on every occasion that conduct which it is his duty to observe.” Interestingly, Bentham’s thinking led him to the conclusion, which he shared with Smith, that professors should not be salaried.

In his early years Bentham professed a free-market approach. He argued, for example, that interest rates should be free from government control (see Defence of Usury). By the end of his life he had shifted to a more interventionist stance. He predated Keynes in his advocacy of expansionist monetary policies to achieve full employment and advocated a range of interventions, including the minimum wage and guaranteed employment.

Jeremy Bentham was a thoroughbred statist; the quintessential bureaucrat and social engineer, who devised ways to tinker in oder to optimize the individual pawn’s common-good conduct.

UPDATED: Called On The Carpet By The Cops (Backs To De Blasio)

Government, Law, libertarianism, Multiculturalism, Paleolibertarianism, The State

Once again, members of the grieving New York Police force, who turned out to mourn the two cops murdered, turned their collective backs on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. (See why.)

Understandable. And commendable. De Blasio is a crappy human being.

Libertarians fall into grave error when they condemn all policemen as an arm of the state. Structurally, this is indeed so. However, on the individual level, there are very many men who love their work, want nothing more than to serve their communities, and know nothing of the libertarian political philosophy. They simply want to fight the bad guys.

In as much as libertarians must be able to apply a cool head to police brutality and denounce it; they have to be able to comprehend the reverse.

Community policing is well-nigh impossible in a multicultural, fragmented, deeply divided empire, where a cop has little affinity with a community that is no longer his community, but an alien hodgepodge of humanity of DC’s design.

UPDATE (12/28): Backs To De Blasio. Awesome. A well-choreographed shaming of a shameful human being, as tens of thousands of “blue-uniformed police officers, state troopers, corrections officers and firefighters from across the country” turn their backs on Mayor Bill de Blasio, in Queens, for maligning them collectively.