No Coercion

This story turns my stomach:

Immigration crackdown hits fence builder

Long article, quick summary:

A guy (Mel Kay) owned a very successful fence company (Golden State Fence) in California. About a third of his employees were illegal immigrants, some of whom he actually rehired after they had been arrested on immigration charges. He says he preferred Mexican immigrants (often friends and family referred by current employees) to the typical American citizen blue collar workers in the area, the Mexicans being more trustworthy and likely to stay long term. He paid his employees incredibly well and provided benefits. So, here we have a man and some other men entering into peaceful, voluntary, mutually beneficial agreements in order to engage in a business providing goods and services to others in peaceful, voluntary, mutually beneficial agreements.

Enter the federal government.

The Feds find out that -gasp- this guy was employing people that the government said were ‘illegal.’ Nevermind that every individual has the natural right to enter into voluntary agreements with any other individual–the government (and a great many voters) has decided that particular right can be violated if one party happens to have been born on the wrong side of an imaginary line drawn by politicians and hasn’t gone through the unjust, coercive, expensive and time-consuming ‘official’ channels to become ‘legal.’

Here’s a telling quote regarding the massive operation the government launched to take down this horrible man and his ‘illegal’ fence company:

Shortly after Kay arrived at work at 5 a.m. on Nov. 30, 2005, federal agents stormed his 14-acre headquarters in an industrial part of Riverside, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. In 14 hours, they would fill a 16-foot truck with boxes of documents and computer hard drives.

Simultaneously, a helicopter with a loudspeaker circled over nearly 200 agents who raided the largest of Kay’s 10 branches, in Oceanside, north of San Diego. In all, agents arrested 17 employees at their homes or as they came to load their trucks at 6 a.m.

So basically, this old guy and his son-in-law would have gone to prison if the judge at the sentencing hearing hadn’t looked at the overall picture and had a momentary lapse into the mindset of an almost free human being. Still, the guy ended up with 6 months home confinement and a $5M fine–for daring to enter into peaceful, voluntary transactions with other human beings.

This is your government, people. The government of the so-called freest country on Earth. Yes, that has disturbing implications for the future of human civilization, but what’s most disturbing to me is how many of our fellow Americans (perhaps even some of my readers) not only approve of this kind of coercion and violation of natural rights, but actually protest loudly in favor of such policies and the politicians who support them. For a great many Americans from both of the state-sponsored parties (Democrats and Republicans), support for these kinds of anti-human, wealth-destroying, totalitarian policies is actually the key factor in their decision to support a given candidate.

And to hear it coming from those who consider themselves supporters of limited government is especially confusing and disheartening. To the anti-immigration conservatives and libertarians out there, why is it wrong for the government to ban certain light bulbs and shower heads, but it’s okay for it to launch commando-style assaults on peaceful businesses for the crime of employing hard-working men in voluntary arrangements providing great value to their fellow man–all because they were born on the wrong side of an imaginary line? Somebody please attempt to justify that. I dare you.

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…of alcohol. Don over at Cafe Hayek reminds us that today is the 74th anniversary of the repeal of the 18th Amendment, which banned alcohol. As we all know, the end of alcohol prohibition increased the safety of booze, stopped the trend of sending otherwise law-abiding citizens to prison (and destroying their families), ended mob warfare over control of the alcohol black market, and generally left us more free from an overbearing police state than we would have been had prohibition continued.

But wait. Something’s wrong. We now have even more dangerous substances on the streets, inner cities wrecked by gang violence and families broken by prison, overcrowed prisons, nonviolent young people being sent to prison where they are converted into violent offenders, and a rapidly expanding police state that routinely beefs up its weaponry and violates our most basic rights in its fanatical crusade to fight prohibited goods. Of course I’m referring to the inane War on Drugs.

Why is it that we learned our lesson when it came to alcohol prohibition, but not when it comes to drug prohibition? What is it about the American psyche that results in a large majority of the public and virtually all elected officials at the state and federal levels favoring the continued prohibition of highly demanded chemical substances? Is it (as an old Army buddy told me) that we feel we’d be encouraging our kids to do drugs if we supported legalizing them? Are we really willing to continue to accept all the society-destroying consequences of drug prohibition in order to make ourselves feel better about the messages we’re sending our kids? I for one am more than willing to have a few more man-to-man conversations with my kids about how to take care of their bodies in exchange for the vast reduction of crime (which is a danger to my family), poverty, and government oppression that would come about from the legalization of drugs. Who’s with me?

(By the way, check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), and see how the guys in the trenches feel about the Drug War).

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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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So the drama with Falcons QB Michael Vick continues. I’d guess that about 97% of the American public that’s aware of this story is itching to see the government really stick it to Vick and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law.

The remaining 3% are those of us with the highest possible degree of respect for liberty and voluntary social interactions.

Let’s get a few things out of the way. I do not condone animal cruelty. I think people that do the kinds of things Vick is accused of are sick and are probably more likely than others to harm actual human beings. I also believe animals are not equivalent to humans. They are not moral agents. They do not have rights. They are resources and can be owned. I grew up with wonderful dogs and cats. They brought me plenty of joy and certainly enhanced my life. Nevertheless, they were still property–not people, not moral agents with natural rights.

Now of course Vick should not be prosecuted on the gambling charge. That’s flat out a victimless crime, and most of us realize there’s nothing inherently wrong with it (it does of course pose ethical issues in some cases and can legitimately be banned by private organizations as in the case of the NFL, but that’s not a legitimate matter for law enforcement).

The real question is whether it’s right for Vick to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals. Of course I realize current law allows such prosecution, but that’s not the point. My argument is that that is a failure on our society’s part to properly understand liberty and natural rights.

A free society is measured by how well it relies on voluntary actions of free individuals rather than the coercion of the state. Government is coercion. Law is coercion. A free society strives to minimize and eliminate those vestiges of primitive aggression. If a monopoly government with law enforcement powers exists, those powers should only be used with regard to invasions of person or property. You should be able to do whatever you want to yourself or your property. The law should not interfere. You may not invade (engage in aggression against) other people or their property.

So animal abusers just get to run loose with no punishment? Not at all. The majority of people in society are decent, caring human beings. They would not look kindly on someone engaging in cruelty to animals. Indeed, we see that Michael Vick is already being subjected to intense personal and professional ostracism. He is looked at with disgust by virtually the entire country. His football career may well be over. Unless miraculously vindicated, he’ll carry this with him like a “scarlet letter” for the rest of his life. And all this without a single conviction through the coercive instruments of the state. That is how things are handled by free people.

Share your thoughts on this–don’t hold back!

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According to Tim Dickinson over at National Affairs Daily (Rolling Stone’s politics blog), John Edwards accused Rudy Giuliani of being “Bush on steroids.”

Of course, Edwards is right—but not in the way he intended. He was referring to the level of ‘crony capitalism’ under Bush and the increased level he would expect to see under Rudy. I’ll give him the ‘crony capitalism’ hit on Bush—our current president wouldn’t know true free market capitalism if it put him in a headlock and gave him a noogie. But neither would John Edwards. Both Bush and Edwards have shown themselves to be fans of various degrees of a coercive, violence-based system of socialism. I actually think Giuliani is probably oriented much more toward free market policies than Bush (but that’s not saying much).

Where Edwards accidentally spoke truth is with respect to Giuliani’s predisposition toward the use of the police power of the state. Giuliani does not extend his pro-freedom philosophy from the marketplace to the realm of civil liberties. Although many credit him with cleaning up New York City through his ‘get tough’ policing tactics, the cause-and-effect relationship is far from clear. Not only that, but in the interests of maintaining the most just society possible, American criminal justice philosophy has always been structured around the absolute necessity of avoiding what’s known as the ‘alpha error’–the accidental punishment of the innocent. Our system knowingly fails to punish every last offender because it’s considered far worse to punish the innocent by mistake (a principle most of us would agree with). Who knows how many innocents were punished under Rudy’s policing policies.

The fact of the matter is that Giuliani would institute a police state in America that would make George Bush slap himself on the forehead every few days and say, “Dang! Why didn’t I think of that?!”

Giuliani’s support for things like a national ID card, lack of strong support for the 2nd Amendment, and “every community in America is prepared for terrorist attacks and natural disasters” (I can just imagine what that would translate into under a Giuliani administration) are just a sample of his lack of respect for true freedom and civil liberties.

I guarantee you Rudy is no fan of Ben Franklin, who famously articulated a key libertarian principle: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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