The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.
– Max Stirner
I compose these links columns all week long, adding them to a Word document as I find them; sometimes I quote the original “tweet”, link or headline directly, other times I write my own “headline” right away, and still other times I just save the link and write one later. On Thursday evening (usually) I pre-post what I have, adding whatever I find on Friday or Saturday directly into the post, then bring it into its final form on Saturday afternoon (again, usually). Well, up until Saturday morning it looked as though my friend Grace was actually going to beat out perennial link-contribution champ Radley Balko, but he pulled ahead at the last minute with several more. Everything down to the first video is from him, including the video itself; the first three items after the video are from Grace, then the rest are from Walter Olson, Brooke Magnanti, Baylen Linnekin, Neil Gaiman, Jacob Sullum, Michael Whiteacre and the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition; the second video and the first link below it were contributed by Jesse Walker.
- The self-perpetuating police state.
- The Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again.
- Does eating chocolate make people more intelligent?
- Another unarmed man murdered by cops without any apparent reason.
- The cop who was fired for sucker-punching an innocent woman will be feted by the Fraternal Order of Police.
- Court declares that incapacitated victim “threatened” three attacking cops simultaneously by drawing a gun via telekinesis.
- For the season, I present these striking Harry Clarke illustrations from the 1919 edition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, and a Poe-inspired short film below.
- Car dealer mistakenly sells truck for too low a price. Customer refuses to sign new contract for the higher price. Dealer has customer arrested, alleging he stole the vehicle.
- We can all agree she’s awful. But life in prison for a non-capital crime?
- Greek cops use a young woman as a human shield.
- Life imitates Monty Python.
- “No taxidermist loved his daughter more.”
- Welcome to our world, school lunch protesters.
- Giant mystery eyeball washes up on Florida beach.
- An excellent analysis of the “War On Drugs” in comic-strip form.
- Man wins cockroach-eating contest, then immediately drops dead.
- UK panicmongers claim strong beer is “worse than crack or heroin”.
- This short Hitchcock tribute by Martin Scorsese is actually a wine ad.
- Big corporations are trying to criminalize the sale of used goods.
- Four cops accused of fisting random men in the street at gunpoint.
- Woman gets phone bill for more money than there is in the whole world.
- PETA continues its campaign to become a global laughingstock by attacking Pokemon for “virtual animal cruelty”.
What, the first-sale doctrine doesn’t apply if something is manufactured overseas? By all means, give American business another excuse to ship jobs to outside the USA!
About all the bad cop stories- The Milwaukee strip search/anal fisting (something not to be undertaken with out lube and time to work up to it), the benefit for the brutal cop-
Again and again, as these stories of bad cops hit the news, we hear the sheep bleat out the same complaint: “It’s just a few bad cops, most police officers are decent”.
I contend this isn’t true, that the entire structure of policing is corrupt, irredeemably so, and is destined to be so. Giving people that much power over others, the ability to perpetrate the worst abuses without penalty, and you will draw sadistic bullies to the cause. It’s inevitable.
The only way to correct this is to close down policing as we currently know it, and replace it with an entirely new structure, one that recognizes that in our society, according to the Declaration of Independence, all power flows from the citizen. That whenever a governmental office interacts with any citizen, he is interacting with his boss. That he can’t order, or force, anything. Under this model, a cop could only use force to protect another citizen’s life, or his life, from clear and direct realistic threat. In other words, he would have to see the gun. It’s more of a city watch model.
Also, like other “professionals”, cops would be personally liable for their professional performance, they’d have to carry malpractice insurance, and could be personally sued.
We live in a society, here in the USA, where the government has so conveniently forgotten that they are our servants, not the other way around.
I totally agree. Furthermore, ALL laws regarding consensual behavior need to be revoked, and cops should be powerless to act unless A) invited to do so by the victim, or B) the perceived victim is a legal minor or incapacitated person.
I agree with you about the cops having too much power. I couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between the defense of cops as being mostly decent and marrying women as being mostly decent. MRAs hear “Not all women are like that.” I took your words and replaced ‘cops’ with ‘women.’
“Again and again, as these stories of bad [women] hit the news, we hear the sheep bleat out the same complaint: “It’s just a few bad [women], most [women] are decent”.
I contend this isn’t true, that the entire structure of [marriage] is corrupt, irredeemably so, and is destined to be so. Giving people that much power over others, the ability to perpetrate the worst abuses without penalty, and you will draw sadistic bullies to the cause. It’s inevitable.”
“sadistic bullies” is not quite the right description of women who divorce and take their ex-loved ones to the cleaners, but aside from that the resemblance is remarkable.
Absolutely.
Sadly, much of the public just isn’t comfortable without the boot on their necks.
Crash land any group of people on an Island, and it’s a safe bet that very quickly, the majority will be looking for “leaders” or “authorities” to tell them what to do. They won’t use their own sense, and natural biological requirements. Find a source of water. Find food. Create shelter. Make a signal for rescuers.
Perhaps it’s built into us. Look at the (to my mind inexplicable) thirst for religion, to believe in the big sky daddy.
People are willing to trade their freedoms, and suffering a good deal of abuse for the comfort of being told what to do.
Maggie, you and I are the weird ones.
Indubitably. 🙁
All the people worth knowing are weird anyways. 🙂
Normal people frighten me…
But then again, I sing along with Bowie —
“I’m afraid of Americans…
God is an American…”
Odd, isn’t it? You’re a strong libertarian, and I’m a socialist, but we share so many of the same concerns, and opinions.
Unfortunately, socialism requires a large and intrusive government to collect taxes and distribute the expropriated wealth and, no matter how noble the intentions of those who create the government, the fact that it has a large amount of power guarantees that it will become corrupt. Socialism and liberty are incompatible.
Socialism requires the power to belong at the most basic level, the people, It’s up to them to choose how they wish to arrange things.
That is a description of Libertarianism lol
Socialism was often libertarian until the Marxists hijacked it.
That’s because both libertarianism and socialism originate in Age of Enlightment ideas about government. Almost every modern form of political philosophy is based on the principle that power comes from, and belongs to, the people, even fascism.
This seems to be a universal pattern. Various flavor of Statists hijacking Libertarian ideals. And people always, always buy it.
No doubt this is in part due to intellectual error. But there’s gotta be more to it. “People tend to be naive in the direction of their self-interest.” I believe I first heard that phrase from Murray Rothbard.
The state always enters a symbiotic/parasitic relationship with its people. Perhaps most people don’t value their freedom as highly as they value the perceived benefits that the State can provide them.
The poster above assumes the only form of socialism is full on soviet style communism. That’s rather like saying the only flavour is strawberry.
My style of socialism isn’t so much focused on who has the wealth, as long as it’s fairly earned, but who has access to the means to making wealth. My style wouldn’t advocate government control of business, but more employee ownership, more co-ops.
This sort of style spreads, and keeps power among the people.
We are in complete agreement on the goals of earning one’s wealth fairly, but I believe you’re mistaken on the means necessary to achieve those goals.
When you offer your labor on the free market – that is a means to making wealth. You seem to have bought into the socialist fallacy of employee = victim, employer = oppressor. In fact, if you’re en employee in a gov’t protected industry there is a good chance you’re earning a salary that is above what you’d earn for the same job on a truly free market. Same applies for unionized employees.
If you want to own you a part of the company that employs you, buy their stock.
Most of my life, I worked as an independent contractor, in the adult business, and eventually, I set up my own business as an independent call girl, and ran my own porn site. That went pretty well. So I know a bit about negotiating rates. And believe me, that’s a very free market world.
I agree with what you’ve said about government regulated business, and with union shops. But we see less and less of those, and more and more of the rush to the bottom that global capitalism has created. It’s very difficult for the individual, union local, or even nation to combat that.
Businesses as co-ops, or employee owned, would combat that. I also believe that entities like the EU could, if they weren’t run by the capitalists, insist on other nations paying a decent wage, providing worker protections, and protecting the environment as a prerequisite to doing business with teh EU.
Not all contributions to the success of an enterprise are via an investment of money. Time, labor, creativity, all are investments. That’s why the businesses should be worker owned.
“But we see less and less of those, and more and more of the rush to the bottom that global capitalism has created.”
I don’t understand what this means.
“I also believe that entities like the EU could, if they weren’t run by the capitalists, insist on other nations paying a decent wage, providing worker protections, and protecting the environment as a prerequisite to doing business with teh EU.”
I thought that perhaps you were a Libertarian misusing the term “capitalist,” but now it’s clear you’re a socialist misusing the term “capitalist.” I should have just believed you when you proclaimed yourself a socialist 🙂
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I doubt I’ll convince you that the wage one can get on the free market is the just wage for the labor one offers. And don’t let’s not get started on the environment.
However consider this as a parting thought. How would you feel if the gov’t forced you to pay your employees double what you were paying them despite them willing to work for what you offered and you only able to make a profit (and a living for yourself and your children/whatever) at that rate. One man’s decent wage is another man’s shitty wage.
Actually, what the Soviets had was merely totalitarian dictatorship; any references to socialism or communism were pure window dressing. The prototypical socialist countries are those in Europe, with large safety nets and a bloated public sector.
Well… the Soviet Union was socialism taken to its logical conclusion.
I hear that claim from libertarians now and again. Only thing is, it’s not true. Not even remotely true. The Soviet Union used Communism as a facade while instituting a totalitarian dictatorship. However, it never practiced Communism, much less socialism.
It did practice Communism in that it issued gov’t flats, and installed gov’t telephone lines, and provided gov’t healthcare services etc. It was all supposedly owned by the people.
If that’s not practicing Communism, then what in your view would constitute “practicing of Communism?” Do you mean the Soviet Union wasn’t “true Communism” because those in power distributed the goods unequally? Well that is precisely the point.
“The Soviet Union used Communism as a facade while instituting a totalitarian dictatorship.”
But that is precisely what Communism actually is: a facade for the purpose of instituting a totalitarian dictatorship. Much like feminism is a facade for female supremacism.
P.S. I am originally from the Soviet Union. Not that this gives me authority in this discussion. Just a “fun fact.”
They voted in Burma recently. Does that make it a democracy? Of course not. The military still runs the place.
Pointing to a few institutions in a society that might also be found in some -ism doesn’t show that it is an -ist society. Yes, the Soviet Union had some institutions that would have been at home in a Communist society but that hardly makes it Communist. The underlying social structure had essentially nothing in common with Communism. It therefore was not Communist.
No, that is not what Communism is. Communism is the political and social theory propounded by Marx, Engels, et al. That theory is impracticable, which is why it isn’t practiced.
“I am originally from the Soviet Union.”
I’m glad you got out.
” Communism is the political and social theory propounded by Marx, Engels, et al.”
Do you really think I overlooked this?
Yes, superficially that is what Communism is. But do you mind being a bit less rigid with your thinking and looking beyond dictionary definitions of words?
The State and “intellectuals” have always entered mutually beneficial relationships, whereby the rule of the State is justified by said intellectuals. For example, Medieval political theorists had seen kings as deriving their authority from God. In modern times economists serve to justify and obfuscate the operations of fraudulent Gov’t institutions such as the Federal Reserve.
Therefore, “Communism is a facade for the purpose of instituting a totalitarian dictatorship” is a much more accurate and useful definition of what Communism actually is than merely “Communism is the political and social theory propounded by Marx, Engels, et al.”
“But do you mind being a bit less rigid with your thinking and looking beyond dictionary definitions of words?”
Yes, I do mind. Thinking and communicating require careful attention to meaning; to be “less rigid” with one’s definitions is merely to be sloppy.
Confusing what a thing is used for, for what a thing is, is nothing but intellectual sloppiness. Communism (well, bits and pieces of it) was used by the Soviets to justify their tyranny but that doesn’t make those bits and pieces Communism. You can play word games all you want but that won’t change the fact that Communism is a particular political theory, distinct from the uses the Soviets put it to.
“You are sad,” the Knight said in an anxious tone: “let me sing you a song to comfort you.”
“Is it very long?” Alice asked, for she had heard a good deal of poetry that day.
“It’s long,” said the Knight, “but very, very beautiful. Everybody that hears me sing it— either it brings the tears into their eyes, or else—”
“Or else what?” said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
“Or else it doesn’t, you know. The name of the song is called ‘Haddock’s Eyes.'”
“Oh, that’s the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.
“No, you don’t understand,” the Knight said, looking a little vexed. “That’s what the name is called. The name really is ‘The Aged Aged Man.'”
“Then I ought to have said ‘That’s what the song is called’?” Alice corrected herself.
“No, you oughtn’t: that’s quite another thing! The song is called ‘Ways and Means’: but that’s only what it’s called, you know!”
“Well, what is the song, then?” said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.
“I was coming to that,” the Knight said. “The song really is ‘A-sitting On A Gate’: and the tune’s my own invention.”
– Through the Looking-Glass, chapter VIII
LOL!
I considered bringing in Humpty Dumpty but it’s been overused….
“Confusing what a thing is used for, for what a thing is, is nothing but intellectual sloppiness.”
So is confusing what a thing claims to be with what it actually is. It’s not like I don’t get what you’re saying, and of course I agree to a certain extent. What I am doing is a word game, but it’s a useful one.
An ideology is not like an object. Unlike say a chair, an ideology can define itself, but we don’t have to accept that definition. We can observe and draw our own conclusions about what the ideology actually is.
Is it a coincidence that everyplace that practiced Communism quickly ended up a totalitarian dictatorship? If X always leads to Y, then perhaps it’s by design.
Your definition suggests that Communism was this good intentioned ideology, but ultimately mistaken idea. Mine suggests that it was always about totalitarian control.
I doubt I will persuade you, so this is for the benefit of any neutral readers. I am bowing out of further responses on this thread.
No, it’s not a useful game because the Communism of Marx et al. is a different beast from the “Communism” practiced by the Soviet Union. Effective thought and communication depend on not playing such games.
Yes, we do have to accept its self-definition. We are free to point out, for example, that Communism is a fantasy, but we aren’t free to take something that is not Communism and say that it is Communism. (We are, of course, free to use the same word for two different ideologies. I would not be having this discussion with you were you merely saying that there are two Communisms, the Marxian theory and the Soviet theory. But conflating the two is error.)
That’s begging the question — first show a place that practiced Marx’s theory! What is true is that every country that has claimed to practice Communism has ended up a dictatorship. That hardly justifies the conclusion that Communism was intended as a tool of dictatorship.
My definition merely states a historical fact; any inference beyond that is your problem — and your error. (I think Communism and serious Communists are evil. But that’s neither here nor there as far as this discussion is concerned.)
I’ve always thought that this quote from O’Brien in 1984 was illuminating regarding the ethics of power.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
Most people buy the idea that human beings are fundamentally incompetent to run their own lives. This idea entails the existence of a paternal government whose job is to protect people from their own incompetence. To accept this idea is necessarily to find oneself supporting or endorsing statism, no matter what rhetoric one uses.
Not incompetent to run their lives, just not up to handling, on their own, anything life can throw at them, such as major illnesses, economic collapses. That’s why we need a society and safety net.
Of course we need society and a safety net. No sensible person believes otherwise. The question is whether government should provide the safety net or individuals should organize to provide the safety net.
That’s where the issue of competence comes in. If people are competent to run their own lives, they are certainly competent to create insurance companies, charities, and other safety net organizations. They don’t need a government to do it for them.
From the Merriam-Webster web site’s definition of socialism:
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
I don’t know what you’re actually talking about; I do know that it isn’t socialism.
Just finished watching Felix Baumgartner highest skydive. I can’t imagine standing there with 24 miles under your toes. Incredible.
The ultra large phonebill reminds me of the prank that Mike the Holmes IV Computer in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” where he issues a paycheck to a janitor for more than the entire value of the Earth.
The Big 3 automakers have tried for years to make it illegal for anyone other than a dealer mechanic to work on their cars. They are now approaching that goal by limiting the amount of computer information that goes to third parties to diagnose the modern electronic car.
My local used book store owner says that there have been (unsuccessful) efforts by the publishers and new book store groups to limit what can be sold in used books stores. When my father first started teaching at the local college, the textbook publishers made it part of their contract with the college bookstore that if they sold used books, they had to sell them for the same price as new and that no separate bookstore would be allowed on campus. So one of the students at the time set up a text-book exchange off campus that morphed into a used text-book store. A few years later, the publisher dropped that clause from the contract because it wasn’t having the effect they’d hoped.
Essentially all the Thai student was doing was the equivalent of currency arbitrage or speculating in futures. He went to the effort of finding a lower price and intiated a supply train to where the price was higher and then capitalized on the difference. Most everyone is outraged by Wiley’s attempt to shut him down, but how often do you hear people complain about “speculators” and people who buy low abroad and sell high domestically as being “unfair?”
And of course, this is nothing new. Los Angeles has a used book store law that requires that the bookstore owners take fingerprints and maintain a registry of anyone who sells them a book. The registry is to be reviewed by LAPD and does not require notice other than having to occur during regular business hours. And that dates to the 1930’s.
Governments everywhere use barriers against voluntary interactions to benefit those who have paid off the appropriate authorities.
Fingerprinting those who sell books and giving their names to the cops? The First Amendment doesn’t apply to LA????
Yeah, it was in a report done by the Institute for Justice. There was no rationale given for the law and I wasn’t able to find anything on the net about it either. So it could be anything from a panicked assertion that anarchists were passing messages through book exchanges to the mayor having a new bookstore owner as one of his cronies. Maybe there were a rash of 1st editions being stolen in Bel Air. Who knows?
Ahh yes, car makers trying to shut out independent repair shops, publishers limiting books sales, all that “free market” that the overpaid creeps in suits say they love so much.
Creeps? No. Criminals. There’s no moral difference between a holdup man and a person who uses the government to take from others what he hasn’t earned.
That’s NOT free market; that’s fascism. Any time a business enlists the government’s aid in shutting out competition, that is by definition not a free market.
Free market means a market free from government intervention. “Overpaid creeps in suits” often pay lip service to the free market while happily engaging in backroom deals. Probably the greatest example of this in American history was when Reagan was elected: more statism cloaked behind free market rhetoric. And the people bought it.
Free market does not only mean free from government intervention – it also means free from domination by monopoly or oligopoly, or on the other end monopsony or oligopsony (limited buyers), free from lies, free from coercion.
The free market is not what you get when you remove ALL government, just as the free market is not what you get when you jam government into every crevice.
A “free market” is what you have in Utopia: everything is perfect. Perhaps some day we’ll get there. I doubt we should be basing policy on this, any more than we should base policy on the idea that if you remove the profit motive, people will work harder than ever for the betterment of society.
Life imprisonment – she’s lucky. Our ancestors would have strung her up.
This defence of evil when carried out by a female – I begin to wonder if your distancing yourself from neofeminism is merely a pose. Afterall, you share with them the central doctrine that all men are potential rapists – a dogma that was enforced upon me and my friends as boys when we were at highschool. But then, as just another of child abuse, who cares as it isn’t a capital offense (“lawhead” anyone – more hypocrisy). I will never let my sons be subject to such stuff – be it from women who identify as neofeminists or those that imagine that they oppose them.
I’ve allowed your comment through because your ignorance is a better argument against you than any I could ever make. As you would know if you actually READ my blog once in a while, I am in favor of justice for everyone no matter what his or her crime or chromosomal arrangement. And only an authoritarian fanatic would classify a question about whether a sentence was proportionate or not as “defending evil”.
I have to say, this is the first time I’ve ever seen Maggie accused of abiding by, “[the neofeminist] central doctrine that all men are potential rapists,” considering she’s usually accused by neofeminists of being a rape apologist. Neither dimwitted accusation is true, but when have facts ever stopped the raging illiterate?
The most amusing thing about ad hominems is the way they’re completely unmoored from reality, reflecting whatever the user imagines his audience will perceive as an insult rather than any actual characteristic of the target. As I wrote in “Ad Scortum“,
Hi Maggie,
Didn’t you actually mean, in this case, ad scrotum?
We are so accustomed to women getting the pussy pass – significantly smaller sentences for the same crimes as compared with men – that when we see a woman given an excessive sentence there is a tendency to rejoice in that and see it as just as an overreaction.
The headline read “Texas Mom Who Glued Daughter’s Hands to Wall Gets 99 Years in Prison.” Uhhmmm NO – she got life in prison for beating a 2-year old INTO A COMA, not for gluing her hands to a wall.
Other headlines on the same story:
“Mom gets 99 years in prison for gluing tot’s hands”
“Mom who superglued girl’s hands to wall sentenced to 99 years”
“Mom who glued toddler’s hands to wall gets 99-year sentence”
“Mom who glued toddler’s hands: Is she a monster?”
I did manage to find one headline that read:
“Texas mom gets 99 years for gluing toddler to wall, beating her”
I can’t prove it, but I am pretty sure it made a difference the prosecutor was a woman, and the child who was beaten was a daughter.
Women prosecutors, cops, etc are often much worse than their male counterparts. A woman in any traditionally-male job tends to overcompensate to “prove herself”, but when the nature of the job is to victimize people, these women have a tendency to “out-Herod Herod”.
Geez, Daniel, what a reading comprehension fail. There is a reason why punishment should fit the crime. “Our Ancestors” also flogged, branded and burned women of Maggie’s former profession at the stake. I’m sure that “Our Ancestors” as an appeal to authority is NOT a reasonable standard of jurisprudence.
We no longer treat crimes as if they are an offense against Deity or the State. Or rather, let me rephrase; We SHOULD no longer treat crimes as if they are an offense against a Deity or the State, (or either re-incarnated as “Society” or “The Collective”) but as an offense against the victim. Any movement back toward that standard of jurisprudence is NOT an enlightened one, rather it is definitely a regressive one.
At first I had a similar reaction to you, but I think it’s because as men we have a tendency to pedestalize The Mother. Proportionate punishment is a matter of objective fairness, though actually sentences vary so widely the question is pretty wide open
When you said the cops “fisted” a man, I thought you had misspelled. Should have known better. Ay, caramba.
The headlines say things like “Mom Sentenced to 99 Years for Gluing Daughter’s Hands to Wall.” This fails to captured the monstrous nature of the crime. The mother beat her toddler daughter almost to death, and then glued the child’s hands to the wall. In the real word, the little girl doesn’t turn into a BabyHulk and beat her abusive mother to death with the bits of wall still stuck to her hands (which would be immediate and real justice), so this is the best we can hope for.
That comic strip was pretty awesome.
PETA has managed to get some cute girls out of their clothes and on camera, but other than that I see them as pretty worthless. Still, it gives me an excuse to link to this.