The Civil Disobedience Ruse

Founding Fathers, Law, libertarianism, Morality, Natural Law, Regulation, Taxation

Despite polite efforts to resist, I was pulled, last week, into a most unpleasant, unscholarly, uncivilized, almost Kafkaesque exchange, in the wake of the publication of “Eric Garner: 100% Innocent under Libertarian Law.” Polite disagreement is second nature when one has been writing controversially and stridently for close on 20 years. However, one is also obliged to swat down any attempts on the part of an interlocutor to score points by sleight-of-hand—by obfuscation. Suffice it to say that ego-bound writing is a bad thing. When the mere prospect of being perceived as wrong is so devastating to a writer; when he becomes maniacal when challenged, digs in and digs up any and all justification for his position, however tangential—that writing ceases to edify.

Another shock to the system was realizing just how difficult the libertarian law is for most mortals to grasp. They say we libertarians make up only 10 percent of the politically conscious public. No wonder. Some of my smartest readers were bullied into believing that to not submit to the sovereign is to undermine some sacred trust or covenant.

So confused were these readers over “Eric Garner: 100% Innocent under Libertarian Law,” that they took off after the pied piper, muttering mad incantations about the understandable death by “civil disobedience” of Mr. Garner.

“Among other things,” wrote one such reader, “there are no real libertarian states and ‘common property’ exists. Thus, while I might have the right to urinate on my driveway, I do not have the right to urinate on (government-owned) Broadway and the cops can arrest me, etc.”

The issue with taxes is also problematic – one who ignores taxes is engaging in civil disobedience and suffers the consequences (this does not make the taxes good but it is not surprising for governments to enforce their own rules). I certainly would applaud those who resist truly immoral laws (like ordering someone to commit torture) but I am leery to suggest massive civil disobedience of petty regulations which may, in fact, just give rise to more oppressive government to “restore law and order”.

Eric Garner did not urinate on public property. Neither did he expose himself to kids. He waved his hands and walked away. Woe is me! As to the comment about “taxation”: yet another WTF moment. Possessing a few loose cigarettes is not a tax offense. Besides, since when do my readers stand up for the “civilizing” influence of the tax collector; a thief by any other name?

Indeed, a few of my readers took off after the rat catcher, wagging fingers at the poor sod who dared to own and dispose of some loose smokes—-committing “massive civil disobedience”—and lived to tell the tale. Scrap that. Civilization is safe. Garner did not live to tell the tale.

Some good news. The natural law has prevailed among the people:

Americans by nearly 3-1 say the white police officer responsible for the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man being arrested for selling cigarettes, should have faced charges from a Staten Island grand jury, a nationwide USA TODAY/Pew Research Center poll finds.

Who was it who counseled that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants”?

Guess Who Warned Against Invading Iraq?

Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq

Who offered the following astute, if utilitarian, analysis, in mitigation of an invasion of Iraq, in 1994?

… if we had gone to Baghdad we would have been all alone. There wouldn’t have been anybody else with us. It would have been a U.S. occupation of Iraq. None of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq and took it over and took down Saddam Hussein’s government, then what are you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world. And if you take down the central government in Iraq, you could easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it the Syrians would like to have, the west. Part of eastern Iraq the Iranians would like to claim. Fought over for eight years. In the north, you’ve got the Kurds. And if the Kurds spin loose and join with Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It’s a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

Bush’s Vice president Dick Cheney, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq in 2002, had advised against it in 1994. His predictions as to the destabilization of Iraq—he doesn’t mention the bloodshed, because Cheney was never one to count bodies—have come to pass.

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.

‘Defining Deviancy Down’: Dr. Pauli Diagnoses

BAB's A List, Constitution, Education, Feminism, Gender, Individual Rights, Political Correctness, Race, Republicans, Terrorism

“More toleration and respect for humanity can be found at a bowling alley or meat-packing plant than in most liberal-arts departments or law schools at modern American universities,” says Myron Pauli, PhD.

Today is the 289th Birthday of George Mason, a man as forgotten as the Bill of Rights he fought for. Those antiquated notions are inapplicable to today’s world full of evil such as “terrorists”, “rapists”, and “racists”. To the zealot self-anointed Torquemadas, you are either “with us” or with the “evildoers.” Zero tolerance must prevail over rights, liberty, due process, rules of evidence, truth, or any semblance of self-restraint.

With the CIA torture revelations coming out, some conservatives posted some nonsense from Dinesh D’Souza that American torture is “better than” ISIS beheading! Boy, talk about defining deviancy down! Great, what’s next “Stalin Better Than Hitler”? The point that these people don’t get is that “WE” (it is MY country as well as Dick Cheney’s country) are doing the torturing which is far worse than worrying what Garbagecanistan is doing 10,000 miles away. The message in Judgment at Nuremberg is for current and future generations, not just “let’s piss on the old dead Nazis” – and we should heed it lest we turn ourselves into Garbagecanistan (listen to the 6 minute speech from Spencer Tracy).

Then we have the Rolling Stone expose of campus gang rape which, I must shamefully admit, I found somewhat credible. Do frat guys drink and like to get laid? Well, apparently, the expose is, at best, partially true – but with gaping untruths. According to Zerlina Maxwell of the Washington Post, truth and evidence must take a back seat to the rape narrative. Even when the accusations are untrue, the accusers “must be taken seriously”. When it comes to rape, there is no such thing as “bearing false witness”. Zerlina, have you ever heard of the Scottsboro boys?

And then there are the various tragedies affecting blacks: Only 1 out of 9 black babies conceived in America will get born to a married couple. Over 6000 blacks die from homicide each year, 93 percent from black criminals. Five million blacks were slaughtered in the Congo by other blacks. So what motivates outrage? Answer: Michael Brown, a convenience store bully/robber who decides while unarmed to take a gun away from a cop. A hoodlum becomes the cause celebre. And “justice for Michael Brown” gets translated into “burn this down” as well as crowds shouting “kill whitey” attacking and killing A Bosnian. Do black lives matter? Apparently ONLY if they die at the hands of whites.

And zero tolerance begets a war mentality – WAR on drugs, WAR on obesity, and even a WAR on intolerance. Let’s record all calls and e-mails, stop-and-frisk the “usual suspects,” and have no-knock SWAT teams to crack down those who smoke dope, eat fries, sell cigarettes, wear ghetto garb, won’t conduct homosexual weddings, don’t wear seat belts, stare at women, speed, draw a cartoon disliked by Muslims, or whatever politically incorrect evil rouses up the mob. “Sentence first and verdict afterwards”.

Of course, with government using Grubers to lie in order to “sell” healthcare and Curveballs to lie in order to “sell” war, perhaps little can be expected of civilians who take their cues of truthfulness from the so-called leaders.

All of this would be tragic enough if the zero tolerance insanity was the product of white rednecks at the bowling alley or black dropouts in the ‘hood. However, many of the loudest justifications for torture, denial of due process, speech codes, unlimited wiretapping, and strong>results-based justice often come from lawyers and academicians. More toleration and respect for humanity can be found at a bowling alley or meat-packing plant than in most liberal-arts departments or law schools at modern American universities.

Finally, we have the ratings-driven media to whip Americans into hysterical frenzy. Terrorists eeek! War on women! Genocide of blacks! Ebola epidemic! Vladimir Putin! Mushroom clouds! Runaway Greenhouse! Democrats!Republicans! Benghazi! Daycare child abuse! Racists and rapist and terrorists – oh my! Unfounded fear statistics such as 25 percent of all college women get raped, which if true, then we should scratch co-ed learning and have sex separate schools. Enough hobgoblins to make every day a near-death experience and antiquated nonsense like the Bill of Rights standing in the way of protecting us from the Epidemic of Eternal Evil.

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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 List” category to access the Pauli archive.