No Coercion

My online friend, George Donnelly, whom I blogged about previously (here, here, and here), posts an update about his situation and the efforts by the state to punish him for the heinous crime of filming his friend being assaulted by U.S. Marshals. Though his situation has improved, he’s not out of the woods yet. Spread this around so that people begin to learn the true nature of the state: it’s a criminal organization that obtains its funding and seeks its goals through initiatory violence rather than civilized, peaceful exchange and persuasion. It should be viewed not as a ‘necessary evil’ but as an unecessary and unfortunate detour on humanity’s journey toward civilized society. Stop defending it.

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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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The recent USA Today opinion column by Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi reeks of double standards.

So people who are opposed to any kind of socialist health coverage reforms who attend town hall meetings to express their opposition to their Congressthings are “un-American.” But when people who were disgusted with Bush and GOP policies (like starting wars) protested quite loudly for a good 8 years, it was deemed (correctly, for the most part) by Democratic politicians to be an exercise in the right to free speech.

The charge that these health care protesters are being ‘put up to it’ by the Republican and Libertarian parties is both hypocritical and inaccurate.

First, the anti-Bush protesters were just as much put up to it as these anti-Obama protesters are; that is, they were already strongly opposed to the Bush policies and the Democratic (and sometimes Libertarian) Party helped organize and focus their opposition in the form of protests and speaking out at events held by Republican politicians. What’s the difference?

Second, there is nothing at all wrong with an organization such as a political party organizing its members to ‘ambush’ politicians by showing up in force and demanding they answer tough questions. That’s one of the things for which political parties exist. As economies progress, the division of labor results in increasing specialization in order to use resources ever more efficiently, thus creating wealth. Some people (political party staff) specialize in identifying opportunities to protest a policy they disagree with and organizing people who agree with them to get out there and raise hell. So people who genuinely disagree with a policy strongly enough to protest against it but don’t have time to identify opportunities and organize their friends simply join political parties or interest groups that e-mail them the latest plans for grassroots protests and then head on over after work.

Sounds like Steny and Nancy are just a little too thin-skinned for a taste of what their own people have been doing to the GOP for the past 8 years.

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