No Coercion

Carlos Miller has this post today about the latest with George Donnelly’s ordeal. Organized crime is not somehow made legitimate by calling itself “the government.” This insanity must end.

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Maybe this is optimistic, but we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the state, the violent death throes of an aggressive criminal organization that senses its own impending collapse. This past Tuesday, libertarian/voluntaryist activist George Donnelly was attacked by federal agents (and subsequently kidnapped by them) while filming a confrontation between an agent and one of his fellow activists (initiated by the agent) during an outreach effort to hand out information about jury nullification and the Fully Informed Jury Association. Summaries can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

He’s out of federal captivity now, but is under house arrest and facing potentially serious charges for his terrible crime of filming a federal goon harassing another innocent person. George is now seeking legal and financial assistance in his fight against this injustice. See here and here.

It would be nice if George is able to not only get these ridiculous charges dropped but also succeed in suing these cretins for their violent actions. Unfortunately, such suits rarely work. One of the ways that a free society could deal with aggressors and other anti-social individuals who refuse to participate in voluntary arbitration and restitution procedures is through ostracism: simply refusing to associate or do business with the offenders, including not selling them groceries, not giving them loans, not providing them with utilities, etc. Given this, and knowing that George is a fan of ostracism, I think it would be great if someone was able to identify the aggressing U.S. Marshalls (some are visible in photos taken at the time) in this instance and launch a campaign to publicly shame and ostracize them. Let’s show the state that its aggression will not be tolerated by civilized society.

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Many Wake County residents (and plenty of other folks) may be interested in knowing that the Wake County Public School System has recently implemented something called the Adopt-a-School Initiative, which seeks to partner every school in the system with a “faith-based organization” in order (ostensibly) to mentor problem students. To begin with, it turns out that not all “faith-based organizations” appear to be welcome. The program is headed by Assistant Superintendent of Student Support Services, Dr. Marvin Connelly, who also happens to be a Baptist pastor and is active in the Wake Baptist Missionary Association. At last check, hundreds of local Protestant churches had been notified of this program–no Catholic churches, and no non-Christian religious organizations. Very interesting.

And it gets even better. The “training” for participating individuals has been farmed out to a hardcore Protestant group called Another Step Forward Ministries. Their training brochure says the Adopt-a-School Initiative “links faith in God and good works for the improvement of life and the lives of others” and “seeks to build strong individuals, families, faith-based organizations, business and communities from a Kingdom perspective.” Really? This somehow didn’t seem problematic to the WCPSS Board?

This is almost certainly a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, as well as objectively immoral since it involves the public school system that is funded with our tax dollars.  It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

[I submitted basically what you see above as a letter to the editor of the News & Observer.]

These kinds of problems are inherent in a government school system and just another reason to abolish it and prevent government from having anything to do with education. Then people could simply send their kids to whatever private schools best suit them. But in the meantime, the only fair solution is to not allow mingling of government and religion.

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