civil liberty

Was I too Rash on Juries and Nullification?

henrymoore Comments, Law , , , , , , , ,

I made a certain statement (a status update, not a comment) on Facebook, and in retrospect maybe it would have been better to have made it more intelligible (okay, and less harsh as well). Now instead I must go through the statement line by line and clarify and defend it. I don’t know if it is good blogging etiquette or not to drag Facebook into it, but this started out as a clarification for the Facebook crowd and transformed into something to big to post there. We’ll see, I guess. Here is the statement I made:

Idiots (to speak kindly) who call others cowards for trying to get out of jury duty, thereby eliminating the less than 0.00001% chance that that person might have to actually “help their fellow man” are perhaps no less dull and collectivist-minded than the feverish nationalist buffoons who make similar statements about “serving” overseas. The purpose of today’s “defense” system is to murder innocents abroad. The purpose of today’s “justice” system is to incarcerate innocents at home. Any person who wants no part in this is not only not a coward, that person is a hero. Anyone who says otherwise should put their money where their big, loud mouths are. How brave and principled are you really, huh tough guy? Quit yer bitchin’ and show me! Get the hell off of Facebook and the comments sections of blogs and put your own life and livelihood on the line.

This all started when a Facebook friend (a very well-known person in certain circles, but I guess I won’t bring up his name) mentioned he had been “conscripted” for jury duty. This interested me at the time because it was just days after I had sent in my own paperwork for jury duty (this would be the second time, click here for my thoughts on the first). As is usually the case with this particular person’s statuses, the comments section was on fire. But the debate was at least a little more civil than the one that took place in the comments section of a blog post that someone linked to in this Facebook thread. It was an article by the estimable Douglas French of  Laissez-Faire Books and the Mises Institute recounting how he had gotten out of jury duty by telling the lawyers in the voir dire process, and later the judge, that, if made a juror, even if he thought the defendant guilty, he would not convict. That even if he was the only such person, he would hang the jury and nullify a bad law.

To my surprise he was accused in several comments of being a hypocrite and a coward because he chose not to perjure himself in order to get on the jury so that he might actually nullify, rather than do as he had done by merely telling off the judge and the attorneys. Sure, some of these commenters concocted clever ways whereby Mr. French could have (hindsight is 20/20) spoken ambiguously in order to get on the jury and then nullify without technically committing perjury but doing this would have required not only premeditation, but also that the person (in this case a humble economist) perfectly answer any objection brought up by the two (three, if you count the judge) cross-examining lawyers in the voir dire process. This would be like expecting the Oakland Raiders to beat the New York Yankees. In Yankee Stadium. Playing baseball. That’s nothing if not an “undue hardship.” Despite having this explained to them (on both the blog and on Facebook) there were those that persisted in their stupidity and their rudeness. Their argument at the end of it all amounted to, “so what, you’re still a coward.”

Now let me explain what I meant by my original statement, line by line:

Idiots (to speak kindly) who call others cowards for trying to get out of jury duty…

These specific people really are idiots in my estimation. Not because they think jury duty might be a good way to help your fellow man, but because they readily abuse others who don’t think it is all it’s cracked up to be, and because, even after the latter view point has been soundly defended, still won’t make room for the fact that other people might have more important obligations (or even trivial druthers) than being at some magistrate’s beck and call all week, pressured into agreeing with 11 other people on something that might be worth disagreeing on.

…thereby eliminating the less than 0.00001% chance that that person might have to actually “help their fellow man”…

I am referring here not to pronouncing a “not guilty” verdict on falsely or mistakenly accused innocents (which is why juries ever came about in the first place, I believe, and is a very admirable thing to do), but specifically to hanging a jury thereby nullifying bad law. In order to even get on a jury to do this you basically have to lie in voir dire, which is perjury. The 0.00001% may or may not be exaggerated, but you don’t exactly hear about jury nullification every day so I bet it’s not too far from the mark. If I had been talking about mere “not guilty” verdicts this would be way off. That number is probably more like 50%.

…are perhaps no less dull and collectivist-minded than the feverish nationalist buffoons…

These jury-shamers I am talking about appear to be primarily libertarians, a group of people who seem to pride themselves on being bright and individualist-minded, so comparing them to those they despise the most (basically various shades of Neoconservatism, but in a pinch, Democrats who think Obama deserved his Nobel Peace Prize will do nicely) is the ultimate dig.

…who make similar statements about “serving” overseas.

The kinds of statements I am referring to in my comparison of jury-shamers to Neocons/Obama-Peacers are analogous to jury nullification, not analogous to “not guilty” verdicts. So maybe I’m talking about a person who admits in some cases that innocent people die even in the United States’ wars, but for the most part it’s just the bad guys. And then maybe, as if that didn’t make them look foolish enough, they make some statement to the effect of, “You can disobey immoral/unethical orders without being accused of insubordination, then court-martialed and punished.”

Note that these immoral/unjust orders might still somehow be lawful, or that even if they are unlawful, there is still pressure from command and your peers to carry them out. But let’s not be coy: just because something is done by the book does not mean it is right or correct or even excusable. Having rules of engagement may be better than having no rules, but they are no substitute for not invading and occupying in the first place.

The purpose of today’s “defense” system is to murder innocents abroad.

Collateral damage is murder, so even if these wars are motivated by good intentions, that’s what’s going on. However, I don’t think we should give the same exact Powers That Be that we accuse of being malevolent at home the benefit of the doubt by assuming that they are somehow benevolent abroad.

The purpose of today’s “justice” system is to incarcerate innocents at home.

This is somewhat different than saying that the “defense” system’s purpose is to murder innocents abroad. While there may be collateral damage of sorts, that is not what I am talking about. Here, I am talking about bad law. You may be “guilty” of breaking the law, so in that sense the purpose of the “justice” system is to incarcerate the “guilty”, and not as I said, the innocent. But this assumes that the laws in question are all good.

That is quite an assumption to make about the government of the supposed freest nation on earth that happens to have the highest incarceration rates in the world. The elephant in the room here is the Drug War. Most of us can agree that drugs are generally bad news, and that the violence associated with drugs is even worse news, but far too few seem to realize that this is just the natural result of prohibition. Surprise! It didn’t work with alcohol, which, according to some metrics, is FAR MORE DANGEROUS than certain hard drugs, but somehow these people thought it was going to work with pot and heroin? In a post-1960s world?! What were they smoking?

Any person who wants no part in this is not only not a coward, that person is a hero.

Freedom of conscience. That’s all this is. Would we want to live in a world where people are led to believe that exercising this right somehow makes them spineless (again, we can all agree on something, that just having your conscience tell you something doesn’t make that something right)? Well then, just open your eyes. Look out the window. Turn on the TV (the only channel immune to this might be the Weather Channel). People with an actual conscience or actual principles are laughing stocks. They are the ultimate fools in the eyes of the world. And for that, yes, even the ones I disagree with, they have my respect.

Anyone who says otherwise should put their money where their big, loud mouths are.

Here I’m only applying the same standards to the accusers that the accusers are applying to the accused. Judge not, that ye be not judged…Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye…Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them…Physician, heal thyself…He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.

How brave and principled are you really, huh tough guy? Quit yer bitchin’ and show me! Get the hell off of Facebook and the comments sections of blogs…

Well, it sounded good at the time. But as a wise guy once told me, “vulgarity is no substitute for wit.”

…and put your own life and livelihood on the line.

In the case of “defense” and the military, especially in time of war, your life is on the line. No one disputes that. In the case of jury duty, especially when you perjure yourself in order to nullify bad law, it could very well be your livelihood that is threatened. But even where there is no perjury or nullification going on, there is still a case to be made that your livelihood is in danger.

I understand it is the situation in probably most states that your employer cannot fire you (and may even be made to remunerate you in some way) for taking time off for jury duty. Were it not for this law (which places burdens on employers that arguably shouldn’t be there), there’s at least the possibility that you would not be retained/paid for this “time off”, especially if your employer was not particularly fond of the unjust and immoral incursions of the government into everyday life. And why shouldn’t your employer be able to look out for his own best interests, even if it means firing your sorry behind? Does he “owe” you your job, indefinitely, no matter what? If it wasn’t for our crummy system and you were to be fired or lose pay because of jury duty, would your instinct really be to blame your employer? Not the people who conscripted you for jury duty in the first place? Or not the people who made life so miserable for some so-called criminal that you felt it was your duty to aid that person by nullifying the bad law he was being tried for breaking?

Additionally, since jury duty, unlike the military (these days at least) is something the state compels people to do (ultimately backing up their threats with actual guns, prisons, and larceny), telling these loud mouth accusers to put their livelihood on the line needn’t mean they have to serve on a jury (something they cannot do unless called upon). It could very well mean instead that they go out and agitate through means of civil disobedience: resisting arrest, harassing magistrates and LEOs, and so forth. Don’t act so surprised by these seemingly bizarre suggestions; we are talking about libertarians here, after all. And civil disobedience, though not quite so much as actual violent acts (only justified in self-defense, need I remind you?), can very well land you in the slammer and/or ruin your reputation as a good cog in the machine. If that doesn’t threaten your livelihood, I don’t know what does.

Separation of Church and State (More Islamophobia!)

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Religion , , , , , ,

…Malaysia’s appeal court ruled Monday [10/14/13 – JD] that a Roman Catholic publication can’t use the term ‘Allah’ to refer to the Christian God, despite its widespread use among Malay-speaking Christians.

…
The dispute dates back to 2007. After Syed Hamid Albar, then the home minister, prohibited the church’s Herald newspaper from using the word ‘Allah’- arguing it should be solely for Muslims….

From Gangopadhyay and Fernandez in WSJ 10/15/13, p. A13.

Technical note: “Allah” is a foreign word to all Malaysians. It’s an Arabic word. All Malaysians’ native tongues are unrelated to Arabic.

Yes, there may be more there than meets the eye. So? Try imagining a US court – state or federal- or a French court, ruling that Calvinists may not legally use a given foreign word, that the particular word is reserved for the use of Roman Catholics!

Not that the court ruling in Malaysia is that unfamiliar. They used to do stuff like that in Europe. It was some time ago, a long, long time ago, actually.

Misunderstanding freedom of the press

Tibor Machan Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , ,

Katherine Rushton of The Daily Telegraph wrote a column trying to embarrass those in America, like Republican lawmaker Kieran Michael Lalor, who oppose bringing in Al Jazeera television on to the American television news market. Ms. Rushton feels such opposition is a kind of ethnic prejudice, not sound journalism. Dubbing Al Jazeera “Al Jihad,” such efforts may well be over the top but not necessarily.

Suppose Americans had opposed making room for Pravda and Izvestia in America or some Nazi or fascist broadcasters in the past. Would this prove them to be prejudiced, unfair, biased? I personally object to NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS (Public Broadcasting Service), not at all because I am prejudiced but precisely because I consider it dangerous to treat government funded and supported “journalism” and “entertainment” as if it were just like some private outfit such as HBO, The New York Times or Time magazine.

When governments fund news outfits, they go astray in several ways. They take money by force from citizens to support what those citizens may well not want supported! They enjoy a competitive advantage as against those who do not use taxpayers’ resources. And when it comes to Al Jazeera, there is no other government-owned – it is owned by the Qatari government(!) – service pretending to be journalists instead of propagandists. (Not everything on Al Jazeera has to be tainted by government bias for one to be justified in being suspicious of the content of its broadcasts.)

Frankly, even the venerable BBC is a misguided institution and its reputation rests mainly on its traditional commitment to straight newscasting, not on its official restraint. Ms. Rushton complained that “Meritocracy is all well and good for certain ethnic minorities.” But evidently not for those with Middle Eastern or Islamic ties.

Maybe not so. Maybe what bothered Kieran Michael Lalor has nothing to do with ethnic ties but with evident enough efforts by Al Jazeera to cast jihadists in a favorable light. I don’t know this for sure but if so, that would certainly justify skepticism about Al Jazeera’s credentials and a bona fide news-broadcasting organization. Whenever I check out Al Jazeera, I sense that jihad is treated with kid gloves.

Genuine freedom of the press has no government involvement of any kind. Competition among newspapers, broadcasters, magazines, etc. arises from the initiative of entrepreneurs! Otherwise we are back to Pravda and the like, which should not be treated as agents of a free market of newscasting.

Statists applaud death of unarmed mother amidst faked Gov’t shutdown

L. A. Repucci Current Events, History, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , ,

Bedlam in Goliath.

Commentary by:  L.A. Repucci

Shots were fired in the Capitol today after a lone female fled a checkpoint in her car.  A child was in the woman’s vehicle, now presumably orphaned by law enforcement fatally shooting her dead outside of the black sedan, used to ram a newly-erected ‘Barrycade’ in Washington, DC.

House Majority Leader John Boehner praised the courage of the Fed’s security for gunning down the unarmed woman with an infant on the threshold of the halls of congress.  Shoot-to-kill seems to be increasingly the only tactical response for law enforcement, from the unarmed Tsarnaev brothers now to a weaponless, unstable mother, clearly outside of the vehicle she was driving.

Could ‘shoot-to-kill’ be a federal-level directive aimed at preventing the voice of dissent from surfacing in the media?

Police have yet to confirm rumors that the suspect is Miriam Carey a 34-year-old Stamford (CT) Dental Hygienist with ‘mental health’ issues.  It would seem the political landscape is saturated with partisan rhetoric to the point that the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost in the Capitol faster than ever before.

Ultimate Party Hacker.

The partisan theater that is the current government shutdown has apparently struck a chord with a public increasingly suspicious of government, rather than one party or the other.  The abuse of power and authoritarian statism may have finally hit a pitch pushing the electorate from the customary partisan vitriol to a new, holistic hatred and mistrust of not just a particular government, but of governance in general.

This blog isn’t intended to assign blame to the ham-fisted-yet-impotent GOP or to the openly manipulative Democrat party — there are the usual pundits and party hacks more than willing to play the left-right game on this (and every other issue), and point the finger across the aisle.  In fact, it’s probable that the usual partisan coverage of one national crisis after another likely whipped the woman into the frenzy that resulted in her behavior and subsequent public death-by-firing squad.  Looking at the current national political climate of deepening partisan divides, it would seem this sort of thing is indeed inevitable.

From a libertarian perspective, it is evident that whether the woman is a dyed-in-the-wool leftist or a red-blooded conservative, the simple truth is that it is the false dichotomy of the two party system within the larger construct of a Goliath Government* that is fueling the schism among the current American political zeitgeist.  Libertarian ideals have found more support within the GOP than the Democrat party, but with the political landscape quickly evolving with left-leaning progressives increasingly autocratic and hawkish, and the right continuing to be the party of ‘smaller’ behemothic, socially-oppressive government, libertarian-influenced politicians may need to re-evaluate their alignment with the GOP and assert their own space on the political spectrum.

*The Mars Volta do not endorse this blog, the US Government, or governments anywhere, so far as I know.

By distancing themselves from the GOP, this current crisis could be the moment at which the principles of limited government and personal liberty fix in the minds of the electorate as the sole territory of the libertarian philosophy.  Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul…the nation awaits your voices.  Use this opportunity to point out the stark failure of the current junta to fix problems with the force of statism.  Point out the fact that a ‘government shutdown’ seems to consist of closing parks and monuments that require little if any state management to simply exist as they do, and furloughing non-essential personnel easily replaceable with simple automation and elimination of redundancy.  Draw attention to the fact that of the 700,000-or-so suspended government functionaries are eligible and filing for unemployment benefits, drawing income from the same stolen tax revenues which are used to ‘pay’ them usually — and paying them not to work may be preferable than paying them to do their jobs, if the goal is shrinking the size of the state.  Be sure to reference the 1.2-or-so million bureaucrats that continue to serve the public by stealing their wealth and threatening their lives and safety with the full force of a statist totalitarian regime and a monopoly on violent oppression.

Government employees carrying firearms aren’t furloughed, nor are the three-letter agencies that spy on the public unconstitutionally and ‘appropriate’ our money as taxes.  The IRS isn’t really furloughed, despite reports to the contrary — they are needed (including their 16,000 gun-toting new recruits — yes, IRS agents carry firearms) to run Obamacare as ‘navigators’, who are paid on commission per signup to the new compulsory, unconstitutional insurance law.

In conclusion, if the Authoritarian government continues to fan the partisan flames with more political theater, they can expect a multitude of Miriam Careys to continue to go postal and throw themselves against the bulwark of the evil machine that has wrested liberty away from a free people.  You called down the thunder, politicians — now you will reap what you’ve sown for decades.  US foreign policy has been breeding terrorists for decades, and now it’s domestic policy will begin to do the same.  Maybe it’s time to rethink the ‘shoot-to-kill’ mentality…

Pax Humana,

–L.A. Repucci

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From the Comments: American Politics without the Romance

Brandon Christensen Comments, Politics , , , , ,

Longtime reader (and prolific blogger in his own right) –Rick riffs off of the Obama administration’s latest attempt to flaunt the rule of law:

Many of the tactics being used by Democrats and President Obama, today, derive from past tactics approved by Republican majorities and Republican Presidents who sought to avoid the difficult role of governing properly by seeking work around exceptions to the Constitution by reassigning or allowing the usurpation of powers between branches or though Constitutional amendments on requirements that stood as roadblocks.

So, neither party is better or more moral than the other in this regard.

Read the whole thing. Upon second thought, I probably should have titled this post “politics without romance” and just omitted the “American” part of it. In fact, you can pretty much use –Rick’s comment to explain every social conflict imaginable if you just make sure that the words ‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’ are replaceable by any faction and the word ‘Constitution’ is interchangeable with the word ‘power.’

I got the phrase “politics without romance,” by the way, from Nobel laureate James Buchanan.

A Problem with Political Authority

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , , ,

As a libertarian with deep anarchist leanings, I have plenty of problems with political authority myself. Nevertheless, I find the society in which I live to be libertarian enough, and that any deviation from the rules and procedures in place can be considered to be a threat to my freedom. With this being said, the Wall Street Journal has a great editorial out on the Obama administration’s increasingly authoritarian and cavalier approach to the political process. What I like best about this editorial is that it focuses on one of the Obama administration’s less well-known attempts at consolidating power: that of granting regulators powers that they don’t actually have. Observe:

In re: Aiken County is another episode in the political soap opera about spent-fuel storage at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, an Energy Department project that requires the approval of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission […] Yucca has since been infamously stop-and-go amid opposition from the green lobby and not-in-my-backyard Nevadans and Californians. This particular application was submitted to the NRC in June 2008.

Mr. Obama promised to kill Yucca as a candidate and the Energy Department tried to yank the license application after his election. But an NRC safety board made up of administrative judges ruled unanimously that this was illegal unless Congress passed a law authorizing it. Mr. Obama then teamed up with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to stack the NRC with anti-Yucca appointees.

Although Congress appropriated money to conduct the review, the NRC flat-out refused, in violation of the three-year statutory deadline.

The explanation continues:

A federal court is stating, overtly, that federal regulators are behaving as if they are a law unto themselves. Judge A. Raymond Randolph notes in a concurrence that former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, who has since resigned, “orchestrated a systematic campaign of noncompliance.” If Mr. Jaczko worked on Wall Street he’d be indicted.

Judge Kavanaugh then offers some remedial legal education in “basic constitutional principles” for the President who used to be a constitutional law professor. Under Article II and Supreme Court precedents, the President must enforce mandates when Congress appropriates money, as well as abide by prohibitions. If he objects on constitutional grounds, he may decline to enforce a statute until the case is adjudicated in the courts. “But the President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections,” writes the court.

That is especially notable given that ObamaCare’s employer-insurance requirement and other provisions are precisely such unambiguous statutory mandates, with hard start dates […] All of this highlights that Mr. Obama is not merely redefining this or that statute as he goes but also the architecture of the U.S. political system.

Indeed. Dr Delacroix has suspected the Obama administration of authoritarianism from the beginning, and it looks as if time has proved him right (which is a good thing for him, given his penchant for missing the mark in foreign affairs). Stay tuned. This blog is just warming up.

A Libertarian Moment in the US?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

I think you’re seeing a growth of self-conscious libertarianism. The end of the Bush years and the beginning of the Obama years really lit a fire under the always-simmering small-government attitudes in America. The TARP, the bailouts, the stimulus, Obamacare, all of that sort of inspired the Tea Party. Meanwhile, you’ve simultaneously got libertarian movements going on in regard to gay marriage and marijuana. And I’ll tell you something else that I think is always there. The national media were convinced that we would be getting a gun-control bill this year, that surely the Newtown shooting would overcome the general American belief in the Second Amendment right to bear arms. And then they pushed on the string and it didn’t go anywhere. Support for gun control is lower today than it was 10 or 15 years ago. I think that’s another sign of America’s innate libertarianism.

This is from David Boaz, who is being interviewed by Molly Ball for the Atlantic. Read the whole interview. There is stuff on Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marxism, the politics of welfare and some recent SCOTUS rulings.

There is a lot to be pessimistic about, but I can see a more libertarian US in 15 or 20 years, provided we do something about ObamaCare and Social Security. One thing we must be very vigilant about is the inevitable push for a more isolated society. Protectionist tendencies are probably going to get stronger if the economy continues to perform as dismally as it has been, and protectionism is the bane of prosperity and cooperation.

Quentin Skinner on Liberty and Security

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , , , ,

I think it very important that the mere fact of there being surveillance takes away liberty. The response of those who are worried about surveillance has so far been too much couched, it seems to me, in terms of the violation of the right to privacy. Of course it’s true that my privacy has been violated if someone is reading my emails without my knowledge. But my point is that my liberty is also being violated, and not merely by the fact that someone is reading my emails but also by the fact that someone has the power to do so should they choose. We have to insist that this in itself takes away liberty because it leaves us at the mercy of arbitrary power. It’s no use those who have possession of this power promising that they won’t necessarily use it, or will use it only for the common good. What is offensive to liberty is the very existence of such arbitrary power.

Read the whole interview. Dr Skinner is an eminent scholar in the history of Western thought, particularly liberal thought (though I seem to remember reading a book by him on Marx…). Although I don’t think he is an outright libertarian, he is definitely a civil libertarian and in the interview he seems to hold the same view of corporations that most libertarians have.

I guess it’s worth noting here that liberalism and libertarianism are basically the same thing (liber is a Latin word that means ‘free not slave’). In the US, conservatives are actually conserving one branch of liberal thought, and liberals are holding down another branch of liberal thought. This is true in Canada and Australia/New Zealand as well, but in much of the rest of the world, conservatives are monarchists and Leftists are fascists of one stripe or another.

Does this make sense? If not, you know where the ‘comments’ section is!

Zimmerman, Martin and Racism in America: Who’s Really Promoting Prejudice?

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

Campaigners chose to make Trayvon Martin the focus for a national discussion of race in America. But it was never going to lead to an enlightened and rational debate. In seeking to personalise the issue and create an emotional tie through Martin’s case, campaigners dodged the significant structural and institutional barriers that give rise to racial inequality. And by portraying racism as something that comes from deep within the hearts of white people (so deep that whites often don’t even realise they’re racist), today’s elitist ‘anti-racist’ outlook makes racial divisions appear hopelessly insurmountable.

This comes from Spiked, an online British publication (h/t Mark Brady). Read the whole thing.

I am a little disappointed in myself for not paying closer attention to this trial. Its importance for understanding American society has just become evident to me over the past few days. For what it’s worth, I think the US is still a deeply racist society. I think there are structural and institutional barriers in place today that prohibit most blacks from having the same support networks as other ethnic groups.

I think that the government is responsible for these structural and institutional imbalances, but also that black leaders are responsible for failing to consider (consider) anything other than statist solutions to the problems that afflict American society. I also think that religion is partly to blame. Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams may go to church on Sundays, but you’d never know it based solely on their arguments.

I’ve got a post on peace coming up shortly. Hopefully it’ll be much clearer than this.

La mort d’un jeune homme, le verdict, la montee du fascisme, le racisme.

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law , , , , , , ,

Je suis desole pour le manque d’accents et de cedilles. Avec mon logiciel de traitement de texte americain ils sont simplement trop difficiles a former.

Introduction

Fin Mars 2012, un homme denomme Zimmerman tuait d’un cou de feu un adolescent de dix-sept ans nomme Martin. Je decris le debut de cette affaire dans un rapport intitule: “Un adolescent noir assassine….”

Le treize Juillet 2013, Zimmerman etait acquitte. Je brosse ci-dessous ls principaux faits de la suite de cette affaire. Je mele a cette description mes commentaires et mes opinions, en caracteres gras.

La victime

Ce n’etait pas le jeune garçon joufflu que TV5 – la chaine francophone internationale – a eu l’outrecuidance (ou la betise) de montrer mais un adolescent de dix-sept ans, plutot grand, bine bati. Il aurait pu facilement faire du mal a l’inculpe. (Je ne sais pas s’il l’a fait, bien sur mais il en etait capable, physiquement), un homme un peu courtaud. La main-courante de son ecole indique que Martin etait un petit deliquant, un voleur pour etre precis. Il n’etait pas particulierement pauvre. Lors de sa rencontre fatidique avec l’inculpe il rendait visite a son pere divorce dans un quartier residentiel economiquement un peu superieur a la moyenne.

Lors d’une breve conversation telephonique avec une de ses amies le soir de sa mort, la victime a brievement employe un terme raciste anti-Blanc (“Cracka”).

Absents du dossier: Tous les antecedents judiciaires de la victime s’il y en a . Je ne sais pas s’il y en a. Possible usage de drogue induisant la rage. Continue reading →

The Zimmerman Verdict, Racism and Trial by Jury

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Law, Liberty , , , , , , , ,

First of all, I have to admit up front that I had not been following the Zimmerman trial at all until the Not Guilty verdict flooded my Twitter feed and Facebook page. The case was just too common, too parochial and had attracted the type of Americans who normally don’t read the more cerebral musings found on this blog (if you get my drift).

I knew it was racially-charged, and that it was taking place in the South, but other than that I had really been in the dark about the relevant details. Nevertheless, you’re gonna get my two cents.

Here are the details that I have found relevant. Some of them may not, at first glance, seem relevant because they don’t even pertain to the Zimmerman-Martin case at all, but stay with me:

  1. George Zimmerman identifies as a Hispanic, not a white person, and is a registered, tried-and-true member of the Democratic Party. I bring this up first and foremost because race in this country has become an odd thing, to say the least. Perhaps it always has been. See Dr Delacroix’s ethnographic musings on race in America here for more on race in the US.
  2. In Jacksonville (also in Florida), a black woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a judge (not a jury) for firing warning shots at her estranged (and black) husband. It is unclear if the woman had a prior criminal record.* She was seeking a restraining order against the man and her defense team used the same “Stand Your Ground” laws used by Zimmerman’s team.** The trial was taking place at the same time as the Zimmerman one.
  3. In Miller Place, an affluent, predominantly white hamlet of Long Island in New York City, a black man was convicted by a jury of killing an unarmed white teenager who showed up at the black man’s house in the early hours of the morning and was threatening to assault the man’s son. The white teenager, now dead, had been friends with the black man’s teenage son.

All three of the verdicts were handed down over the weekend. I take away a couple of things about American society from these three cases. Firstly, the only white person involved in any of these cases directly was an unarmed teenager who got shot in the face. Secondly, America still has a long way to go before racism becomes more irrelevant than relevant. Jim Crow ended in the late 1960s, but its legacy of state-sponsored racism lives on in a number of ways that I don’t want to list here (feel free to do so in the ‘comments’ section).

Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, I think that, were the woman from Jacksonville to have received a trial by jury (and it is still unclear to me why she did not get this constitutional right), she would have been found Not Guilty. Given this speculation, and given the large amount of ignorance about each of these cases on my part, I still have to conclude that the juries made the right decision.

Tocqueville once wrote about the unique trial by jury system found in the United States and argued that it was the jury itself which guaranteed liberty and freedom in the United States. Were this unique system ever to be removed from the legal system, Tocqueville mused, it would signify the beginning of the end of the American experiment in self-government. The right to be judged by one’s peers, instead of by a member of the court, is a right too few Americans appreciate enough. The trial by jury is not perfect, not by a long shot, but it is also no accident that liberty, tranquility and prosperity reign prominently in the few societies where it has been implemented.

*[Update: the woman had no prior criminal record]

**[Update: the Zimmerman team did not use the “Stand Your Ground” law of Florida]

From the Comments: Open Borders, Immigration and the Sociology of Gradualism

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , , , , , , ,

Dr Delacroix takes issue with my woefully inadequate summary of his work on open borders in the Independent Review. He writes:

Small yet somewhat important correction: In our piece in the Independent Review, Nikiforov and I argue for somewhat more than a guest worker program and our reference is not a to a EU “guest worker program.” (I am not sure whether there is one.) Rather, we argue that little harm would be done and, as we see now, much harm avoided, by simply agreeing that citizens of Canada, the US and Mexico (especially Mexico) can freely move across the common borders of the three countries. including for the long term. What we have seen in the EU for now more than twenty years shows that there is no reason to attach this free movement principle to citizenship.

That you may work, open a business, pay taxes in Mexico does not logically imply that you may vote in Mexican elections. That you may not does not deprive you of any “rights.” As an immigrant into Mexico you knew what you were doing. You moved under your own power. It’s unlikely anyone even invited you. If you crashed the party, you have no moral right to complain that the food is not kosher (or hallal, you decide).

Several years later, I think that the only reason for this insistence on tying residence to citizenship is the Democratic Party’s totalitarian aspirations. Observing the drift in the Obama administration toward non-legality clarified the picture for me, personally. (I am not speaking for my co-author, here. He just spent three years in Russia; I will ask him.)

Historical precedents matter, and a preference for gradualism may make it desirable -in this country- to transition through a somewhat familiar “guest worker program” rather than directly decree open borders for the citizens of the three NAFTA countries.

I am for whatever works but we must keep concepts distinct from each other: A tomato is not really a fruit, not really.

PS I am glad Notes On Liberty publishes my essays (and even my stories) and that it links to my blog. When I grow up, I want a readership like Notes’ readership!

No Capitalism Means No Peace: Egypt Edition

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , , ,

I just briefly touched on this in an earlier post, but I thought I’d bring in another perspective to shore up my argument. Fraser Nelson, writing in the UK’s Telegraph, explains some of the important differences between freedom and democracy:

While the West was celebrating Egypt joining the comity of democratic nations, Egyptians themselves were sliding into an economic abyss, with terrifying shortages of fuel, food and security. Sectarian violence has been thrown into the mix, with persecution of the Coptic Christians followed by Sunni v Shia strife. The murder rate trebled. Things were falling apart, which is why the generals were welcomed back.

But the Arab Spring was a demand for freedom, not necessarily democracy – and the distinction between the two is crucial. Take, for example, the case of Mohammed Bouazizi, who started this chain of events by burning himself alive on a Tunisian street market two years ago. As his family attest, he had no interest in politics. The freedom he wanted was the right to buy and sell, and to build his business without having to pay bribes to the police or fear having his goods confiscated at random. If he was a martyr to anything, it was to capitalism […]

The narrative of a 1989-style revolution in hope of regime change seemed so compelling to foreigners that there was little appetite for further explanation. But […] this was a protest for the basic freedom to own and acquire ras el mel, or capital.

Read the rest. I think it is pertinent to note that liberalism (the institutional face of capitalism) was murdered by British imperialism in its infancy (“Egyptian freedom means no more British imperialism, therefore…”).

The people of the Middle East will not get out of the rut they are in until there is a revolution of ideas in their societies. The demand for liberal ideas is certainly there, but Western imperialism provides a convenient scapegoat for authoritarians in the region. Western imperialism is different from Russian, or Persian, or Turkish, imperialism because the Arab public holds the West to a higher standard than other states. It’s time we started doing the same: remove all troops and military equipment owned and operated by the United States from the region.

This will lead to the rapid disappearance of the Islamist monarchies our government protects, and will open up the region to important dialogue. As long as the US military remains in the region, though, the Middle East will not taste freedom. Imperialism is antithetical to freedom, as both the society funding imperial projects and the society being forced to receive imperial projects are coerced in the name of central planning.

See also “Moral Markets and Immoral ‘Capitalism’” and “The Hidden Vice of Capitalism” for more in-depth arguments about the term “capitalism” and what it actually means.

The Immigration “Reform” Bill: RINOs, Labor Unions and a Libertarian Alternative

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Links, Politics , , , , , , , ,

Nobody is happy with the current immigration reform package being shoved through Congress at the moment. I don’t know too much about the specifics of the bill, or even about immigration itself (except that immigrants make good drinking buddies), so I’ll just outsource some ideas and arguments I’ve read elsewhere. First up is our very own Jacques Delacroix, an immigrant from France, who writes:

The main objective of the bill is to install in this country an unbeatable Democratic majority for the foreseeable future. The intent is to turn this polity into a one-party system. Everyone assumes, of course, that the electoral benefits of the bill will redound to the Democratic Party. If you don’t believe it, conduct a simple mental experiment: Tell yourself under what circumstances the implementation of the present bill, or of one similar to it, would cause a net increase in the number of Republican voters?

At best, at the very best, the admission of ten million formerly illegal immigrants and of their dependents would have no effect on American electoral politics. There is no scenario whereas it would help the conservative cause.

New immigrants vote Democrat. Immigrants from societies with authoritarian traditions vote Left unless their societies have gone through violent purging convulsions such as happened in “communist” Eastern Europe in the nineties. The idea that the government should leave people alone is a sophisticated one. It does not grow naturally out of the experience of oppression.

Indeed. Is this analysis wrong? If so, feel free to elaborate why you think so in the ‘comments’ section. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Angelo Codevilla, an immigrant from Italy (and one of Dr Delacroix’s fellow academics), also elaborates on the bill:

Beginning in the 1960s, increasingly dandified native youths shunned agricultural and service jobs. So did the new legal immigrants. This made room for a growing number of laborers from Mexico who came and went freely and seasonally across a basically un-patrolled 2000 mile border. These were not “immigrants,” but rather mostly young men who yearned to get back to their families. They did not come to stay, much less take part in American politics. America came to rely on them to the point that, were a magic wand to eliminate them, whole industries would stop, including California agriculture.

US labor unions however, supported by the Democratic Party, pressed the US government to restrict this illegal flow. While until the 1980s, the US-Mexican border was patrolled by fewer than 1000 agents – nearly all at a handful of crossing points – that number has grown to some 25,000 in our time. As the border began to tighten, making it impossible for the Mexicans to come and go, many brought their families and stayed put in the US between work seasons […]

The controversy over illegal immigration did not touch the core of the immigration problem, namely the Immigration Act of 1965 and our burgeoning welfare system. Nor did it deal with the fact that the illegal flow of Mexicans was really about labor, not immigration, because most Mexican “illegals” had not come with the intention of staying. A well-crafted guest-worker program would give most of them what they want most [emphasis mine – bc].

Hence the “illegal immigration problem” is an artifact of the US political system: The Democratic Party wants the Mexicans as voters, the labor unions want the Mexicans as members rather than as competitors, and the Chamber of Commerce wants them for as low a wage as it can enforce.

Codevilla has much, much more here. Codevilla attributes the US immigration system to the corporate state, but I am unsure if Dr Delacroix feels the same way.

Delacroix’s piece, like Codevilla’s, also brings attention to an alternative guest worker program. Delacroix, in an article for the Independent Review, points out that the guest worker program has worked extremely well in the pre-central bank European Union (I am unsure if this is still the case).

A guest worker program would eliminate the political implications associated with “illegal immigration reform” and, as a result, enhance the economic benefits of seasonal labor flows coming from Mexico. The Cato Institute has recently come out with a policy report detailing how a guest worker program might be implemented. As I’ve stated before, the Cato Institute is one of three think tanks I actually trust (the other two being Brookings and Hoover).

Internal Revenue Service Even Handed After All

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Liberal commentators in all media and even on this blog have been eager to announce that the IRS was an equal opportunity offender between Left and Conservative groups and that, therefore, there is not much of a (new) scandal attached to the IRS.

Peggy Noonan resets the clock in her column of Wall Street Journal of 6/29/13. (All boldings below come from me.)

According to a House Ways and Means Committee source , only seven (7) cases of the 298 cases flagged by the IRS for extra scrutiny appear to represent progressive causes. Not one of the seven was subjected to harassment and abuse. Of the seven, only two were sent follow-up questionnaires after their application for tax-exempt status was received […] And all seven saw their applications approved […]

The “source” was not identified by name. Want to bet it does not exist?

[…] Russel George, the Treasury Inspector General whose audit broke open the scandal answered Rep. Sander Levin’s charge that the audit had ignored the targeting of progressives (by the IRS, bolding and comment mine) […]

The evidence showed conservative groups were singled out by the IRS, not liberal groups. While some progressive groups may have ended up on a BOLO list, the IRS did not target them. We did not find evidence that the criteria you (Rep. Levin), labeled “Progressive” were used by the IRS to select potential political cases during the 2010 to 2013 time frame we audited. One hundred per cent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” or “9/12″ in their names were given extra scrutiny.

Soon, very soon, the Internal Revenue Service will withdraw its apology for misdeeds it gave about two weeks ago precisely for persecuting, treating unfairly conservative-sounding groups. Right?

I wish the liberal deniers on this matter were cunning and twisted rather than something else. It’s easier to deal with conscious dishonesty than with the alternative. Many 1932 Germans were also not twisted, not consciously dishonest; they just would not see the evidence of their eyes.