"Nolo Consentire"

Oh, My, Mr. Ashcroft, You've Changed

Isn't it amazing what a difference half a decade and a fancy job title can make? Why, back in 1997, John Ashcroft was all up in arms to KEEP BIG BROTHER'S HANDS OFF THE INTERNET.

Power is a corrupting influence I tell you. The more you have, the more you want, and the less you count the costs.

Another link borrowed from Doc Searls.

Cheap Shot, But Funny

Favorite throwaway line about the State of the Union speech:

From RatcliffeBlog via Doc Searls.

Libertarians of Convenience

I've spoken before of my rejection of utilitarian arguments in favor of government. "We need to do a little tax collecting at gunpoint or else terrible things will happen" is an argument that leaves me cold, because even if it's true it doesn't matter. "You need to own a few slaves or you'll die" is not an excuse to own slaves, even in the vanishingly unlikely event that the proposition were true. My objections to government are primarily ethical, not pragmatic.

Which is why it is sad to see solid libertarian types who would otherwise be fine stout neighbors taking this tack. Lately the hobby has been climbing aboard utilitarian arguments for offensive warfare. War-mongering self-styled libertarians have been all over the net of late, all atwitter with arguments for bombing and killing nasty people that haven't actually done anything to them lately. I haven't actually heard a libertarian say "It's for the children" yet, but I won't be surprised when I do.

The latest disappointment for me on this score has been the fine libertarian blog Samizdata.Net, which yesterday published this lengthy piece by David Carr arguing, in a nutshell, that the non-aggression principle (which rejects the initiation of force for any reason) is impractical because it prohibits preemptive military strikes.

Now, there's room to argue, around the edges, about whether that's true, but in the broad strokes it's correct. And it does mean that people respecting the non-aggression principle are at a military disadvantage with respect to folks who don't, although the disadvantage need not necessarily be crippling.

But remember, it's not about the utilitarian advantage people! What Mr. Carr is saying is "It's impractical not to reserve the right to go kill people asleep in their barracks, so I want to reserve that right and the morality of it can go hang!"

Why would a libertarian feel this way? Well, judge for yourself. The last sentence of the article says, of those who believe in the non-aggression principle:

Interesting use of the word "force". A little bit redundant, you might say, with the word "political."

"Yup, gonna reject the non-aggression principle, because it interferes with my fondest desire to become the guy who tells the guys with the guns who to shoot at."

You bet it does. And good riddance to Mr. Carr. In the United States we have name for people like that. We call 'em Republicans.

Progress, One Vote at a Time

Mrs. du Toit is never going to vote for a Republican again.

And Mr. du Toit is one inevitable Republican fumble away from making the same pledge. He says:

I just hope they'll take the next step, and swear an equally mighty oath regarding the Democrats. I think Kim might already have done so; dunno about the Mrs. though.

And as for the Demopublicans and the Republicrats, a pox on both their houses. Neither party has a whit of consistent credibility in defense of individual liberty. Fairly have they been collectively termed the "Boot on Your Neck" Party.

For myself, although I still sometimes exercise the dubious privilege* of the vote, I no longer have the stomach to vote for any Republican or Democrat.

*Voting is indeed a dubious privelege at best. I hate to keep quoting Lysander Spooner, but he was right a lot. He had this to say about the privilege of the vote:

The Arbitration of All Against All

Although as previously noted I am not moved by utilitarian arguments in favor of the coercive state, I am rather in favor of living in a society in which one can live in relative harmony with one's fellow man. The fascist argument against anarchy is that such peaceable interactions in a large scale society are impossible without the firm punitive hand of the coercive state to maintain order.

Which is why David Friedman is so valuable. His writings (he is I think most famous for a book called "The Machinery of Freedom") demonstrate and explain how people might manage to get by pretty well in a state of civilized anarchy. For instance, this excerpt from a chapter of The Machinery of Freedom, in which he describes how free persons might resolve a minor dispute regarding a migratory television:

An Evening at the Improv

It's time, and past time, for a kind word about Doing Freedom, a monthly online periodical. This is a publication for people who want to do something about freedom, rather than just talking about it.

Not the least interesting article each month is a column on improvised weaponry, written by one carefully pseudonymous Tom Spooner. Interesting defensive weapons often feature highly; this month's column is on improvised claymores. An earlier column covered the construction of a paper shotgun.

It takes courage to publish this sort of thing during the current unpleasantness. The current editor, Carl Bussjaeger, has that (er, courage, not unpleasantness) in abundance. Thanks Carl!

Converting Burglary to Murder

One of the many utilitarian arguments against governments is that they can't do anything right. Every legislative act has unintended consequences, which are often tragic.

For instance, this routine crime story has a paragraph suggesting that a "three strikes" law induced a burglar to commit murder.

Thus does a perfectly sensible-sounding proposal (punish repeat offenders more harshly) become a series of fatal hammer blows to the head.

I am not a utilitarian, and generally have little truck with utilitarian arguments about government policies. The fundamentally criminal immorality of coercive government is what drives my anti-political ranting. But the law of unintended consequences stands as a huge impediment to those (most folks) who try to justify government on utilitarian grounds.

Thanks to The Mouth for spotting this little gem.

Use Drugs, Support a Terrorist

Anyone who watches television has experienced the latest government propoganda blitz about how being a drug user means you support terrorism. Are we then supposed to apply that wisdom to the United States Government, which has now gone on record as saying that speed (amphetamine) is good for you? As reported by Reuters; thanks to Hit and Run for the link.

What Time Is It?

No, I am not posting to this blog before 7:00 AM as the last entry would indicate. For some odd reason posting times seem to be four hours off. So this post is a test to see whether lying about my timezone by four hours will fix things up.

Cops Who Lie (In Italian)

The BBC reports that Italian cops are finally fessing up to planting two bombs and faking a knife attack in order to justify the thuggish treatment of anti-globalization protesters in 2001.

I have no great sympathy for anti-globalization protesters (globalization, as near as I can tell, is just a buzzword for capitalism, of which I am manifestly in favor) but the recent appalling trend is for police to torture such protesters when they catch them. After the last big brewup in Seattle, I saw video of police handcuffing arrestees and then spraying them in the face with pepper spray - an act of thuggish brutality if there ever was one. Apparently in Italy the program was to just beat them up with billy clubs, after planting evidence sufficient to make such tactics seem, ah, less loathesome.

Thanks to Hit & Run for the link.

A Noble Sentiment

Courtesy of the classy but much-beset friends of liberty at Samizdata.net.

On to Business!

Piss-poor shooting, but then again this guy was shooting from concealment, which may have saved his life. I'm amazed he survived the incident, and doubly amazed that that prosecutor had the balls not to prosecute. Too many prosecutors would have preferred to blame this outcome on the jury instead of on the home invaders.

Nice to know that every now and then the jack-booted thugs take a bullet when they break into somebody's house. People who batter down doors in the middle of the night deserve to be shot; it's an act of aggressive violence that fully justifies the use of deadly force in self-defense. Carrying a hidden police badge does not change the equation. (These cops were wearing street clothes, if you didn't go read the story.)

Thanks to Instapundit for the link.

Beautification Proceeds

OK, we are live thanks to Moveable Type, and I feel like a cargo cultist playing with a pallet of engines for a Corsair. This is awesome cargo even if I only dimly understand most of its functions.

Beautification of my hamfisted template adjustments will continue throughout the day.

Good thing I brought my umbrella

My mother once told me that all skill is in vain when an angel pees down the barrel of your rifle. (Yah, I miss her.)

Likewise let it be noted that software installation proceeds poorly when the installation files are corrupted on the fly by ancient Windows unzipping software as the files are extracted from the .tar archive file. Following directions closely is of no assistance in this situation.

Doh!

Gettin' my day off to a good start

Won twelve bucks at my poker game last night. Got six solid hours of sleep. Caffeine ready to hand. Parrot has his morning seed ration. And the first sound of the day out of the MP3 player is Ted Nugent's Stormtroopin'.

It's time to go read the docs for Moveable Type.

"Get ready....."

Freedom is Sexy, Mr. Bond

Alinas has a fantasy about James Bond. Sort of.

Cops Who Lie (But I repeat myself)

Update on the dog-shooting cop mentioned below. The Washington Post quotes the cop in question, one Eric Hall:

That's a fine effort to put things in the best possible light, but if you've watched the video it's simply not credible. That dog wasn't displaying an ounce of aggression. Hall is either lying his ass off or he's an idiot with a dog phobia.

Why are stories like this important? Because police who lie are deeply toxic to liberty. Too many police lie reflexively and automatically, editing their own personal narrative on the fly to revise reality into something that will make them look good (and their "perp" victims look bad) in the courtroom and on the evening news. That's human enough, but it's unacceptable in people who have been given powers of deadly force and arrest. Especially when those people are considered to have special credibility in the courts.

Sagitarius, we has arrived....

Prepare to disembark, man!

If you can read this, we have arrived at the new server space. Now I have access to PHP and MySQL and all sorts of other scripting stuff I have to figure out so I can turn this thing into a real blog.

Hold onto your hats

Please use the handrails and watch your step. Nolo Consentire is moving to a new server, and there may be interruptions in service over the next day or two. Have faith; I shall return.

Gun Control For Cops...please!

CNN reports on that roadside arrest gone wrong down in Tennessee in which an innocent family was mistakenly pulled over and given the full thug treatment, complete with the "shoot the family dog" trick. CNN describes the dog as "playfully wagging its tail" -- and, indeed, in the police video currently available here the dog is clearly looking to play.

Of course, the local cop involved is receiving the full support of his department.

George, who asked you anyway?

The despotic mind at work:

"I haven't made any decisions as to who is going to be vaccinated or not."

-- President George W. Bush (quoted in September 2, 2002 Forbes)

Other people's money (that is, ours)

Spending stolen money is way easier than spending your own hard earned cash. This explains much government spending and activity. Thus was Howard Bashman induced to inquire: "Is it necessary to issue an errata to change the "th" in 7th from superscript to regular text?"

No, Howard, it's not necessary. But the government employees of the First Circuit Court of Appeals were spending your money and mine when they did it, so "necessary" don't enter into it.

Just another form of slavery

Apropos my disclaimer below, Alinas over at Totalitarianism Today offers this fine quote regarding conscription:

"...it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state -- not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers -- to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea."

-- Ronald Reagan in Human Events, February 1979

Comments, comments, comments

By popular demand (Russell is popular right? And my father is on my case too....) I'm working on a solution to allow comments. However, the blog software I'm using allows only a painful kludge (a sort of automated email collection and posting system) which upon further examination is so ugly and unsatisfactory that it doesn't bear contemplation.

So, an email has been dispatched to my hosting provider to inquire about upgrading my hosting to a plan that allows server side scripting, which in turn will allow the use of improved blogging software. However, if I actually convert this blog to Moveable Type (which is what needs to be done) it will be my first leap into using that sort of scripting. It will take time.

So please bear with me. All comments received will be posted manually, although alas not quite in real time.

Updates as events warrant.

We need more like him

Penn, the comedian, got his privates touched at airport "security" not long ago. Having large brass balls that clack when he walks, plus deep pockets and the leisure of not caring if he missed his flight, he complained of being assaulted and insisted on hanging around until the real cops showed up to take his assault complaint. The whole story is well worth reading.

One interesting thing he appears to have discovered is that airport fedgoons and local cops don't appear to have a good working relationship, at least in some places. The local cop was more than willing to take down his assault complaint, and the TSA goon kept trying to shoo the local cop away by explaining that they had no problem with Penn even if he had a problem with them.

Penn's account also demonstrates the civil liberties content of all the careful training the TSA says it has been giving its security screeners. The instructions on respecting the civil liberties of travelers must have been extremely sophisticated:

He [the security screener] said, "Once you cross that line, I can do whatever I want."

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

The First of Many

I'm a lawyer, I utter disclaimers the way some people drop dirty socks next to the bed. And so now is a good time to point out that I don't agree with everybody (hell, probably I don't agree with anybody) or everything published at the links over there on the right. For instance, Armed Liberal is a "liberal" (in the "liberal with other people's blood, sweat, and toil" sense) notwithstanding that he says some very smart things like the italicized part of this post. Today he quoted with vast approval from someone else's blog what must be one of the prettiest descriptions of raw slavery ever penned:

Mandatory national service would oblige everyone who lives here to give something back to their country. It would allow teenagers to see firsthand what other parts of America are like, and what their fellow Americans are like. It would allow blacks to work alongside whites, rich alongside poor, and natives alongside immigrants. It would provide a large workforce that could be deployed both domestically and internationally. It would provide manpower for our inner cities and ambassadors to the third world.

Yes, and then we will all goosestep together down the avenues of the future, basking arm-and-arm in the warm glow of national unity. Perhaps the trains will even run on time.

Linguistic note: Don't you just love the use of the repeated use of the word "allow" in the above passage as a euphemism for "force"? Or don't we already "allow teenagers to see firsthand what other parts of America are like"?

And so the noose tightens

During the Cold War, the United States made much of the failure by repressive dictatorships to allow the free exit of their citizens. Every border crossing out of such countries was fraught with anxiety even for the authorized traveler, with much scrutiny of papers, inspection of goods, and hard questions. Free countries, we were taught, allowed their citizens to come and go without question, subject only to minimal border inspections to prevent the flow of "contraband." (Which is a subject for another day.)

Well, the AP via Yahoo is now reporting that U.S. citizens will no longer be allowed to enter or leave the country by air or boat without filling out a form detailing their personal information: name, date of birth, citizenship, sex, passport number and country of issuance, country of residence, U.S. address, and any other information the Attorney General may yet specify. This information must be provided to the government electronically before the entry or exit takes place "for matching against security databases."

"It's another way to enhance security for travelers," Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Kimberly Weismann said.

Yes, Kimberly, and freedom is slavery, too. Thank you for reminding us.

It will not be greatly surprising to learn that the ACLU does not consider the right of a citizen to come and go without explanation or question to be a civil right.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has criticized many of the administration's anti-terrorism information-gathering efforts, said these rules should not impinge on people's privacy.

"We don't see a huge downside," said spokeswoman Emily Whitfield.

Of course not, Grazhdanin. Surely you are an honest citizen, so what have you got to hide?

Thanks to the crew over at Reason's Hit and Run for the link.

Smells like a holdup to me

Does your money smell good enough to bail your kid out of jail? It had better. These folks in Vermont went to bail their daughter out of jail, but the cops thought their money had "a slight odor of marijuana" and confiscated it. Kept the money and the daughter.

Explain to me please why getting rid of parasites like these is supposed to doom us all to brutish barbarism?

Thanks to The Mouth for the link.

Sauce for the Goose, Sauce for the Gander

Apparently they have a little problem in Portland; drug cops without enough to do like to conduct random searches of curbside garbage looking for evidence of illegal drug use. So Willamatte Week Online chose three public officials who defended the practice, and/or the idea that you don't have any privacy in your garbage once it hits the curb, and the paper sent a squad of crack investigative reporters to do a little garbage filtering. What's more, they then proceeded to publish what they found, right down to the brand names of the used teabags and cigar stubs.

For some reason, the Mayor and the Police Chief found this offensive, and got very huffy when the personal items from their garbage were arrayed in front of them. (The District Attorney, to his credit, managed to see the irony in the situation.)

It's a delicious idea and a hilarious article. Well worth a read. (Thanks to Unruled for the link.)

Who the heck is Daniel J. Boone?

First of all, let's get something out of the way. Daniel Boone really is my name. Blame my parents. My mother used to claim that the alternatives (based on the names of suitable male relatives) all came out to whisky: "Jack Daniel" Boone, "Johnny Walker" Boone, etc. Probably would have suited me better, in the end, but there you have it.

Now, as for me, I'm a lawyer, 34 years old, single, self-employed -- oh, wait. I can hear you choking. Yah, you. The guy with no pants on. You are wondering "How, in the name of Thor's middle chariot goat, can this joker be an anarchist and a lawyer at the same time?"

Duncan Frissell ("The Technoptimist" over on the blogroll) wrote an answer for that years ago in a worthy article called "How to Break the Law". As he put it:

There are even anarchist lawyers. As an anarchist law student once said when asked by his friends how an he could be a lawyer, "My father is a physician, but that doesn't mean that he believes in disease."

Seriously, a lot of the things that lawyers do would be necessary even if there was no state. People make agreements and write them down and argue about them and negotiate and write nasty letters even when they don't have laws and governments to complicate things. And indeed, I've spent months at a time feeling that my job as a lawyer is not that dissimilar from the job of the scribes who squatted in dusty togas in a market square three thousand years ago, ready to write letters and petitions for a few copper coins. It's amazing how much can be accomplished in this world by writing a good letter, and it's doubly amazing how few people can do it. For all the law school crap and bar association conspiracy-in-restraint-of-trade mumbo-jumbo, a lawyer is just somebody who can sling words about in a facile fashion for the highest bidder.

Which is quite enough on that topic for the nonce.

Under color of law

From AsiaWeek via this web article, a graphic example of government activity:

An unrepresentative sample of unusually despotic government? Not hardly. Every government on earth operates from the premise that it is acceptable to point guns at its citizens and force them to submit to its demands, no matter how painful or humiliating. The demands vary, but the premise never does. This photo merely represents an historical example of one such successful demand, and is presented in opposition to the premise that made the example possible.

Philosophy that's also funny

Why governments are even worse than highwaymen, from Lysander Spooner:

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life." And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to "protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection" he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!

Please visit the always-excellent North American Samizdat (Hi Carl!) at least once a month to read the monthly Jackbooted Thug of the Month award. December's winner is one Detective Mike O'Neil of the Louisville Police Department, who found it necessary to repeatedly and fatally shoot a man who had a knife. In his hands. Which were handcuffed. Behind him. Go read the whole story.

One more illustration of why government employees shouldn't be entrusted with weapons or other useful tools.

Smaller than the bear, bigger than the bunny

Wow! Not twelve hours old and Nolo Consentire has an incoming link -- from rabbits with bad diets and implacable memories of schoolyard humiliations long unthought of.

Silflay Hraka is a consistent good read. Check it out.

Hello 2003, and welcome to "Nolo Consentire"!

It all comes down to this: modern systems of government claim legitimacy based on the supposed consent of the governed. Here in the United States, our Declaration of Independence proclaims:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

From this it should follow, that a government has no just powers against a person who does not consent to be governed, who does not consent to tithe a portion of his productivity to support goals and projects decided by others, and who does not choose to obey the whims of those others. And yet, not a government on earth will allow any citizen to withhold such "consent" and remain unmolested.

"No attempt or pretence, that was ever carried into practical operation amongst civilized men...embodied so much of shameless absurdity, falsehood, impudence, robbery, usurpation, tyranny, and villany of every kind, as the attempt or pretence of establishing a government by consent, and getting the actual consent of only so many as may be necessary to keep the rest in subjection by force." --Lysander Spooner, No Treason.

Well, I do not choose to consent. The product of my labors is mine to dispose as I choose, and that government which says otherwise is a criminal gang, bent upon my enslavement. Its just powers against me, if it had any, could only be derived from my consent...and I do not wish to consent. If I comply with its rapacious demands, it is only to avoid imprisonment or death.

This blog is intended both to explain this manner of thinking, and to explore the limited options available to like-thinking people. For additional entertainment purposes, derision and scorn will also be liberally heaped upon statists and government thugs; it's cheaper entertainment than drinking (taxed) whisky, and there's no shortage of targets.

Please stay tuned.