Category Archives: The State

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.

Torture A Fig Leaf For Greater Evil

Iraq, Law, Morality, Terrorism, The State

You’ll probably say this is a serious defect, but the CIA torture tempest has never been uppermost in my mind.

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on the C.I.A.’s interrogation-and-detention program during the Bush era, just like the torture furor that erupted at the time, is nothing more than a foil and a fig leaf; a cover for complicit journalists, jurists, politicians and pointy heads, who all skirted the real issue:

In invading Iraq and vanquishing an innocent people—Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Kerry and the gonzo journos who backed them absolutely, prosecuted an illegal, immoral and calamitous war. Torture is a subspecies of a larger crime. Fussing about it in this context is like harping on a murderer’s traffic violations.

UPDATE III: Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law (Natural Law)

Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Private Property, The State

“Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… Not to be conflated are the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, of Ferguson fame. While the evidence of police wrongdoing in Garner’s death is incontrovertible, the reverse is true in Brown versus Officer Darren Wilson.

As the evidence shows, Michael Brown initiated aggression. He had aggressed against the store keeper and the policeman, who protected himself from this rushing mountain of flesh. In libertarian law, the individual may defends himself against initiated aggression. He may not initiate aggression against a non-aggressor.

Eric Garner, on the other hand, had aggressed against nobody. Whereas Brown was stealing cigarillos; Garner was selling his own cigarettes. The “law” he violated was one that violated Garner’s individual, natural right to dispose of his own property—“loosies”—at will.

In libertarian law, Garner is thus 100 percent innocent. For the good libertarian abides by the axiom of non-aggression. When enforcers of the shakedown syndicate came around to bust him, Garner raised his voice, gestured and turned to walk away from his harassers. He did not aggress against or hurt anyone of the goons.

To plagiarize myself in “Tasers ‘R’ Us,” “Liberty is a simple thing. It’s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or policeman] unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, even killed.”

Again: Garner had obeyed the libertarian, natural law absolutely. He was trading peacefully. In the same spirit, he turned to walk away from a confrontation. Befitting this pacific pattern, Garner had broken up a street fight prior to his murder.

The government has a monopoly over making and enforcing law— it decides what is legal and what isn’t. Thus it behooves thinking people to question the monopolist and his laws. After all, cautioned the great Southern constitutional scholar James McClellan, “What is legally just, may not be what is naturally just.” “Statutory man-made law” is not necessarily just law. …

Read the rest. “Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law” is the current column, now on WND.

UPDATE I: “FOX NEWS POLL: Voters agree with Brown grand jury, disagree with Garner decision.”

UPDATE II (12/12): One despairs when, on a site that is faith and freedom-oriented—and to which this writer has been contributing for so many years with articles similar to “Eric Garner: 100% innocent under libertarian law”—most readers still have no feel for the supreme law of God, if you will, and show an overriding concern with validating state oppression and unjust state laws.
One wonders how a people can ever regain true freedom when they are so beholden to the sovereign’s perverted laws and cannot tell just- from unjust law. The feel for and understanding of freedom is exactly zero unless you know that the natural law—call it the law of G-d, if you like—is incontrovertibly supreme. Any state law that violates it is unjust. (An why are individuals arguing the merits of taxes and obedience to all manner of tax, when taxes are tantamount to theft? For that is what a government-imposed tax is: private property stolen at the point of a gun.) Moreover, the natural law is not some libertarian ideal. People who habitually talk about western civilization should know that the natural law is one of its greatest philosophical expressions, beginning with the Decalogue (The Ten Commandments), the ancient Greeks, Aristotelian philosophers, the Stoics and Cicero, Scholastics and St. Thomas Aquinas through to Thomas Jefferson and Declaration of Independence.
Natural law has always been a bulwark against tyranny; that of monarch and mob alike. When the people forget that; they are as good as slaves.

UPDATE III (12/13):

Hugh Mcgarity • 2 days ago:

I think that I read somewhere that the officers involved in the Garner case were called there by a shop owner who was concerned by the presence of Garner causing loss of business. This would seem a valid concern as most small businesses struggle in the highly taxed and regulated environment of NYC. As far as the level of force, it would appear to be excessive. Ask yourself this though, if you were being assaulted by a huge man and were wanting intervention by police: would you want the officer/s to apply a little too much force or not quite enough. If not quite enough and you were further injured, what would your reaction be? I know, it’s not a perfect analogy but it does have some parallel. If Mr Garner had complied with the legitimate first request of police then he would still be selling loosies somewhere else.

ILANA MERCER replies:

The column addresses this bit of statism in the last paragraph. Please read it:

Eric Garner was not violating anyone’s rights or harming anyone by standing on a street corner and peddling his wares – that is unless the malevolent competition that sicced the cops on him has a property right in their prior profits. They don’t.”
A shopkeeper has the right to pursue profits, he does not have the right to the profits he had before the competition arrived on the scene. Not in a free-market.

Race Demagogues Vs. The Misrule of Law

BAB's A List, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Racism, The State

By Myron Pauli

In 2006, 50 bullets were fired at 3 unarmed drunk black men leaving a strip club in Queens – killing one, maiming 2, and almost wounding a bystander and two nearby Port Authority patrolmen. America’s number one race baiter, Al Sharpton, started to growl until it was discovered that the first cop to fire, Gescard Isnora, was black – oh, well… never mind!

Yes, blacks kill blacks, blacks kill whites, whites kill whites, and (surprise) whites sometimes even kill blacks. But only the last of these phenomena is an excuse for the Sharptons to rouse up crowds and, if the opportunity arises, looters to rob and burn every store in town. By the way, the Queens cops were exonerated of all charges (yawn)!

One issue that arises is whether certain laws have “disparate impact”? Yes, rape laws affect men more than women. Prostitution laws affect women more than men. Burglary laws affect poor more than rich. Brokerage fraud laws probably affect Jews more than Buddhists. If improperly wearing a hearing aid was criminalized, it would probably affect the elderly more than the young. I do not see “disparate impact” as a reason to invalidate a law that is otherwise proper.

Nevertheless, while the Torah has 365 prohibitions – some “secular” such as dishonest weights, stealing, and murder; and some “religious” such as not eating pork—in Bloombergian America, we need tens of thousands of laws to regulate all of us sinful citizens – the Torah is almost anarchistic. And to enforce Bloombergia, we need lots of cops armed with the latest from the Department of Defense with SWAT “no knock” raids, “stop and frisk”, zero tolerance, TSA gropes, Tasers, ….

The other piece of the puzzle, of course, is the higher rate of criminality by black men. The recent “Hollaback” video – which has some feminists calling for laws against talking to women on city streets – shows mostly black men coming up to the white girl walking. Even Jesse Jackson has admitted that he would be more likely to clutch his groceries more tightly or cross the street at night if walking alone and seeing Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Michael Brown than 3 elderly Asian women. Now, perhaps, elderly Asian women should start committing more crime to make things “fair” but this might not improve the world.

So imagine 10,000 business regulations in Bloombergville – which companies are more likely to “comply” – Con Ed and Verizon or Pedro’s Bodega and Mobutu’s Taxi? Personally, I am happy with the law that says “don’t defraud your customers” but perhaps the other 9999 laws can be scrapped because they are idiotic onerous laws, not because they are part of a “racist conspiracy” again Pedro and Mobutu.

And so it is, often in “liberal” minority communities, that one finds the most idiotic and corrupt governments, onerous petty rules, highest taxes, idiotic traffic traps, and (sadly) the worst cops. The Cleveland cop who shot the 12 year old boy had been dismissed from his job in suburban Independence. My revulsion over race-baiters and looters does not mean I need to admire corrupt governments and pathological policing.

The case of Eric Garner is illustrative. Garner was making a few bucks avoiding the 300% cigarette tax and the cops came to bust him. However, they did not bother to ask him a few times (time was not urgent) to put out his hands for arrest but all of a sudden pounced on him, riding him like Secretariat and tackling him to the ground to handcuff him. He said a couple times that he couldn’t breathe. Then, he lay in front of the cops for 7 minutes. The NYPD is trained in CPR – “Curtesy, Professionalism, and Respect” AND Cardin-Pulmonary-Resuscitation – but practiced neither. WAS IT “CRIMINAL”?? – I personally did not hear from the dozen witnesses nor gone frame-by-frame over the Garner – Cop – Jujitsu part nor know the “mens rea” requirements pursuant to an arrest to determine involuntary manslaughter vs. reckless endangerment vs nothing. So far, the ONLY one indicted was the (white) cameraman, Ramsey Orta, on “criminal possession of a weapon” based on an undercover police investigation.

Respect for the law goes down the toilet among civilians of ALL races unless the government holds itself accountable.

******
Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A Lis