The group that killed Eric Garner is protesting against the group that killed Eric Garner

Sometime yesterday, Congressional staffers (government employees) walked out on their jobs to the front steps of the House of Representatives to protest the laws (written by themselves) that led to the death (at the hands of other government employees) who were enforcing the will of government employees. Instead of meaningless symbolic gestures, why don't they protest by making it legal to sell "loosies" without a punitive tax that pays their own (government employee) salaries? Lord have mercy, what a pack of doofuses....

 

Selling Loosies vs Stealing Swisher Sweets

About 4 years ago, I advocated something called "The Neighbor In A Cage Test" for new laws. 
In short, would you be willing to put your neighbor in a cage if he refused to obey (or fund) your proposed law?  Because that's exactly what happens when your neighbors don't obey laws, no matter how stupid the laws, no matter how few people voted for them, no matter how corrupt their origins.

We've had two good cases for this in the last few weeks.  Michael Brown and Eric Garner. 

We don't often think of Government this way, but....

1)  Government is force. 
2)  Government also writes laws. 
3)  Government uses force to ensure compliance with all of its laws, including the bad ones.   
4)  If you don't agree to obey the laws, or fund them, you will be locked up....
5)  In a cage. 

Here's how it works in theory.  This is from noted Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter:

On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law…..

The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.

BTW, a "loosie" is a single cigarette.  The New York Police Department had an "opportunity for official violence to get out of hand" (in Professor Carter's words), and supposedly choked Eric Garner to death.

Garner had been selling loosies.  (The rationale for selling these single cigarettes is that retailers have to charge an ungodly tax on packs of cigarettes.  Those who are willing to sell individual cigs usually don't send additional inflated cut to the IRS.  Hence the illegality, even though the tax was already paid by the first purchaser of the "broken" pack.) 

But that's the theoretical part of it.  Here's an interview with a NYC police officer, explaining the difficulty of enforcing bullshit laws:

What do you think about all this? I mean, honestly — that video. Eric Garner looked so scared.
Well, Garner was in bad health, and Pantaleo said it wasn’t a chokehold; he was just trying to take him down so they could arrest him. The thing that nobody hears about in the media is that Garner had been arrested for this before. The store owners, they had been … saying he was taking away their business. These people pay their taxes; they pay for tobacco licenses. They wanted him gone.

Right, but he wasn’t fighting the cops. He was just standing there with his hands up.
Yeah, but he’s a big guy. He could have been holding up his hands, or he could have been threatening them. All I’m saying is that cop needed to arrest him. Once that was decided on, they had to take him in one way or the other, and he didn’t want to go … but maybe there was excessive force used. I won’t say there wasn’t.

So you don’t think this is a race thing?
No, it’s not a race thing. It’s a Ray Kelly thing. (Ray Kelly was a veteran NYC Police Commissioner.)  That man singlehandedly ruined this department. When I came up as a rookie, you were assigned an older cop who had been around and knew what they were doing. We were taught that you catch more flies with honey. Basically, if you let the small things go — like the guy selling loosies or weed or whatever on the corner — then when the big shit happens, like homicide or burglary, those are the same guys who will tell you all about it. If they hate you, they won’t tell you shit.

But this is happening everywhere. I mean, Ferguson — there have been so many of these cases for so long.
All I know is New York City. Nowadays, since Kelly’s Operation Impact, rookies are taught one thing: Write tickets, do searches, make money. They’ll have a quota they have to fill. They’re not supposed to, but they do. They come up not knowing their asses from their elbows. These rookies don’t understand how to let the small stuff go. They'll be on your back for a bag of grass.  So when things happen they overreact.   

There you have it....
The theoretical problem from Yale's Stephen Carter. 
The practical problem from a NYC cop. 
Which leaves the rest of us with a problem. 
Would you be willing to have someone strangled to death for selling loosies?  If not, then don't ask someone else to do your dirty work.

How would that work out?  Where does one draw the line? 

Well, take the case of Michael Brown. 

(If you've been living under a rock, Michael Brown, a black teenager, supposedly did a strong-arm robbery of a convenience store, walked out with some Swisher Sweets, was stopped by a white cop, then something happened that we'll never, ever, ever figure out, and Michael Brown got shot.  Dead.) 

Here's a video supposedly showing some of the last moments of Brown's life.  If you're in a hurry, the last 20 seconds are the key moments. 



Would I be willing to shoot someone to keep Swisher Sweets from being stolen?  I don't know, and I hope I never have to find out. 

Would I be willing to outsource that job? 

I can only answer with a very reluctant.... Yes. 

That's one of the Big 3 legitimate functions of the state.  (Protect the borders, provide a courts system, and protect property rights.)  Even if the property in question is a $40.00 box of cheap cigars. 

But would I willingly pay someone to shoot the people who sell loosies?  Heck no. 

Libertarianism in a nutshell is "Don't hit people and don't take their stuff."  Hitting people (except in defense) and taking their stuff is a job reserved for the state.  Michael Brown took a convenience store's stuff and hit the clerk. 

Eric Garner didn't take anyone's stuff, and it doesn't look like he hit anybody. 

Brown and Garner are both dead. 

Another Libertarian clutch-phrase is "If there is no victim, there was no crime". 

Who was the victim in these two cases?  Brown?  Garner?  The convenience store clerk?  The IRS? 

Please discuss. 

Who's to say that Libertarian politicians, over time, wouldn't become Statists?

I get variations on this all the time:  "Who's to say that your Libertarian candidates wouldn't start spending and regulating like Statists if they stayed in office long enough?"

My answer  "If you left mulitiple generations of them in office long enough, without changing any of the rules of the game, or changing the worldview of the electorate, they probably would become Statists."

People are people.  They don't become cherubs when they win the beauty contests that we call "elections".  I'm sure that Ron Paul could be swayed by flattery and donations.  Ditto for Gary Johnson.  Judge Jim Gray is one of the finest men I've ever met, but I bet if you agreed to fund one of his favorite causes, he'd be willing to consider using a few taxpayer dollars to build that new stadium, or blow up some brown people overseas, or throw some stimulus in the right direction. 

This is why it's so important to have a government that is as small as possible.  Government is force.  The power to take other people's stuff and redistribute it.  The power to throw your enemies into steel cages.   I honestly don't know anyone that I would trust with that power for a long period of time. 

Here's some vintage Milton Friedman:

The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.

I believe that Libertarian candidates are the most likely to do the right thing.  But it's even more important for you to be aware of the right thing - stopping redistribution, ending privacy violations, curbing the spending and ending the wars. 

In the meantime, we're getting the government (and the wars, and the debt, and the wealth transfers, and the black incarceration rate, and the taxes) that we deserve. 

Best Rothbard Quote EVER

Since I can't type anything at length because of this f***ing Blogger/Blogspot problem, here's a great Murray Rothbard quote.

On Privatized Prisons

One of the few legitimate uses of government power is for initiating the use of force. 
The government is supposed to have a monopoly on police, military action, courts and prisons. 

So, of course, that's what the government has been trying to outsource. 

(They want to educate our kids, control our lightbulb purchases, correct our diets, takeover the medical field, subsidize their campaign contributors, dominate insurance, regulate oil drilling, protect manufacturers from overseas competitors, prohibit recreational drug use, prevent me from purchasing some awesome fireworks, monopolize college education, prevent gays from marrying, hamstring the auto industry, inflate the money supply, rape the economy, run up our debts, and shoehorn their way into hundreds of thousands of other situations where they are totally incompetent.) 

But prisons?  One of the few things that really is their job?  That's what they're willing outsource. 

One of my employees has been recommending a blog called Grits For Breakfast.  Mr. Grits specializes in the failures of our justice system, and Lord Have Mercy, outsourced prisons have been one of failures.  There really are good reasons why the government should have a monopoly on initiating force. 

Here's Mr. Grits on an outfit called GEO, which runs some prisons in Mississippi:

In Mississippi, "the state's corrections commissioner on Friday said that [the GEO Group] would no longer operate three [private prison] facilities in the state, which held 4,000 inmates," NPR reported recently. Regrettably, Mississippi is seeking another contractor instead of taking their management in-house or downsizing youth facilities, as Texas has done.

Now to be clear, a state that, in the 21st century, voted 2-1 to keep the Confederate battle logo as part of its state flag (you don't really see it flying much in any of the come-to-Mississippi tourism commercials, do you?) doesn't really care what us Texans, DOJ, or anybody else thinks about them. They ousted Geo out of their own self interest, so as another of GEO's customers, Texas should naturally consider why.

The decision comes in the wake of legal setbacks for the company in federal court involving abuse allegations at a juvenile facility, though GEO insisted their departure is unrelated and adamantly denied the charges. Even so, "the judge's [March settlement] order ... said an investigation by the plaintiff's counsel 'uncovered pervasive violations of state and federal civil and criminal law and a wholesale lack of accountability by prison officials. For example, staff of the [facility] and those responsible for overseeing and supervising the youth engaged in sexual relationships with the youth; they exploited them by selling drugs in the facility; and the youth, 'handcuffed and defenseless[,] have been kicked, punched, and beaten all over their bodies.''"

To make matters worse,"Staff at the center failed consistently to report and investigate claims about excessive use of force, even though they witnessed many of the acts, the judge wrote. 'Given that the facility employs correctional staffers affiliated with gangs, no more can be expected.'" Finally, "The judge also noted a Justice Department report, which confirmed many of the allegations and said the state of Mississippi was 'deliberately indifferent' to the constitutional rights of the young inmates."

Whatever proximate cause anyone wants to attribute it to, when federal judges start saying things  like that about your government contract, it's understandable one might decide it's time to pack up and leave town!

Texas has closed many of its juvenile facilities and may soon end up closing the rest of them, shifting juvenile supervision wholly to the counties and more aggressive community-based programming. It's too bad Mississippi looks like it will continue  contracting management of these facilities instead of taking the opportuntiy to pull them in-house or, better, downsize. I'm not sure  just finding another profit-driven management contractor will solve the problems the judge chastised them over.

Related posts: From Texas Prison Bidness, "GEO Group subject of lawsuit in prison death at Central Texas detention center." Also, "GEO guard indicted for contraband at Val Verde Correctional Center."

The cartoon of a contractor whispering in the Mississippi governor's ear came from here.  The cartoon of the Statue Of Non-Liberty came from here.   The chart showing the prison population increasing, partly because of lobbying on the part of the prison industry, came from here.  The cartoon of the vicious cycle came from here. 

Operation Fast And Furious

I can't believe I haven't written anything on "Operation Fast And Furious" yet. 
There's been too much insane competition for subject matter.  That's my only excuse. 

Here's the story as I understand it.....

The Obama administration wanted to prove that American guns were going across our border with Mexico.  They wanted to show that it was guns, rather than our insane Prohibition laws, that were causing the violence along the border. 

As usual, the crowdsourced explanation from Wikipedia is the best one:

The ATF gunwalking scandal came to national attention in the United States in 2011 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations between 2006 and 2011.  This was done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the U.S. “Gunwalking” or “letting guns walk” was a tactic whereby the ATF knowingly allowed thousands of guns to be bought by suspected arms traffickers ("gunrunners") working through straw purchasers on behalf of Mexican drug cartels.

The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher−level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, in theory leading to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.  The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers.  Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest "gunwalking" probe, led to the sale of over 2,000 firearms, of which fewer than 700 were recovered as of October 20, 2011 (2011 -10-20).  A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high−level cartel figures have been arrested. 

Firearms "walked" by the ATF have been found at violent crime scenes on both sides of the US−Mexico border, and have been found at the crime scenes involving deaths of many Mexicans and at least one US federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Agent Terry's murder.  As a result, dissident ATF agents came forward to Congress.  As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.

These weapons have been found at more than 170 crime scenes in Mexico.  Another of our Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Jaime Zapata was murdered with one of the guns.  Eric Holder has been trotted in front of Congress to lie about what emails he did and didn't receive about the operation. 
Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, is in a little trouble because of this mess, but not at the level you would expect.  The White House is circling the wagons, and is putting on the Full-Nixon. 

Let me repeat what happened here....

There are two explanations for the violence in Mexico - 1) American Prohibition Laws, or 2) American Guns Crossing The Border. 

In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords. 

In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.


In an effort to sway public opinion, the ATF purchased a bunch of guns and knowingly sold them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords.


I know that a lot of people love Barack Obama, and he's thrown a lot of taxpayer money to his supporters (more than any other president) and he makes good speeches that make Statists nod along with a warm damp glow of contentment.  There's a competing school of thought that claims he's the dumbest human to ever step foot in the Oval Office, much less work there. 

Here's CNN's Anderson Cooper on the anguish of the Zapata family. They're not letting Holder or Obama off the hook, no matter who was programming The Teleprompter during the operation:



The solution to this mess? Stop voting for Fascists.
I don't speak for every Libertarian running for office in 2012, but I don't think we'll ever, ever, ever purchase guns, sell them to the reps of Mexican Drug Lords, WATCH as they cross the border, and then lose track of them.
We will never, ever do that.
Hell, the slowest students in a Special Ed class would never, ever do that. 

Pics came from here and here. 

Beaten for driving while diabetic

Here's a video of some government employees beating the crap out of a guy who is in a diabetic coma.  They think he's drunk. 
It's featured in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 



The victim got $250,000 in restitution from....you.  The cops involved walked away fat and happy, of course. 

Go here to read the Vegas Review-Journal account of the mess. 
Go here to read Radley Balko's commentary on the incident, posted under the line of police dialogue "Stop resisisting, Motherf***er", and also includes the following observations:

•This certainly isn’t the first time cops have mistaken diabetic shock for intoxication—and with similar results. We’ve also seen a number of incidents where cops have mistaken epileptic seizures for aggressive behavior, often resulting in a Tasering. The root problem here is the same as that with the cops who mistakenly mistake a bounding or territorial dog with an aggressive one, and then kill it. The cops get excused because they made “honest mistakes.” (Though in this case, the honest mistake ended with mistaking low blood sugar for intoxication.) But that means they haven’t been trained properly. At some point, enough of these stories should have made the news that departments across the country would begin to implement such training. That doesn’t appear to be happening.

•Note that at one point in the video, after they’ve just beaten a helpless man, one cop asks his fellow officers if any of them are hurt.

•Not only were none of these cops criminally charged, every one of them is apparently still protecting and serving the public. The story indicates one seargeant was “disciplined,” but we aren’t allowed to know what that discipline was. The department also claims to have changed some policies in response to the incident. But we aren’t allowed to know exactly what those changes are, either.

•We also aren’t allowed to know the names of any of the officers in the video. This is inexcusable. It seems pretty clear that there’s a culture problem, here. Mistaking a diabetic for a drunk is bad enough. Beating him senseless when he clearly posed no threat is criminal. And yelling “Stop Resisting!” at a man who is clearly not resisting is indicative of a police culture in which excessive force is common enough that the officers know what to say as they’re beating someone to give them cover later. Laughing after you’ve just beaten a man, and after you’ve just discovered he was a diabetic is straight-up pathological. All of which means there’s plenty of reason to doubt this particular department’s internal review process. These officers names need to be released, so journalists and police watchdog groups outside of law enforcement can look into their histories on the job.

•Greene and his family were given a $292,500 settlement, which of course will be funded by taxpayers, not the cops who beat him senseless. This too needs to change. The cops who beat green should be forfeiting a portion of their paychecks to him for the rest of their lives. And those paychecks should preferably be compensation for work other than police work.

Top Ten reasons why the rich should be allowed to keep even more of their money

Here are the Top Ten Reasons why the rich should be allowed to keep even more of their money than they're currently keeping:

1) Because if The Federal Government takes their money, The Federal Government will probably do harmful things with it.

There are no other reasons. 

Which of King Herod's programs would Jesus cut ???

"I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me... ... "And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!'"  - Matthew 25:36

From The Orlando Sentinel:

Members of Orlando Food Not Bombs were arrested Wednesday when police said they violated a city ordinance by feeding the homeless in Lake Eola Park.


....The penalty for violating Orlando's ordinance is 60 days in jail, a $500 fine or both.

Arrest documents state that Orlando Food Not Bombs received permits and fed more than 25 homeless people at Lake Eola Park on May 18 and 23. Coleman said the group rejected the permits.

From the Belief Blog:

A coalition of progressive Christian leaders has taken out a full-page ad that asks “What would Jesus cut?” in Monday’s edition of Politico, the opening salvo in what the leaders say will be a broader campaign to prevent cuts for the poor and international aid programs amid the budget battle raging in Washington.

What would Jesus cut?  As in, which of King Herod's or Caesar's programs would Jesus really get behind and lobby for and which ones would he campaign against?

Give me a freakin' break.   

The first King Herod (who supposedly murdered tens of thousands of Jewish babies) and Caesar (who had almost as many troops in the field as Obama) had different priorities than Jesus.  Herod and Caesar still have different priorities from the Jesus painted in our surviving gospels. 

When person A takes stuff by force from person B to give it to person C, it doesn't mean person A is a good person.  It usually means person A is simply a Statist thief. 
Person B isn't improved by the process either. 

Herod and Caesar hate, hate, hate competitors.  They don't want anyone else to deliver mail, defend property, maintain privacy, teach children, start a new currency, or in the case above, care for the homeless and hungry. 

"Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.  And then give him everything else.  For Caesar is freakin' awesome."  - Luke 20:25

********************

Thanks to Stephen Gordon on Facebook for the link to the Orlando Sentinel article.

I hope to do a YouTube video of this sometime soon.  Here's a song I wrote called "Let's Get Caesar Involved". 

"Jesus taught the multitudes one day in Galilee,
Must have been five thousand, and they all got hungry....
Disciples came to Jesus, and said "Get those people fed.
Jesus turned toward heaven, and this is what he said:

(bass) And he said

Let's get Caesar involved !
Caesar will get your problem solved. 
Go away and let me relax, that's why I pay all that tax,
You need to get Caesar involved. 

Three men saw a traveller that thieves had robbed and beat.
Two men were too busy, but one man stopped to speak
"Buddy that looks painful, yeah sometimes life's a bitch. 
Samaritans no longer pull your ass out of the ditch.

(bass) They just say...

Let's get Caesar involved !
He will get the problem solved.
I used to go the second mile, but in your case I think that I'll
Just try to get Caesar involved.

A wedding feast in Cana had just run out of wine,
One man said to Jesus, make us some moonshine...
But Jesus had no permits, nor a license to distill,
So he said I can't help you, but I know one who will

(bass) And he said

Let's get Caesar involved !
Government will get the problem solved. 
Give to Caesar what is his, next you'll give him all their is,
So let's get Caesar involved.

So if you're on life's highway, burdened with sin and shame,
Just call on Big Brother, just call out his name....
Don't call out for your neighbor, or friends and family,
They will just refer you to Washington, D.C.,

(bass) And they'll say

Let's get Caesar involved !
He will get the problem solved. 
If you find that you can't cope, call on Mr. Change and Hope....
That you can get Caesar involved.

(Repeat chorus forever and ever, praising Caesar and thanking him for his great and glorious works.) 

On Government Force

Via Radley Balko, here's an editorial by A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch on the Tucson shootings.

The frenzy surrounding Jared Loughner's rampage in Tucson this month has finally died down. As tempers cool, perhaps distance could turn reflection toward some bigger questions. Many Republicans and Democrats have lamented the frequency of violent rhetoric in politics. Fewer seem to have regrets about the actual use of violence itself.

I'm not referring here to death threats, terrorism, assassination attempts, and similar heinous acts. Nobody considers those violent deeds by non-state actors legitimate. But what about violence by the state? Liberals and conservatives alike often embrace it as a means to an end they desire.

Government, as Max Weber famously put it, is distinguished from other social organizations by its claim to a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A church or club might invite you to join, but cannot conscript you as government can. A developer cannot take your property by eminent domain; only government can. Acme might try to persuade you to buy widgets through advertising. A gay-rights group might try to coerce Acme to adopt gay-friendly personnel policies by organizing a boycott of Acme's products. But Acme cannot make you buy widgets at the point of a gun, and gay-rights groups cannot change Acme's employee policies by kidnapping the CEO's daughter.

Acme must rely on your consenting however grudgingly to buy its widgets, and the rights group must rely on other people consenting to join their boycott. Only the government can make you buy its products on pain of imprisonment. (Just ask actor Wesley Snipes, currently doing a three-year stretch for tax evasion.) Only government can force you to "boycott" products it declares off-limits, such as heroin, and arrest you if you don't.

The debate over the size and scope of government, then, is an argument over when to use violence to change things and circumstances consensual activity cannot. Liberals (broadly speaking) find inequality odious and think the government should use force in the economic arena by redistributing wealth but leave individuals alone in matters of personal morality, such as whom they have sex with. Conservatives (broadly speaking) are less troubled by inequality and disdain the redistributive uses of government power. But social conservatives are outraged by immorality, as they define it, and therefore think the state should use the threat of violence to enforce personal moral codes by banning prostitution, homosexual sodomy, and the like.

Then there are a small minority of diehard libertarians who would like to minimize government involvement in both arenas, and a small minority of diehard communitarians who think government should dictate behavior of every stripe.

Admittedly, this oversimplifies the issue. It ignores some big questions such as whether people tacitly consent to being governed. It ignores the many exceptions to the general rule, such as conservative Republican support for upward redistribution through corporate welfare. And it is open to several criticisms.

Here's one: A liberal might say that if Acme is the only grocery store in town, then the townsfolk are hardly free to choose whether to shop at Acme's Food Store, because they have to eat. So they should be able to force Acme not to price-gouge. But there is a difference between a lack of options and the use of violence, and that difference seems more than slight.

I've got to disagree with Mr. Hinkle on that one.... One of the biggest economic fallacies out there is the monopolist's ability to price-gouge.  Unless the government is helping enforce a monopoly, the quickest way to end a monopoly is through price-gouging. 

Liberals also sometimes speak glowingly of collective action. They find a nobility in the spirit of community and the notion of people working together to achieve common aims. Everyone should. From corner churches to corporate suites, voluntary social groups have accomplished great marvels. Adding coercion to the mix, though, seems to fatally undermine the community spirit.

Some conservatives also speak glowingly about the common good and argue that their policies alone will advance it. But again, forcing people to embrace those policies by threatening them with imprisonment is an admission that the people who are being forced don't think the policy is good, at least for them. A gay man, for instance, might strongly disagree that forbidding physical intimacy between gay men advances the general welfare.

Conservatives could reply that the homosexual resembles a willful child who simply does not know what is good for him (a remarkably Marxist suggestion of false consciousness) and therefore should have the good imposed on him by force. Or they could say the homosexual's own best interest does not serve the common good. But then who belongs to the common, and who doesn't?

Force is sometimes necessary. We must have police and courts and national defense and environmental protection and so on. But government at all levels does much more nowadays than is strictly necessary, because both liberals and conservatives delight in using it to make other people do what they would not do through mutual consent.

In the wake of the butchery in Tucson, it has been nice to hear many people say we should not speak so well of violence. It would be even nicer to hear more say we should not vote for it quite so often, either.

Amen, Amen, Amen.