No Coercion

Over at Lew Rockwell, William L. Anderson writes in a similar vein to my previous entry about Michael Vick–except he makes an even stronger case for the government leaving Vick alone!

After stating his position that the federal prosecution of Vick is another case of government abuse of power, he mentions the inevitable hateful comments he’ll get from those not adept at rational thought (the same hatefulness I’ve experienced in recent days in various online forums where I’ve attempted a rational discussion about the legitimacy of prosecuting Vick):

Unfortunately, my comments so far are going to lead to my receiving countless emails from animal lovers and animal rights people who have decided by now that I am defending dogfighting and cruelty to animals. While those things are not irrelevant to Vick’s behavior and very questionable judgment – provided the things alleged are true – they are irrelevant to my point that federal involvement has taken a bad situation and has made it much worse.

Anderson discusses the coercive and totalitarian law known at RICO and how it’s been used for decades to undermine the very concept of justice, as is now being done with Michael Vick:

If Vick decides to plead guilty, it will be one more episode of the disappearance of the right to a fair trial. Why would Vick plead out? It is because federal prosecutors are preparing to bring in more indictments, this time under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. This abominable “law” (if one can call it that) takes so-called bad acts and then bundles them into the federal “crime” of “racketeering,” which is a nice way of saying that under RICO, people are charged with what only can be called imaginary crimes.

And more about RICO (quoting himself and Candice Jackson from an earlier article):

Under RICO, individuals who engage in what prosecutors allege to be extortion, illegal gambling operations, and the like are not charged with those specific crimes, but rather are accused of racketeering, which is a derivative catch-all term. Because RICO cases are tried in federal courts, U.S. attorneys do not have to prove to juries and judges that the accused engaged in the aforementioned crimes (which as a rule are violations of state criminal law); they must show only that it appears the defendants carried on those activities. Moreover, for a RICO conviction, the prosecutor must meet only the civil standard of “preponderance of the evidence,” not the higher standard of “guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” that historically has been required for criminal conviction.

You read that correctly: “they must show only that it appears the defendants carried on those activities.”

If this doesn’t make your blood boil, you may already be deadened to the abuses of our leviathan government. My condolences.

Anderson concludes with this:

What he did was wrong and thuggish, but while Michael Vick allegedly was a danger to some dogs, that was and is nothing compared to the dangers that federal authorities impose upon the people of this country – and, indeed, the world – every day. That, I believe, is the central issue in this case, not the guilt or innocence of a professional football player.

When you hear emotional animal-lovers (hey, I’m one, too) going on about how Vick needs to be strung up, then shot, then drawn and quartered, remember to stay rational and keep things in perspective. The abuse that really needs to be looked at here is not animal abuse–it’s the abuse of each one of us by an increasingly powerful and coercive state apparatus.

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