A DIFFICULT QUESTION June 2, 2010
As many of my readers are aware, I am fairly close to finishing my
second non-fiction book, to be called _Where We Stand_, a sort of
unprecedented manual, not of libertarian theory, but of libertarian
policy.
As might be expected, this little book has a rather long chapter
on the proper place for “law enforcement” in a free society. For those
who are familiar with my writing — especially a brace of essays
entitled “Toward A Police Reform Movement” — it should contain no
surprises.
As I prepared my police chapter for inclusion in the new book,
however, for the first time, a series of questions occurred to me. For
someone like me, who is concerned above all for the rights of the
individual, they are not easy questions. I don’t like limiting a
person’s freedom on account of what he _might_ do. I like even less
the idea of limiting it because of what people like him have done
before.
So I’m going to pass these questions on to you and let you chew on
them for a while before adding the appropriate paragraphs to my police
chapter, or refraining from adding them for various reasons involving
principle.
Here we go:
Given the character of their training and what they have been
called upon to do, once they were deployed, should recent military
combat veterans be disqualified for later employment as police
officers?
Is this not perhaps a source of the increasing police brutality we
have all noticed over the years, a problem that seems to have begun
shortly after GIs started coming back from Vietnam and signing on as
cops?
The jobs of a soldier and a policeman are not the same. It’s a
soldier’s job, as Rush Limbaugh has observed, “to break things and
kill people”. On the other hand, it’s a policeman’s job to keep the
peace.
Accustomed to operating in a foreign environment where everyone
who is armed is the enemy, and the United States government claims
that civilians have no rights of the kind we’re accustomed to calling
“Constitutional”, can ex-soldiers operate safely in a home environment
where, increasingly, everyone is armed, and the Constitution is of
increasing relevance every day as a popular revolt against socialism
continues?
Please don’t hesitate to speak freely, and to invite others, not
habitues of this blog, to come and toss their own two cents onto the
pile.
I’ll be interested to see your thoughts on the matter.
- Posted in : Politics
- Author :Administrator
Comments»
How much of that is actually the levels of police brutality going up and how much is it an increase in public sensitivity to it? I don’t believe that prior to the anti Vietnam War movement, police brutality being much of a public issue even though everyone knew it happened (sometimes called ‘tuning him up’ I think).
Isn’t it the job of a sheriff (and deputies) to keep the peace (protecting people and property) and that of a police officer to enforce the law (keeping the population under control and a job a bit closer to that of a soldier)? If so, the two are very different and should be noted in the chapter.
Should former soldiers be allowed to become police officers? No. Emphatically so!
Combat experience is a polite way of saying shooting at folks in the name of empire. That is not the type of person I would feel safe around during a traffic stop. The fact that many soldiers become police officers is the reason I do EXACTLY as I am told during a traffic stop, making no “furtive movements” or anything else that could be conceived of as threatening. I know what these killers are capable of.
If I ran an enterprise that had need of a crossing guard, I would not employ a Cyberdyne Systems model 101. Sure, it may not have all of the weapons that its former employer supplied, but the programming is still the same.
I am not convinced there is any place for police in a free society.
If there is, I would not disqualify any group since that seems collectivist to me.
However, there should be “one strike and you’re out”. There should also be personal accountability and consequences when that “one strike” occurs. None of this nonsense about a slap on the wrist and the “tax”-payers pick up the tab for the lawsuit. If you are a cop and you violate the rights of any individual by initiating force- or doing anything else that is wrong to do- you pay restitution directly from your own pocket and are immediately fired.
Your past profession, soldier or donut maker, has no bearing on it at all; only your actions here and now.
“[S]hould recent military combat veterans be disqualified for later employment as police officers?” — What a convoluted question!
My first impulse is that the former soldier should have unrestricted employment opportunity, just like any other person. It’s a relationship between the prospective employer and employee. It’s nobody else’s business.
But on second thought, I would prefer that nobody be allowed to be a government-paid soldier or policeman, by the expedience of there being no government to employ such a person. If the former soldier has committed any act that would be considered immoral if done by a civilian (and all initiation of force by the military is without restitution), without making appropriate restitution, then nobody should hire him. Whether he should be allowed to become a policeman is moot. I think of the question as “Should force be used to prevent a person who has initiated force without making appropriate restitution from working in a different profession which would allow that person to further initiate force without making appropriate restitution?”
I don’t know, but I don’t think so.
@ Kent McManigal
I am certain there is no place for government in a free society. That is unfortunately irrelevant, as the word “disqualified” was used in Neil’s question. This would imply that an authority was in charge of determining job qualification, for police that would be municipal government.
If he was speaking about a free society (not the one in which we live) there would be no question as to it being a matter between the prospective employee and employer.
Since we are talking about the grey statist reality that we inhabit, I would venture that applying collectivist rules to collectivist organizations is hardly a sin. Especially when society at large would reap the benefit of less children dying at the hands of the black clad punitive priesthood.
I for one would not mind overburdening the theft fueled institutions of mass destruction with “collectivist” rules & regulations that hamstring and cop-block at every turn. Painting cop cars pink and outlawing use of pain compliance devices would also be nice.
I think part of the solution to the problem is to make sure soldiers have time to “decompress” before being allowed to work in law enforcement, a minimum of one year if they don’t show psychological problems.
it would also help if the political leaders they answer to would get over calling for “wars” on this, that, or the other thing. The siege/occupying army mentality that these misleaders foster also needs to go.
Special Forces types and guys who did a lot of CAP’s would make good cops.
If you’ve ever seen the old Car 54 Where Are You? which shows why foul ups like Tudy and Muldoon were such effective cops you’ll understand the type of thing police (whether or not if military background) should be doing,
The answer is, to me, complex. Every police person would, in the ideal society, be actually a private contractor, hired by a private person or company, to investigate, solve, or prevent specific acts relating to the employer. In other words, a private detective. (NO, I’m not sucking up to Neil). Therefore, the hiring criteria would depend upon the employer’s needs and desires.
But I think Neil’s question is more along the lines of “Now that we’ve straightened out this ridiculous mess in DC, and we are forming our new society, cops will be needed for a while. Can the now un-employed combat vets fill these positions, TEMPORARILY, until we can do without police at all?”
My answer to that would, sadly need to be “depends on how fucked up our transition is”. Damn, but I hate to be wishy-washy.
But did we arrive at this new governmental system after a long and protracted civil war, leaving embittered groups (think Quantrill’s Raiders) roaming the countryside? Then yes, use them for what they are trained for. But if the transition was peaceful, then NO, because they have been trained for different duties. Could they, after months of training, be trained to behave differently? Yup. But I wouldn’t trust the polite academy training to overrule the survival skills that kept them alive in combat. (yes, I did mean polite, as in genteel)
There has been a growing thugishness among police over the past 50 years. Where police were once the “thin blue line” between the sociopaths in our society and the civilized, they have devolved into an us-versus-them brotherhood: civilians are all potential criminals and should be treated as such.
Remember the Dick and Jane portrails of police officers from the ’60s? The attitude that the policeman was your friend and someone there to help you? How much that has changed.
I don’t think being a military and/or combat veteran has had much effect on this coursening of the police. We are still creatures of free will and rational thought. If that were not true, then my three years in the army from ‘72 to ‘75 should have made me a blood-lusting control freak, and I assure you it has not.
Having covered the police beat as a newspaper reporter, I think that police departments, and especially women officers must drop their siege mentality and return to a partnership with their communities.
Why should there be a class of people with different rules of conduct, with those rules imposed by deadly force? The concept of government police necessarily means that the wearing of a special badge and costume entitles a person to violently force people in ways that, if you or I do it, is considered a crime: forced entry, kidnapping, putting people in cages, and manslaughter or murder.
With out a doubt its not same profession, even Military Police need to be retrained in civilian law enforcement. And IMO all applicants regardless of background needs to be screened.
I have first hand experience with Soldiers who have come back from a combat tour, mentally unsuited for law enforcement or even further military duty.
But some people who have not served a day are unsuited for law enforcement or military duty.
The majority return, for the most part, the same person that left. Transitioning to a job as a LEO is common,
I am a 1SG in the Army Reserves, and it’s not just former active duty Soldiers moving in to Law enforcement, it works the other way to.
A large number of LEOs are currently severing in the Army Reserves and National Guard. About a quarter of my Company are current LEOs.
With almost every deployable Soldier in the Reserves / Guard having been on at least one combat tour and the large number of LEOs in the Reserves / Guard, keeping veterans out of Law enforcement is unlikely. Even if you believe it is justified.
Please forgive me if I just fly past the blog this morning, as I’m struggling to finish _Where We Stand_ on time. What I want to say is that I was pretty sure my provocative question would draw some interesting answers, and I’m pleased to say that my expectations have been greatly exceeded.
Thanks, all of you, for being who you are, for thinking what you think, and for not being afraid to say it in public. It’s a rare, valuable combination of qualities, and if my efforts have attracted the interest of such people as yourselves, I can feel very proud of myself.
And I do.
“…should recent military combat veterans be disqualified for later employment as police officers?” ~ No (see below)
“Is this not perhaps a source of the increasing police brutality we have all noticed over the years, a problem that seems to have begun shortly after GIs started coming back from Vietnam and signing on as cops?” ~ No. The militarization of police officers is a function of the increased belligerence of governments (e.g. see the IWOD), And it didn’t start after Vietnam … or WWII for that matter.
“… can ex-soldiers operate safely in a home environment where, increasingly, everyone is armed, and the Constitution is of increasing relevance every day as a popular revolt against socialism continues?” ~ Ah if only that were true. The Constipation is increasingly irrelevant to the PTB, and the revolt against socialism has yet to bare its teeth.
Now to the meat of the matter. As government grows more aggressive, it needs stronger muscle to control us. Hence the increased militarization of police. What we need is a free market solution to policing, and in that context a former military man of proper morals and mindset would function as well as anyone, and better than some. Of course I assume a world in which our military is reduced to a defensive force of citizens, trained and equipped to defend our land against aggressors, and nothing more. I would render us incapable of fighting a war in foreign sea, air,or land.
But this, and a couple of bucks will get you a decent cup of coffee. You know my qualifications, which speak for themselves.
Some years ago I was told that guys returning from the Nam were allowed for one year to claim diminished responsibility for crimes of violence. Even allowing for bs factor on part of person telling me this, it is reasonable to allow returning combat veterans a period to reprogram their reflexes and perception of the world, recover from low grade PTSD, and otherwise get their heads straight for police work.
The problem remains of the two bit punk politicians who want to use their local PD’s as armies of occupation to keep “them” in line and the siege mentality they stir up in the citizenry and police to justify this approach to “law enforcement.”
Neil, I’m surprised that you — heavily and unalterably committed to an individualist epistemology — would even ask such a question. But here goes:
First, everything (we learn from science) is a Bell curve, particularly when dealing with such weirdly varying data as anything about actual people. Height, weight, viciousness, courage, idealism — everything is a Bell curve. Call this Fact One.
Fact Two is that soldiers — and I assume we’re talking combat infantrymen here; Motor Pool mechanics differ from your local garage guys only in their tolerance for bureaucracy — are relatively young, in good shape, and know their way around weapons. They are also, nowadays, accustomed to the most incredibly idiotic Rules of Engagement.
Fact Three is that these are our kids. With all due respect for the Martyn series, these are not Oplytes, they are Americans — and by and large from the most traditional strata of American society.
Fact Four is that the most complex and confusing urban law-enforcement scenario is a model of clarity and simplicity compared to the typical Fog of War. Thinking fast and instant evaluation of the situation from different points of view is a necessity for both infantrymen and cops.
So although it shouldn’t be an automatic in, it shouldn’t be an automatic disqualification, either. In fact, I’d tend to make military combat experience a plus for a police applicant. Always assuming, of course, that by “police” we are not committing ourselves to a statist world view.
Again and again i have to beat the drum on this point: if the political leaders the police answer to are out to create a cadre of people whose job is to protect people’s rights under law there is no problem. When the politicians calling the shot use the police force as an army of occupation to control the people or stand off a siege by “them”there is a big problem.
To be honest there are circumstances where cops have to do both. then you’ve got a bunch of problems.
Come to the border and see what I mean,
So what is expected of your local PD?
If the goal is to reduce police brutality reducing the number of cops, my be a better place to start.
A libertarian leaning government would eliminate the need for LEOs to enforcer zoning, truancy, prostitution, gambling, and most drug laws.
Public housing Police, pubic transit Police, and school resource officers would be unnecessary.
Most States have huge highway patrol \ State police forces who primarily enforce traffic laws, take away their arrest powers, give them only the authority to ticket drivers, with authority similar to a meter maid they would need to call the local Sheriff if they run in to a real crime. This would push down most law enforcement to the local level were it belongs.
With a libertarian foreign policy, a lot Soldiers will be looking for work, excluding them from Law enforcement may be counterproductive.
Good point, Gary. I have said for thirty years that there are about ten times as many cops on the street as there ought to be.
For a long while here in Larimer County, Colorado, it was the sheriff’s policy that, since he and his deputies had one of the largest patrol areas in the country, it was pretty much up to folks to defend themselves, and he would do nothing to interfere with that process or make it more difficult.
We had a couple of lousy sheriffs after that, including one who colluded with the Ft. Collins acting chief of police and a particularly sleazy city councilman to pressure the state legislature to tighten victim disarmament laws, first for guns, then for knives. They failed at that. They even visited local knife stores and intimidated them into not carrying things like butterfly knives — despite lacking any authority to do so.
That sheriff left Colorado under a cloud of corruption.
We now have a much better sheriff who, among other things, publicly informed the bosses at Colorado State University that he would have no part of enforcing their victim disarmament policies. These, of course, were later shot down in lawsuits.
I like the idea of sheriffs. I confess I don’t understand Joe Arpaio’s continuing popularity. Or maybe I just don;’t want to understand it.
[...] by libertarians I am sure he’d appreciate reasoned responses from anyone on the subject. via L. Neil Smith at Random [...]
I like most of the answers I’ve seen here, so, rather than reiterate what’s been said, I’m going to take a step further.
Most people are, one way or another, constrained by the things they have done and the justifications they have created (or accepted) that justify their actions. Soldiers are too often obliged to justify some terrible actions — especially if they want to continue to think well of themselves.
Consider a store manager who wants to hire someone to diminish or eliminate shoplifting. On the one hand, it would be a good thing to hire someone with a lot of personal experience — even someone who’s done a lot of shoplifting. They’d know what to look for, more than most!
But if that person still has their justifications for shoplifting in place, if they’ve never actually acknowledged that _their own_ shoplifting was wrong, then hiring them to stop others from shoplifting is — probably a bad idea.
One of the difficulties any soldier must confront is that he is expected to, and has agreed to, obey ‘lawful’ orders. Any lawful order. In essence, he has agreed not to question orders to “kill people and break things” (or support those who do) so long as those orders come to him from the right people and in the right manner. “Chain of command.”
Back in 1966, I joined the USAF, as an Airman, because I really liked the idea of getting a bunch of new clothes and because, when I got out, they’d pay for my college. (GI Bill) I spent two years training (electronics) and two years deployed in Germany. Only towards the end of the first two years, did I even begin to consider the Vietnam war, whether it was ‘just’ and what I’d do were I to receive orders that would take me there.
If I ‘declined to go’ then I was breaking my verbal and written contract; if I went, I might be required to do things that I was beginning to suspect were wrong. “Rock and a hard place” don’t you know?
Fortunately, I didn’t get smashed by the rock or have to go to a hard place. Still, it was the first really significant ethical choice which I confronted — or rather, dodged.
I didn’t have to go to Canada, I didn’t have to go to jail, and I didn’t, (thank ya) have to go to Vietnam.
But, had I gone to Vietnam, I’m pretty sure I’d have tried to maintain the ability to regard myself as a good guy. As most folks do, I think, and prefer to continue to believe, that I wear a white hat. And should it have happened that I actually killed someone there, a Vietnamese, I would have been ever so eager to justify my actions so that the white hat could continue to reside where it belongs: on my head.
Coming back to the point, it seems rather important that those charged with stopping, or preventing real crime or with apprehending criminals, should have ‘clean hands.’ I don’t mean that they should never have done anything ‘bad’; but that they should not, in the present, be justifying any prior bad acts.
It’s said that, “Confession is good for the soul.” Probably so. But the really important point is the ability to admit one has done wrong and then to repair the matter, rather than justify it.
G.
Sheriff Joe is popular because people in his area are scared. Since I don’t live there I can not say whether this fear is rational or drummed up by politicians (including the “good sheriff when he runs for reelection.).
As to reducing size of PD I’m not so sure. Local police force is undermanned and they deal with situation by adopting “mess with us we’ll mess you up attitude). In spite of statistically improbable low murder rate (one to date out of pop of about three quarter meg.) have purchased one full auto assault rifle per squad car.
Too few cops (as long as we have them) can be just as bad as too many. It is whether they are used by politicians as oppressive force or to protect peo,’s rights that matters.
I guess it gets down to who’s bossing the cops and what they expect them to do.
@Gary “Back in 1966, I joined the USAF, as an Airman, because I really liked the idea of getting a bunch of new clothes and because, when I got out, they’d pay for my college. (GI Bill) I spent two years training (electronics) and two years deployed in Germany.”
Similarly, my observation about the military that I’ve known is that their motivation is to advance their economic interests. The training and pension and all that. The patriotic thing is so much bullshit.
I also note that, when FDR’s “New Deal” controls (and WW2 was a continuance of the same) were lifted in 1946, the US had its highest economic growth ever, with employment for anyone who was willing to work. That suggests that, ala LNS, in a de-statized society you would see economic opportunity for everyone that would easily employ any returned soldiers without the need to give them LEO sinecures.
WW deuce left people with money in pockets (because of lack of consumer goods during war time allowing people to save) and backed up demand from years of wartime rationing and the depression.
this also led to high inflation and a permanent war mentality that we are suffering with to this day.
I’ve noticed many in these circles saying things like, “A libertarian (leaning) government would …”, and then go on to say what the lib gov would get rid of, which are that persons pet bugaboos.
Let’s face it. We aren’t getting a libertarian gov anytime soon. So what can we do about getting what we want by having those in power deciding that it is in *their* interest to reduce taxes, spending, and restrictions on the public?
A possible economic collapse due to current policies (and its’ juxtaposition with the open source/open manufacturing movement) is one scenario. I just don’t know how realistic that is as compared to calling it a just dearly held wish by some libertarians. It may actually happen, not, or just some. Were the corporate bailouts just opportunism or are the elite truly scared and trying to get all they can before the abyss (or worse [and I think, *least* likely due to lack of intelligence and foresight on their part or that they are smart and know it can't be made to work] , make most destitute and transform society into a new police state enforced feudalism with themselves as the mega-wealthy aristocracy with all it’s attendant privileges and abandon even the pretense of equality under the law)? I don’t know.
Again, how to get the elite to dial down our taxes and restrictions by showing them it is in their own best interests? Law enforcement brutality and a control attitude is part of the picture, but only part.
Ed- I truly doubt anything but a gun to the head would work with this crop. But if you have any ideas that you think would work, I’d LOVE to hear them!
I’ve always thought that in a free society, everybody who is not a known violator of the ZAP should be expected to put in time as “police,” but that nobody (except for CSIs and other specialists, which are a whole ‘nother story) should be allowed to “go career.”
Part of the problem with the current oinks is that they start seeing the world as “us vs. them,” and they see “them” as divided into perps and future perps. Too much time staring up society’s anus isn’t good for anybody.
Even in Libertopia, there’d still be crime—I remember LNS Himself himself mentioning Ed Bear telling Win about an encounter with a triple murderer—and as far as I’m concerned, taking a turn with this is analogous to turning out to help with the bucket brigade when there was a fire back in the Old Days.
One advantage to this would be the demolition of the “blue wall”—police would know that they weren’t always going to be cops, and would be likelier to blow the whistle on power-abusers, as well as to not abuse power themselves.
Having had to break and/or head of the occasional fight by young men bigger than me I can tell you now that making police duty a militia/ home guard thing has its limits. Definitely respect officers who can use humor and common sense with only the hint of applying force to keep the peace.
And to beat the same old drum again, it depends on what expectations the politicos apply to our fuzz, whether they are government employees, security firm employee (Griswold’s, brrr!!), or armed citizens doing their turn at patrol. Please remember that one of the jobs of the militia in the Antebellum South was to patrol hunting for runaway slaves, checking passes for slaves off their masters’ properties and reminding free black men to stay in their place.
First we get rid of as many bs laws and regs as possible, then we make sure the minimalist surviving legislation is just, then we set up just enforcement doctrine and procedure for our cops to work under (remember, we are talking having to work in high adrenaline situations) then we worry about who we hire to do this.
Define just.
Neale - I’ve only had one so far. I emailed Neil about it a week and a half ago and he said he would pass it on to someone who can do it.
The idea is for a statistical correlation showing the severity of gun laws by geographical location and the number of law enforcement officer deaths from criminals. Also, how the number of deaths changes with the lowering of the severity of the gun laws. I’m hoping that the more guns, the fewer deaths.
If it is true, the goal is two fold. First, get law enforcement to demand an end to the gun laws, *all* of them. The second would be for law enforcement people to encourage arms bearing among the population. At most only about 1 percent of the public carry arms in states with ’shall issue’ gun laws. This isn’t nearly enough (by an order of magnitude or more). I want law enforcement trying to get as many guns as possible out on the streets in the hands of the general public.
This is what I mean by getting the elite (law enforcement is a part of that) to changing things to the way *we* want them to be because it is in *their* interests.
Neil, you’ve missed the question behind the question. In a sane libertarian society, what need would there be for “soldiers” as most of us understand the term?
That left dangling, however, I’d say that, in general, I’d rather not have anyone who’s been through Army or Marine basic training riding traffic patrol, investigating burglaries, or worst of all enforcing drug laws. As pointed out, their training is to consider anyone who is armed as an insurgent or enemy combatant, which means if there’s a situation where police break into the wrong house in the middle of the night (see above concerning drug laws), those with military training are far more likely to fire as soon as they identify a firearm, rather than waiting an extra split second to determine where it’s pointed. I don’t much like the idea of everyone taking their turn, though, either — it takes training to do a policeman’s job well; it also takes experience, which militates against forbidding career police, and the very idea tends to smack of conscription (= state slavery).
Come to that, how many actual police does a healthy libertarian society really need? Most would-be murderers, rapists, and home invasion burglars won’t live to be arrested in an armed society. Don’t forget, drug dealers won’t be gangsters, they’ll be at least semi-respected business men and women; that alone eliminates a sizable fraction of murders in a city this size or larger. There will also be no need for traffic cops (accident investigations will be handled by insurance companies), parking enforcement (at least in government employ; they’d work for the lot owners and their job would be a bit different from the “meter maids” we’ve all met), etc. I can easily see a city of a hundred thousand requiring only a dozen full time police. It shouldn’t be difficult to find that many who enter police work because they love the forensics and detective side of the work (i.e. the same kinds of folks who make *good* private detectives).
RE: Joe Arpaio — the county includes Phoenix, which is chock-full of people who’ve move to AZ from places like California and New Yawk and such. If he tried to run in the county _I_ live in, he’d get about 3 votes… if that many.
Ed- neat idea. I’d also recommend a side study- is the state a concealed carry only, open carry only, or both. This would help determine the safest society to live in.
Personally, gun-wise, I lean towards “Beyond This Horizon” (Robert A. Heinlein) methods for handling firearms. Carry them or not, but if you DON’T want to be challenged to a duel, you’d damn sure better be polite to all. The safest way to avoid duels is a “Peace Brassard”, telling all and sundry that you are un-armed, and you yield to any offense against you. For me, I consider a PB a lame way to live, but it makes EVERYONE know who are the tigers, who are the housecats, and who are the eunuchs. I consider myself a battered tomcat, older than some, but not willing to roll over and be neutered. I may lose the fight, but I damn sure intend to let that motherfucker know he was in one.
A just law is one which does not reward or encourage people treating other people like prey or slaves or prevents people from going about their honest business, defined as exercising their rights without violating the rights of others.
obviously i meant does not prevent people from going about honest business.
big woops
“”I’ve always thought that in a free society, everybody who is not a known violator of the ZAP should be expected to put in time as “police,” “”
I like that idea! ..and it should apply to Govts, right now!!
Same principle, anyone who wants to get into power shouldn’t be there, and people who see it as a duty to their neighbours should!
We run jury service like that, and if you are willing to put your life in the hands of 12 strangers I’m sure it would not be a problem for Police or politics to do the same.
I think the main Police problem stems from their tight-knit “drinking buddies club” mentality and the increasing view of citizens as either criminals or potential criminals.
Changing that attitude is probably more important than blocking ex-Forces members from joining, they would be influenced by their buddies either way.
–
Individuals qualified by military service to wear the various combat awards (including the Combat Infantry Badge, the Combat Action Badge, and the Combat Medical Badge of the U.S. Army as well as the Air Force’s Combat Action Medal, and the Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard Combat Action Ribbons) are “pre-stressed” in both good and bad ways.
There is no doubt that individuals “blooded” in combat - those people who have been under fire and demonstrated satisfactory performance in those circumstances - come to any occupation in which deadly force is threatened or must be administered with certain reserves of experience that can be of value.
They are also not uncommonly progressed along the inevitable course of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Studies have shown that people reliably suffer psychological dysfunctions after a certain total number of days in a combat environment, and whether this experience is broken by respites or not, the cumulative injury is all but inevitable. A policeman teetering on the edge of breakdown is NOT someone you want to trust in an “Officer Friendly” role.
I agree that policemen are not “peace officers.” They are, explicitly, LAW-ENFORCEMENT officers, and this gets to be a damned bad thing indeed.
Bear in mind that the German Feldpolizei and Feldgendarmerie - not elements of the Nazi Party but units under the command and control of the OKW - carried out what can only be called atrocities against enemy combatants and civilians as well as against Axis military personnel and Reich civilians. Goldhagen’s *Hitler’s Willing Executioners* focuses on one unit of the German military - Police Battalion 101 - and its actions in the slaughter of Jews and other “Untermenschen.”
Not to mention the fact that the Waffen SS raised two full divisions from among the Reich’s Ordnungspolizei (4th) and SS police (35th).
Policemen are ripe for exploitation as violent enforcers of normative political viciousness.
I would refer to economist Walter Block’s excellent *Defending the Undefendable* (1976)* with specific attention paid to his chapter on “The Dishonest Cop,” in which he had written:
“But it is difficult to countenance the notion that breaking the law is necessarily evil. Indeed, if the Nuremberg Trials have taught us anything, it is the diametric opposite of this view. The lesson of the Trials is that some laws are in and of themselves evil, and to obey them is wrong. It is equally difficult to understand the notion that selective law breaking establishes a precedent which ultimately leads to chaos. The only precedent such an action establishes is that illegitimate laws may be disobeyed. This does not imply chaos and arbitrary murder. It implies morality. Had such a precedent been firmly established at the time the Nazis came to power, concentration camp guards might have refused to obey lawful orders to murder hapless victims.
“Finally, the notion that no ‘mere’ individual should be free to pick and choose which law he will obey is nonsense. ‘Mere’ individuals are all we have.”
It is Block’s contention that the corrupt policeman - whether he violates his “law enforcement” brief out of simple conscience or for bribes - provides a valuable service in civil society in that he enables the private citizenry to escape many of the adverse consequences of overweening and unlawful government.
In my personal experience (in Emergency Medicine), the police will, when opportunity presents, betray their hard-held sentiment that they are in reality an OCCUPYING ARMY dealing with an “enemy” populace of actual and potential lawbreakers.
Their contempt for “civilians” is not uncommonly suppressed among “civilians,” but those of us in emergency medical services seem privileged to be considered sufficiently “inside” for many of the policemen to speak as frankly to us as they would to one another.
Think of the relationship between a Marine enlisted man and the Navy corpsman assigned to his rifle company. Such sailors are not treated as “squids” because they wear the same utilities and serve in the same Fleet Marine Force as do the riflemen.
That the police themselves - whether experienced in combat or not - consider themselves a military force imposed upon a recalcitrant and resisting population cannot be denied, and ought to be taken into consideration of all writing on this subject.
* http://mises.org/books/defending.pdf
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Damn, Richard, you make me want to go out and break an illegal law, and use the Nuremberg Defense. “I had to violate that law, oly following orders is no acceptable defense for doing wrong.”
Should this, should that. So many shoulds I see here and elsewhere.
F*k “should.”
It all makes me visualize Foghorn Leghorn (I mean, “Foghorn J., I say, Foghorn J. Leghorn”) boring everyone to death. Yawn. Yaaaaawwwwwn.
Operationally, what is to be done?
@Al: Define “rights.”
Rights are the enforceable powers and qualities needed to survive and function as a member of a society without violating the rights of others.
The term rights defines a relationship with others. For example let us consider the free exercise of religion. If there are no other people around I can pray the Rosary any time I want. It is only when their are people around who object to me saying my Aves that I need a right enforced by law to pray as I please. Conversely. involuntary human sacrifice violates another;s right to live and is and ought to be forbidden.
Enforceability is also an element to be considered. If an unborn child had the power to strike abortionists dead that child would in fact have the right to be born.
Essentially it’s the “y’got a problem wit dat?” argument. I’ll cry if I want at a movie and if you give me grief I’ll pound the snot outa youse approach.
Sure, if the theater’s terms of use allow crying then you have a contract to cry. No rights there, just a contract.
In a “public” space you might claim a right to pray. In an owned place you can only do what the owner allows.
In a free society there are no public (i.e., unowned) places. It is all owned by someone and you go there at the owner’s pleasure and conduct yourself according to his terms. No rights there.
Try this definition of rights: rights are an appeal to the state to force someone to do your bidding.
In a free society there are no rights.
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Neale, regarding “an illegal law,” there are characteristics of certain laws which are effectively impossible to objectively and dispassionately enforce, or which otherwise make no sense sufficient for the populace to accord them the force of law.
“But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.”
Hm. Now where have we read that before?
The point Ayn Rand was making by way of her character, Dr. Ferris, was that laws like the infamous Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and Mrs. O’Connor saw that crap coming down the pike, didn’t she?) make life in compliance with the law effectively impossible for the private citizen.
No matter what one does or doesn’t do, every minute of every day, you’re doing SOMETHING illegal, whether you know it or not.
I’ve heard the old joke about how women regard the men in their lives as offensive for simply being men. The old joke about getting punished for “BWM” - “breathing while male.”
Well, those who govern have much the same attitude toward the private citizen. We are to be considered law-breakers ab ovo, and those who govern proliferate their statutes - if not with the overt and acknowledged intention of so doing - to ensure that we very much ARE law-breakers.
We cannot avoid it.
But in addition to “guilt,” such activities on the part of the government thugs also breeds contempt.
The effort to “create a nation of law-breakers” has been made all through history, and all through history the result has been the destruction of social comity and the breakdown of good civil order.
Respect for the officers of government disappears when the officers of civil government are broadly perceived to be officious thugs instead of true public servants.
Stuck in my memory is one of Hank Ketcham’s one-panel “Dennis the Menace” cartoons from the ’50s.
A highway patrolman in riding breeches and boots (what the hell do motor cops have to do with costume suitable for riding hayburners?) is walking away from the Mitchell automobile, tucking his ticket book back into his pocket, while in the background Mr. Mitchell sits miserable at the wheel of the family car and Dennis leans out the backseat window, his face a mask of rage, shouting;
“STRUT, you big bully!”
From that moment in my childhood, I understood the nature of the police, and “Officer Friendly” lost me as a good little boy forever.
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Robert, pulling yet again from Ayn Rand:
“Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law.”
That’s society as a whole, both public and private sector.
Now, what defines individual rights and makes them necessary?
Let me pull yet again from her *The Virtue of Selfishness*:
“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action — which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
“The concept of a ‘right’ pertains only to action — specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
“Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive — of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
“The right to life is the source of all rights — and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
“Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.”
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I confess that I find Mrs. O’Connor’s fiction to be damn’ near unreadable. Her “good” characters - her protagonists - tend to be the kinds of people I would walk wide to avoid, and with whom I cannot really identify (and I delight in Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac as well as Heinlein’s Lazarus Long).
Her expostulatory prose, on the other hand, tends to be friggin’ masterful in many areas. The lady grinds through stuff with hammermill relentlessness.
If one sets aside her efforts to set a putatively “objective” case for her aesthetic preferences (she loathed, for example, men with mustaches and other facial hair, and where the hell did THAT come from?), the old bag provided an eloquent and readily appreciated body of work in philosophy, and is to this day hated by the card-carrying membership of the Philosophers’ Union for that crime.
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“A ‘right’ is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.”
What does that mean? Who does what? Unless you nail your definitions down to concrete actions then you get divergent interpretations of your definition, depending on whose ox is being gored.
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Robert - being deliberately obtuse, perhaps? - has apparently failed to read that longer quote from Rands *The Virtue of Selfishness*, and does not address it in his insistence upon a detailed discussion of “concrete actions.”
Frankly, when it comes to “whose ox is being gored,” I am beginning to take Robert either as a castrated bovine or as somebody who is determined malignantly upon the destruction of reasoned argument on this subject, almost certainly for ends detrimental to both intellectual integrity and social comity.
Robert, unless and until you work your way through those five expatiatory paragraphs of Mrs. O’Connor’s I’d quoted above and refute the points provided therein - in detail - you have no real interpretation (”divergent” or otherwise) to offer, and therefore to hell with you.
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Getting beyond my fury at Robert, I am moved yet again to examine the abstract - that’s “abstract,” not “concrete” - concept of individual rights.
Beyond the senselessness and arrant stupidity of any demand for nailing “…definitions down to concrete actions” (in other words seeking maliciously those hard cases that make bad laws in order to derail the consideration of principles devised to abstract from factual reality those guidances necessary to structure thought in the broad consideration of purposeful human action) there is an understanding among intellectually honest people that the exceptions which test (”prove”) any rule tend reliably to do little or nothing to vitiate the particular rule itself.
To put it in terms a viewer of *House* might understand, just because you come across a goddam zebra every now and then (and have to be prepared for it, maintaining “situational awareness”) doesn’t mean that most patients aren’t going to present with “horse” pathologies - the statistically common stuff - when you next hear hoofbeats.
I have to wonder just what is motivating Robert in his participation on this thread.
Given what can be seen of him, I do not believe that the citation of people who have given diligent thought to the abstract (that’s “abstract” again, not “concrete”) concept of individual rights will impact in any way at all upon Robert, who looks to have a solid prejudice against this concept.
I wonder what the hell he DOES use in lieu of a basis for moral conduct in the company of other human beings.
And therefore zweimal to hell with him.
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Robert, who said using the state to enforce my rights? My rights are enforced by fists and whatever weapons are in them. The state in an effort to legitimate itself pretends to the power to arbitrate disputes about conflicting rights and to protect my rights for me.
My problem isn’t someone not wanting me to pray outloud on his property, but trying to use force (his own or the state’s) to stop me from praying on my property, the property of people who have extended me permission to do so, or on unclaimed property.
Thank you Robert for making me haul out my unexamined assumptions and examine them.
Methinks Bob doth forget the consequneces of his actions. But perhaps, it’s just that he’s never even realized HE has rights, too (if only he knew who should enforce them for him!!) I don’t know. All I DO know about him is his tendency to go along, sounding fairly intelligent and moderately self-reliant. Then, he lets his inner authoritarian out and shows his true colors.
In comment 46 the gremlins stole a my between by and fists.
sorry about that.
@RD: I’ve read all of Rand’s books. I’m an individualist and not an authoritarian (as I’ve already said).
Maybe “concrete” was a poor choice of words. The word I’m looking for is “operational.” If I don’t see a definition that describes how something actually works, but instead (as is usually the case in libertarian circles) abstractions standing on abstractions (and so on, ad infinitum) then I kind of lose interest. That is because I’ve lived long enough to see that sufficient vagueness any political program can be justified. You see that in America, with “civil rights” and “right to schooling.” The German government in the 20th century and the Israeli government in the 21st, both claime(ed) a right to national survival, and employ(ed) similar means to pursue that claimed right. There’s the droit de sang (right of blood), the rule of law giving children the nationality of their parents. In feudal times, the lord of the manor supposedly had a “droit de seigneur.”
@Al: That’s what I was looking for: some context to the praying. So an operational definition of “right to pray” might be that you have a right to pray on your property, and (say) on some other consenting person’s property. By that definiotion you would be exceeding that right if you got up a high tower in your neighbourhood (three times a day!) and in a stentorian screech called for everyone else to come pray at your temple (when they want to sleep in).
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Robert, your denigration of abstract reasoning appears either to rise from a failure to appreciate - to understand and to accord due value to - the role of abstraction in the examination of concepts and the development of broad principles to guide purposeful human action, or you’re niggling about particulars in an effort to derail the discussion, to what purpose you have not yet defined.
The piling on of particulars - as infinitum - in pursuit of what you apparently consider “operational” guidance is incapable of getting anywhere. It is a sort of drunkard’s perambulation among a cluster of concretes, conscious of EVERYTHING as an exceptionality instead of seeking commonalities, denying the validity of generalizations reliably applicable across a broad range of eventualities.
In the sciences, that’s an abnegation of scientific method. In ethics, it’s the denial that a moral code applicable to rational beings is possible. In politics, it is evasion of the principle we call rule of law.
It denies the utility of both analytical and deductive reasoning.
Indeed, when you think about it, an attitude which demands particularities rather than principles is rather the opposite of “operational” in the military sense, which denotes an organizational level between “strategic” and “tactical.”
But at all three levels in military thought and action, abstract conceptual content is key. It’s not until you get to the level of “shoot that bastid over there with the RPG launcher first, and then blow away the guy following him with the reloads” that particularities are specifiable.
The battlefield - like everything else in real life, frankly, - is so fluid an environment that any effort to rigidly specify action on the basis of particularities tends to be a recipe for failure.
Hm. I wonder what your personal definition of “operational” happens to be. In the business world, for example, I get the impression that it is ordered BELOW “tactical” and pertains to day-to-day logistics and oversight.
But I have a poor opinion - on the basis of decades of experience with Pointy-Haired Boss types as well as examination of their theoretical literature - of people with baccalaureate degrees in Business Administration.
Very slippery term. “operational.” Damned odd that you should use it.
The purpose of abstract conceptualization is to gain advantages in terms of flexibility, reliability, and capability in the evaluation and address of phenomena in the real world, and to do so in a manner which makes the methods of analysis and action understandable across a broad range of reasoning human beings.
Without it, for example, the coordination required for a division-of-labor economy at even the most primitive level is impossible. Alpha, the bowyer, doesn’t know what kind of projectile weapons the hunters in his clan want or need. Or what his available materials best permit him to make. Beta, the fletcher, wouldn’t know what kinds of arrows best suit the hunters’ needs when they take up whatever bows Alpha can make for them. Gamma, the lead hunter, doesn’t know what kind of game he should (and could) take with the available tools, and so forth.
Your point, Robert, about the agents of civil government refers to these lying sons-of-unnamed-fathers’ reliable tendencies to EVADE accurate and intellectually honest conceptualization in order to perpetrate frauds and other violences upon their victims. What’s the solution to that problem?
Apart from simply blowing them away whenever they’re caught doing so (pour encourager les autres as well as the satisfaction of skimming the crud off the shallow end of the gene pool), the best course of action is clearly to articulate concepts which are in accord with factual reality and hold the weaseling bastiches to conduct compliant with said concepts.
The problem isn’t “vagueness” as the result of any failure of honest effort in reasoning but rather a malignant striving on the part of criminal actors to employ the machinery of civil government in attacks upon the individual rights of other people in civil society.
This is one of the reasons why the denial of the validity of individual rights - as a concept - is one of the prime “operational” objectives of the authoritarian.
And why, Robert, you are going to be perceived as an authoritarian until you prove otherwise, your protestations of “individualist” status notwithstanding.
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If people are praying too loud wear earplugs.
Richard- while exceedingly wordy, dead on the money. He reminds me of those Republicans who claim to be Libertarians after they lose an election- NO CLUE what a Libertarian is, but sure they are Republicans, just like him.
Al- if someone set up a mosque in my neighborhood, then screeched 5 times a day calling the faithful to prayer, their loudspeakers would soon suffer lead poisoning (or the Imam). I WOULD NOT don earplugs!! Sorry, but it is a fact on that one. As Neil once said (in _The Probability Broach_, I think) “Some surly curmudgeon would demand you keep your photons off his property.” Weeellll, same to the decibels from that excercise of religion. Practice what you want, but do not try to force ME to listen to the calls to worship.
@ RD: I’m not denigrating abstract reasoning. I did physics and maths (no concrete-bound muscle mystic, am I) on my way to being an engineer. I am however pragmatic and unwilling to engage in abstract reasoning when I feel that it is a mere parlour game. It is a mere parlour game if MOST PEOPLE CAN’T DO IT AND WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A POLITICAL PROGRAM.
Sorry about the stentorian capital letters.
Hence the interest in operational definitions. How does it work. That’s what I like about the ZAP: It is self-contained and I don’t need to ask for further clarification.
Neale, I’ll disregard the insults. I figure that the truth can withstand merciless cross-examination. Would you rather sit around feeling good in a mutual agreement society?
Robert- they were not intended as insults, merely a statement of fact- you strike me as one of the Republicans I spoke of. I don’t claim you are one, merely that your rhetoric reminds me of them. I may be wrog as to your political affiliations, but the fact is that you remind me of one. As to a mutual agreement society, since I have expressed my points of disagrement with the LP and our host here on numerous occasions, that comparison holds no water. (In point of fact, I have spent many an hour in Neil’s living room in the early nineties disagreeing vehemently on many points.)
As to “It is a mere parlour game if MOST PEOPLE CAN’T DO IT AND WE’RE TALKING ABOUT A POLITICAL PROGRAM”, there is NO ONE who can’t do it, there are only people without the cojones to do it. There is NEVER a guarantee that you will succeed in any endeavor, merely that you have the right to try (and sometimes, to fail).
For years i’ve put up with railroads, planes , freeway traffic, boomboxes, church bells, matachines, and even bagpipers marching through the streets. Mullahs calling to prayer is just one more noise.
Re: enforceability of rights: there are reasons why one of the things the NRA gets right is calling the right to keep and bear arms the first right.
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Neale, Robert is a Brit (or Brit-zone-ish). Note the spelling of “parlour” and the remark “I did physics and maths.”
No American - except for the most pretentiously Anglophilic, or one pretending to be from Perfidious Albion - would speak or write that way. We use “math” as short for “mathematics,” not “maths,” and we _study_ math, or _take_ math, or even _major_ or _minor_ in math (wouldja believe that even though I was a pure science pre-med grunt - in a Jesuit college - I minor’d in philosophy and theology?).
Only a Brit would say “I did physics and maths.”
And, yeah, I get wordy. I should pull up the precise quote at this point (because I know someone else with a lot more authority than mine had addressed this issue), but it’s enough to note the following:
When error - or deliberate deceit - prevails, it is necessary not only to offer sound reasoning in its stead but to make plain the fact that what you’re countering is, in fact and inescapably, either error or malicious fraud.
And those people hewing to that fallacy or fraud - be it ever so beloved and comfortable and reassuring to them - have got to be convinced that it’s worthless and pernicious and sets them up to get their asses handed to them.
Witness “government-as-Santa-Claus” and the catastrophic decompensations threatening the Eurozone. Those marching morons in the streets of Athens REALLY want to believe that they can keep on sucking at the government teat, and they’d rather kill than accept what we all know is hard and inescapable reality.
Hm. Gives me to remember the first time I heard that old saw about how “For any genuinely innovative measure to achieve acceptance in medicine, an entire generation of doctors must die.”
Right then, right there, I started looking around the room at the guys who headed departments, picking out the invested and officious obstructionists I figured were better off dead.
Clearing away the crap is damned difficult, but it must be done. And it must be done for very much the same reason that a surgeon addressing a mangled traumatic wound has to be able to identify and debride devitalized tissue before he can close the goddam wound.
Debridement ALWAYS takes longer than the primary wound closure, and it’s by far the more exacting job.
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Robert, if you’re stuck into an undergraduate or graduate degree program in engineering, you’re almost certainly too goddam young and inexperienced to be held to a hard accounting of your intellectual capacity. You ain’t salted yet, and therefore you’re still to be considered a fumbling incompetent, groping at effective thought and not quite getting it yet.
That’s not an insult. It’s an allowance.
Not to say, of course, that you’re not expected to clear away the bullsh!t and reason effectively to the extent that you CAN reason. Just as a preceptor allows medical students to fumble and grope and chase false trails but still imparts guidance designed to help them improve their clinical acuity, us older guys here have an obligation - whether you like it or not - to correct you when you go merrily down your own personal paths to blunder.
Take, for example your pride in being “pragmatic and unwilling to engage in abstract reasoning” because you think abstract reasoning to be ineffective.
No more perfect mark of intellectual immaturity can be imagined. You’re not looking - impatiently - to cut away the deadwood and get to something immediately effective. You can’t really tell the deadwood from the good stuff. You’re trying to practice bonsai with a riding mower.
Sh!t. You wouldn’t know the utility of abstract reasoning if it took physical form, stumped up to you on all four legs, and bit you bloodily in the crotch.
You might get it eventually, but you sure as hell haven’t gotten it yet.
Gives me to delight in your claim to be thoroughly read in Mrs. O’Connor’s corpus and still use the word “pragmatic” as if you should be admired for being “pragmatic.”
Ain’t gonna happen, mac.
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“Epistemologically, their dogmatic agnosticism holds, as an absolute, that a principle is false because it is a principle — that conceptual integration (i.e., thinking) is impractical or ’simplistic’ — that an idea which is clear and simple is necessarily ‘extreme and unworkable.’ Along with Kant, their philosophic forefather, the pragmatists claim, in effect: ‘If you perceive it, it cannot be real,’ and: ‘If you conceive of it, it cannot be true.’
“What, then, is left to man? The sensation, the wish, the whim, the range and the concrete of the moment. Since no solution to any problem is possible, anyone’s suggestion, guess or edict is as valid as anyone else’s — provided it is narrow enough.
“To give you an example: if a building were threatened with collapse and you declared that the crumbling foundation has to be rebuilt, a pragmatist would answer that your solution is too abstract, extreme, unprovable, and that immediate priority must be given to the need of putting ornaments on the balcony railings, because it would make the tenants feel better.
“There was a time when a man would not utter arguments of this sort, for fear of being rightly considered a fool. Today, Pragmatism has not merely given him permission to do it and liberated him from the necessity of thought, but has elevated his mental default into an intellectual virtue, has given him the right to dismiss thinkers (or construction engineers) as naive, and has endowed him with that typically modern quality: the arrogance of the concrete-bound, who takes pride in not seeing the forest fire, or the forest, or the trees, while he is studying one inch of bark on a rotted tree stump.”
– Ayn Rand, “How to Read (and Not to Write)” (from The Ayn Rand Letter, 1971-76)
Rich, that comment was NOT an indictment, but a laughing tribute to a man I have come to respect for his erudite postings. I was having fun with just how perfectly you stomped him without ever losing the “It’s not that your an idiot it’s just that you have no concept of how to think” tone.
@RD I would like to draw upon your intellectual powers by asking what you are doing, or can suggest that one can do, to live in a freer world. Keep in mind that my tiny, pragmatic mind can’t really grasp the higher realms of abstraction that you bask in. However, I would be most grateful for some “tips” on the subject of living free.
All,
I want to make several points here. My major malfunction with “Libertarian Ideals” as expressed (poorly most of the time) here and elsewhere is that some of you want it both ways. You want to be secure in your home and person and yet none of you really want to take responsibility for your own security. You are willing to accept heightened security at the expense of personal liberty. As the great man once said “you deserve neither”.
Point the First:
“Soldiers break things and kill people.” Yup that’s what we do. However, this is both a gross oversimplification and a profound distortion of the reality of combat operations and operators.
Soldiers operate under the purview of National Command Authority. That’s Obama these days.
How’s that working for ya?
I spent several years in covert operations in central and south America. Our mandate was to keep communist incursions into southern Mexico and off our borders. This policy was tangential to the Iran Contra operation which eventually ended our operations south of the border.
The current situation along the border rose from, and is the consequence of, discontinuing those operations.
Thousands have died and thousands more will die before it ends. The barbarians are at the gate and no one is manning the ramparts.
Point the Second:
In the US, Police officers as peace keepers is a misnomer. Law Enforcement is another example of oversimplification. A police officers first duty is to act on information related to violation
of the law within his or her jurisdiction. The second is to apprehend criminals and document in support of the law violated and to protect the rights of the accused.
Protecting the lives and property of the citizens within their jurisdiction is a tertiary consideration. Police have no mandate to protect you.
Point the Third:
Those of you that have read “Probability Broach” or the “American Zone” El Neil more than adequately depicts the role of “Peace Officers” as information collectors and arbitrators to
make sure that the rights of all parties at conflict are protected. The injured are cared for and the dead are buried and the street or sidwalks get hosed down. The primary responsibility for self defense lies with the individual.
Conclusions?
When I say generally that it seems that y’all want it both ways, the simple fact is if you want security but aren’t willing to get your pinkies dirty you deserve what you get. Police officers
aren’t Soldiers and Soldiers aren’t Police Officers. And yet our leaders want them to be both or either and then bitch about the consequences. What you need to remember is that our Soldiers and Police Officers are typically patriotic Americans with a profound sense of responsibility. Duty, Honor, Country means something to me and my brothers and sisters at arms. It has become increasingly disturbing to me that otherwise rational, intelligent people look at Law Enforcement as the problem. I vociferously disagree. Law Enforcement personnel don’t write the laws or make policy, the voters and lawmakers do. That’s You and I folks!
If you don’t want civilian law enforcement to be militarised then get a law passed to make that change. If you don’t want troops in your city then you’ll have to give civilian LEO’s more
latitude. You can’t have it both ways.
The Second Amendment was designed do that in the event of societal breakdown, emergency or disaster, civilians could take up arms to restore order or repel invaders. Now it seems that a
vocal minority screams bloody murder whenever the feel threatened by armed citizens in their midst.
Come to my city and try to ride public transportation or go for a walk in the evening with your other half without being accosted by drug addicts selling, buying or panhandling to
get their next fix. All of this shit comes across either our border to the south or the border to the north.
Want to solve the problem? Vote to End the Drug War, legalize drugs, remove the profit motive and treat chronic users from the standpoint of a public health policy of remediation, education and diversion. I can tell you right now there is too much money involved to make that happen. I know for a fact that government has a vested interest in keeping this drug war going to keep people in fear. The fastest growing segments of our economy is in private prisons, rehab centers and government employees to maintain the fiction that this policy works and is the only answer.
For the last 60 years government has grown to a bloated monster that is moments from collapse.
A majority of Americans are too fucking lazy or too underwater financially to be bothered. Monday (6/7/2010)the USG announced that the National debt had reached parity with the GDP. We are faced with a collapse of Biblical proportion and yet the denial continues. All people seem to do is contribute to the heat death of the universe by talking this shit to death rather than actually doing anything about it. If you really want contribute meaningfully to your own security and the stability of your community. Arm yourselves, get training, educate yourselves about the law. Ignorance of law is no excuse. Every courthouse in the land has a public law library and very helpful clerks.
Participate! Exercise your right to vote, serve on juries and know how to be an effective juror.
Anarchy is an answer to a question that few know how to ask let alone understand how to properly articulate. El Neil is one of the few that can. I’ve seen a working Anarchy in eastern Europe in the ’90s. Thousands died before stability was re-established. Sarejevo used to be one of the most beautiful cities on earth.
You don’t know what you wish for.
Let this bullshit continue at your peril.
Shotgun Wedding at large
So in the end it all comes back to the expectations put on the police by the political leadership and public.
Dave- you have it totally wrong. We Libertarians DO NOT want a strong army running around the world, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. We DO NOT want police to “protect” us out of our rights. What we want is simple. The right to defend ourselves, wherever and whenever we need to, without let or hindrance. PERIOD. When and if our country is ever invaded, we will cheerfully deny the government the right to raise a huge army, tax the hell out of the rest of us to pay for it, and let Washington think again that it is our boss instead of the other way around. We will, instead, put down our bookkeeping, calaulators, pipewrenches, torches, turn off the tractor, or cease and desist doing whatever we were doing, pull our personally owned weapon out of the holster, off the gun rack, or remove it from the closet (or un-sling it), and we will go forth, defend our country, then GO BACK TO WORK!!
WE aren’t the ones who put Obama in office, WE aren’t the ones supporting raised taxes, WE aren’t the ones supporting the concept of a THREE MILLION MAN standing military force, WE aren’t the ones responsible for the mess we are in now. WE ARE, however, the ones fighting to teach the rest of America what to do to end these abominations. THAT is what being a Libertarian means. And if it means getting our pinkies, or our entire bodies dirty (or even dead) we will continue to work for the day when these things will happen.
Dave, you may not be aware that for the past decade there has been an effort by those who think the Republican party has sold out (or failed to sell out) to the democrats to preempt the Libertarian movement. They have already stolen control of the Libertarian Party, for a little while.
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Robert, I’m a physician. Doctors - if they’re any goddam good at all - educate. Patients (and their lay caregivers) have to take care of themselves, and though diagnosis and the selection of treatment are important, the patient (and/or the caregiver) carry out day-to-day management of whatever disease afflicts them.
Same thing with our screwed-unto-death political situation. Just as I cannot literally sit on the vast majority of people and force-feed them their meds (we’re not discussing psychiatric incapacitation such that the patient is determined to be an immediate risk to himself or to others, are we?) , I can’t walk each and every American through his life to tell him what actions to take in the course of his participation in our republic.
Just as with patients, really, I try to impart an appreciation of the abstract concepts which most reliably enable sound decision-making.
Not the pragmatic particulars, but the abstract guidelines.
You’ll see the same thing from Mr. Smith on this Web log and elsewhere.
Particular cases - like, for example, the obliterating insanity of Obamacare - are useful as elements to demonstrate the validity of the abstract concepts, just as we use case histories in medicine and surgery to educate students and each other in disease management.
If you want to take effective action “to live in a freer world,” you must persuade other people to see the value of life in a free society, and the necessity for a government that functions not to violate but to retaliate against the violation of individual human beings’ rights to their lives, their liberties, and their property.
That requires you to get a grasp of abstract concepts providing (pace Mrs. O’Connor) metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and political support both for the utility and necessity of a society and economy free of government violence against those individual rights.
Your “tiny, pragmatic mind” renders you incapable of communicating ideas to other human beings because - and I’d think by now an engineer would’ve figured this out - without congruity in standards of assessment, nobody you’re going to try to live with in this “freer world” of yours is going to understand you or cooperate with you.
And standards are (whether you like it or not) the products of abstract reasoning, and NOT pragmatic in any way at all.
When I speak with professional colleagues on political subjects, I find it easy to approach them by appealing to the same rigorous reasoning methods they apply to the assessment and management of patients’ presenting with medical disorders.
Habits required to effectively confront hard reality seem seldom to be called into use when considering social and political problems, almost certainly because doctors - like just about everybody else in Western society - spend their lives being taught that civil government is “different” in some bamboozle-clouded way, and cannot be approached with the tools of dispassionate reason.
This is, of course, bullshit.
Maybe you should try to apply some of the intellectual rigor you’re supposed to be learning in your engineering studies to your appreciation of politics and the task of effecting change upon a system of social organization malignantly disordered by politicians and bureaucrats bent upon your pillage and enslavement as well as the plunder and serfdom of all around you.
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@RD: Thank you. You confirmed my suspicions: you’re no more than a windbag.
To present a question and then complain that the person who took the time to answer in detail is a windback is cheap and puerile.
So how much police authority do you submit to, how regularly, and why?
An open message to Robert, and authoritarians of any stripe who come here in the future- you are welcome to come and discuss yopics. You are welcome to listen and lear, listen and not learn, or listen and vehemently disagree. But once you resort to childish namecalling, you are no longer worthy of a reply.
Now, specifically to Robert- I had hoped you’d learned to at least fake decent behavior after your stint of deletions and address changes (NO, Bob, we aren’t the idiots you thought we are, we knew you were back. But as long as you acted civilized, we tried to treat you nicely). But today, you opened your ass, inserted your head, and displayed your complete lack of politeness, especially when in another person’s house. So, for me, insulting friends of mine, especially when they are merely answering a question YOU asked, renders you irrelevant. If those words are too big for you, I’ll make it simple. FUCK YOU! I, for one, will probably not waste my time talking to you again.
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Neale, can it be taken that this “Robert” specimen (who has claimed to be “on [his] way to being an engineer.” and therefore either an undergraduate or graduate student of callow years) had been lying about that?
I had taken him for a youngster, with all the inexperience, cockiness, and false self-confidence of someone in the late second or early third decade of life, and made allowances accordingly.
Still, unless Mr. Smith determines otherwise (it’s his Web log, after all), the effort isn’t wasted.
It helps to bear in mind that campaign trail confrontation between our Mombasa Messiah and “Joe the Plumber,” in which the conventions of a political “poverty pimp” met the common sense of John Q. Lunchbucket, a person who understands what is required to operate a small business in an increasingly hostile environment of government-as-pillage.
How many people who participate in the political process - even if only to the extent of voting - filter the noises of political candidates and other governmentally inclined animals through the same skeptical regard they’d apply to the claims of a vacuum cleaner salesman?
Tom Paine wasn’t wrong in titling his 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense.” It seems to me that even if one is not conscious of the philosophical nuts and bolts under the hood of the reasoning process, the application of methods derived from even half-successful dealings with the hard realities of daily life ought to enable people to spot the bullshit of authoritarianism and reject it.
I have generally found that people trained and practicing as engineers tend toward political conservatism - though not the religious traditionalism of today’s partisans on the right - simply because the habits of thought they must professionally adopt are (ceteris paribus) incompatible with getting suckered by people who promise what simply cannot be delivered.
If “Robert” is, indeed, an engineering student, I have to wonder about the value of the engineering curriculum he’s undergoing, and the instructors malpracticing upon him and his classmates.
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Perhaps it is “social engineering” he studies.
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Neale, to the extent that I’m capable of honesty (I’m a married man, and the habits of dissimulation are required for survival as such), I honestly don’t understand how anybody can even FAKE a pretense of presentation as an “individualist” - the way this “Robert” critter tried to sell himself in comment 49, above - while writing “In a free society there are no rights” (comment 40).
Getting back to Mr. Smith’s request for thought “…on the proper place for ‘law enforcement’ in a free society,” and his desire that we consider the question: “…can ex-soldiers operate safely in a home environment where, increasingly, everyone is armed, and the Constitution is of increasing relevance every day as a popular revolt against socialism continues?”
All of us have known men (and it’s effectively entirely men) who have had combat experience and returned to civilian life. The majority - of course - are not law-enforcement officers, but rather private citizens living as such.
How do such men respond to situations in which “everyone is armed” and the people around them are acutely conscious of the Constitution and its relevance to the operations of civil governance?
The policeman and the sheriff’s deputy (I do not hold that there’s a significant distinction to be made between them despite the fact that a county sheriff holds an elective office) are not well-educated in the limitations imposed by the U.S. Constitution upon the actions of government agents.
They’re far more sensitive to the priorities of their superiors, who can and do make the life of a “peace officer” pure hell.
A combat-experienced military veteran might actually bring to the job of law enforcement a better understanding of the circumstances under which procedural adherence is not only foolish and dangerous but also contrary to the preservation of civil rights, and he will more readily “bend the rules” in favor of common sense and the plainest of common decency.
This can be a bad thing, too, however.
Someone who has seen an enemy deliberately target a Medic or Corpsman understands only too damned well that such niceties as the Rules of War are not well-honored in reality. How is such a person to think and behave when obliged to decide between the enforcement of the Constitution and the perception that he must violate the constraints of government under the rule of law in order to get done what he thinks is his job?
Another thing that ought to be taken into consideration is the fact that the combat soldier is outnumbered (by something more than ten to one) by non-combat personnel in the Army, and is throughout his military service appreciative of the covert and overt hostility of the “REMF” types for the people on the sharp and shitty end of the proverbial stick.
This fosters an attitude of hostility toward outsiders very similar to what is found prevalent among cops. Is the combat veteran therefore more likely to be collusively participant in the cover-up of criminal violations of private citizens’ civil rights and other transgressions against the Constitution?
If somebody hasn’t yet done the research on this, I think there’s a paper - hell, a dissertation - in this.
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@Al Perez & Neale (STRW),
Guys, the way our “2 party” system works is that the third party or parties do nothing but dilute the electorate. That being said YES YOU DID contribute to the current situation regarding the current varmint in the Casa De Blanco. Ripping the Republicrats for Libertarian non performance is kinda lame. Really all you’re doing is continuing to use that same excuse and it really makes Libertarians look silly. Silly won’t build voter confidence. If you can’t get a candidate on the ballot where it matters all you’re doing is spinning your wheels. The GOP ain’t what it used to be for sure, but running against the Second party in a Two party system means that Libertarians will ALWAYS lose unless you can impart libertarian ideals within a candidate of either of the TWO parties. All of the Fiction I’ve read by libertarian authors has their candidate winning by some fluke of probability, procedural errors, or some-such weirdness. So barring a chronosynclasticinfundibulum of galactic scale It doesn’t seem likely that you’ll find a No-load of sufficient stature to be elected the first Libertarian President, let alone a majority in the House and Senate. IT WON’T HAPPEN in our lifetimes. Wishful thinking about a utopic and benevolent anarchy taking hold on this mud-ball is fun to read about but I’m not gonna hold my breath.
Neale, I’m sorry mate, but I’m not wrong. Individual Libertarians may not want all of the things you list but they are getting them anyway. This is because by the very nature of the current flock of “InDuhViduals”, we are ALL getting a shitload of too much government. This has occurred because rather than working within the system you are trying to buck it. Rather than supporting the GOP you voted against it and Obama is in the Casa de Blanco. It’s not all libertarians fault there are other little furry critters out there too. The Tea Party is making inroads in at least winning the hearts and minds of the majority of taxpayers out here in the real world. However I don’t think they have the horsepower to go the distance and put a candidate in the WH or a plurality in the House or Senate.
The Next President will be most likely from the GOP and female.
Libertarians really miss out on capturing large portion of the Electorate by not encouraging women to participate in the discussion. All the “libertarian” forums seem to be inhabited by angry, bitter, old loner misogynists like me. While it engenders comfort for me and my bros. It makes my woman angry and shrill.
I really want what all of you are shouting for and about. Believe it. It ain’t happening as long as Libertarianism continues to be marginalized so easily. It really comes down to the level belief and commitment of the people wanting change. I don’t think that most of you really have any clue beyond the vague idealization of a utopic society of free people. Subconsciously anyway. It’s still the germ of an idea, not a real concrete Strategy supported by flexible Tactics to achieve the goal of a true Libertarian ideals based society. We were closer to realizing it in 1789 than we are now. Y’all want it! I am convinced of that. You just don’t have a compelling enough argument for the majority of Americans to swallow after being lied to by the PTB for 230 odd years.
In order to gain Enlightenment, you must give up Everything…. Siddharta Gautama Buddha
Well, Dave, I guess we just look at life a little differently. Read this, and you’ll see where I come from.
There is NO middle ground. There is only right and wrong. It is wrong to deny homosexuals basic human rights. It is wrong to deny immigrants the ability to improve their lives. It is wrong to deny Americans their Constitutional rights, no matter the excuse. This includes, but is not limited to, the 1st,2nd,4th, &5th Amendments. Not even in an attempt to provide “Security”. It is wrong for the government to deny people the right engage in ANY sexual activity that does not harm others (Meaning rape and child molesting, ONLY may be punishable by law). See, no middle ground. It is merely taking what is right, and applying it across the FALSE lines defined by the 2 party system.
One of Rush Limbaugh’s favorite sayings is that moderates cannot make up their minds, and that IS true. But he also says that no one who is not either Republican or Democrat can stand FOR anything. Totally wrong. I have a very specific series of positions, and NONE of them are mutually exclusive to each other. But I am NOT a moderate. Some are on the traditional “Right” side of the spectrum, and some on the “Left” side. This DOES NOT mean I can’t decide what to do, it means I go strictly by right and wrong, Constitutional or un-Constitutional, and finally, if both fail me, then by my personal compass. God does not decide for me, as I doubt he exists. I will not even force my views on topics not covered by the Constitution on others. I WILL make them known, defend them vigorously, and make my reasons for it known, but I will NEVER try to set them down in laws, as I oppose 90+% of the laws on the books, and hate the thought of making even more!
An example of each is as follows:
Abortion- I oppose it because I can’t PROVE to myself that it isn’t murder. While a woman owns her body, the baby owns IT’S body, even if that body is still in the mother’s body. So, except to save the mother’s life, and IMMEDIATELY following an incident of rape or incest, I oppose abortion. Prove the existence of a soul, or that the baby will re-incarnate, and my objections will go away. BUT, I oppose laws against it, because it is only my belief, not a fact. And, abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, so my personal compass is the only thing I have to use.
Gun control, on the other hand, is a total violation of the 2nd Amendment. Repeatedly, the Supreme Court has upheld that the phrase “The People” means each and every individual person. And the 2nd Amendment says “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. That ends it.
Now, as everybody with intellectual honesty will admit that no matter which party they belong to, there is SOMETHING they don’t agree with, unless they wrote the platform themselves. I am a registered Libertarian, and have been since 1988 or 89. I disagree with only ONE plank. As I said, I oppose abortion, but my party doesn’t. It is my only break with it. I could not be a Republican OR Democrat, they each support far too many things things I can’t accept for me to be able to go along with them. IF all parties other than these two were to be eliminated, then I would join the Republicans, and work very hard to change the platform to my standards. And I would never vote a party line with either of them, as I would always vote for the candidate that supported the Constitution the best. So to all you idiots who keep insisting that to oppose your side in EVERYTHING automatically makes someone a member of the other major party, SHUT UP AND THINK IT OUT NEXT TIME!!!
I wrote this for Newsvine on MSN, so do not think that it is a direct attack on you. The title was “Democrats and Republicans, Rush is Wrog, and So Are You!!” But my point is valid regarding third parties and the BS line that they mean nothing. It is the same reason that your assertion that I am responsible for the idiot currently occupying “Casa da Blanco” is totally wrong.
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt Neale (STRW). El Rushbo has an interesting way of spinning people up that really doesn’t add anything to the conversation. You and I are in complete agreement as far as the discussion of right and wrong goes. Without getting bogged down in the minutiae of individual party platforms. Lets just agree that politics is the art of getting a majority of people to accept the will of the loudest minority. Rush takes an absolutist view. “My way or the highway”. I find that offensive. Rush is a loudmouth hypocrite at best. He is invariably right all the time because he belabors the obvious and assumes ignorance of the listener to be vast.
Your first example:
” It is wrong to deny homosexuals basic human rights.”
Homosexuals aren’t entitled to more rights because they are at odds with what society considers “NORMAL” it’s that simple.
What a person does in the privacy of the bedroom with other consenting adults is their business as long as no one is being deprived of their basic right to life liberty etc. Society has deemed marriage to be between a man and a woman for the purposes of procreation and mutual support of children at issue from the marriage. If denying homosexuals same sex “marriage” is deemed denying them basic human rights that won’t hold water with christians and other “moralists”. It’s that pesky majority rule thing. I know this will piss you off but homosexuality is considered a perversion in most of the world. The fact that homosexuality is tolerated and even venerated in this country gives lie to the argument that homosexuals as a minority are somehow being deprived. Personally I find them harmless at the very least, entertaining in the middle ground, and at worst a potential public health risk. But as a group they are NOT entitled to more rights than they already enjoy.
Second point you try to make ” It is wrong to deny immigrants the ability to improve their lives.”
LEGAL immigrants yes! ILLEGAL immigrants NO! Illegals are a drain on finite community resources within the legal system of the US. Arizona’s immigration law is near VERBATIM in it’s composition to Mexico’s immigration law. Go read it!
The rest of your argument regarding our eroding “rights”. I am in complete agreement with you on the causal aspects of our dying Republic. It is A REPUBLIC, not a democracy of the mob. This is a country based on the rule of law, not majority rule as the Democrats would have us believe. If you don’t like a law get it changed within the system. Each of us has that right. We have a franchise. VOTE! If you don’t vote you have no voice. If you don’t vote you have no right to complain when your fellow citizens have spoken.
Like you pointed out I also wrote this for general distribution. If you are taking this personally you might want to examine your convictions a little closer and more honestly. We have a 2 party system. If you want to have a 3 or 4 party system have the law changed by holding your reprehensibles responsible for making the changes and voting for it.
Denny Smith (R. OR) really hates it when I corner him in an elevator. These people work for US. They are not allowed to evade the electorate. If they do they get fired on election day.
I don’t take any of this shit personally and I always get a chuckle when people get defensive about their malformed political beliefs. I’m sorry you disagree with my holding “moderates” responsible for taking the middle ground.
You as an individual are not responsible for Obama being in the White house Neale. But as a group you are in my mind, ABSOLUTELY responsible for him being there. That won’t change until January 22nd, 2013 when we inaugurate a REPUBLICAN president that believes in the rule of law that founded this nation.
As long as independents, so called libertarians, and all the other huckleberry’s out there continue to winge on about how unfair it all is without any thought to actually how to go about making the changes they want, nothing will change. So Neale, from that standpoint you and those like you will continue to be at very least part of the problem rather than any real solution.
Well, Dave, if it is a Republican you want, you’ll probably get one. But my point is simple- Voting for the lesser of two evils is STILL A VOTE FOR EVIL! I’d rather go down fighting for the correct side rather than “win” with a crappy choice who violates my principles in a different way than Obama does. If you aren’t willing to fight for what you believe in, then you really aren’t worth much (you being generic here). You seem willing to fight for a Republican ascendancy. I’m willing to fight for an end to BOTH the current major parties. After all, there were different major parties over the decades, and will be again. Maybe this time we’ll get at least ONE party that actually follows the Constitution. Stranger things have been known to happen.
Go negative early, that’s a moderate choice for sure. Evil is a subjective observation. In this instance I’m not “fighting” for anything, I’m sharing an observation of the facts as they exist.
On a Apples to Apples basis Neale (STRW) can you explain to me how your minority view of voting to lose is less evil than allowing the obviously anti freedom Democrats/Quisling Republicans to win? Why can’t my idea of putting Libertarian minded Republicans in a position to win, work? Your idea to vote for the lesser of two evils and lose hasn’t worked in the last 35 years since the Libertarian Party first appeared in a coherent form. I seem to recall that doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result was the definition of insanity.
Seriously Mr. Osborne, take some time to reflect on that. Find a way to separate your emotions from the goal. You’re not making too much sense. Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
This is an excellent example of that old bumper sticker.
Dave- I’m not fighting to lose, I’m refusing to help the wrong people win. IF a Republican candidate were to run on a STRONG libertarian platform, I would support him/her if the LP were running another idiot like we did this past cycle. And of course I try to educate both Democrat and Republican candidates and voters of the Libertarian ideals in the hopes they will see the light. But, for example, while I thought Palin was an interesting person, NONE of the four choices we had in the election (Obama,Biden and McCain,Palin) were different enough from the same old same old to make it worth voting for them. IF Palin was the headline, and McCain the VP, I might have voted her way. At least she was pro-gun. But any more, voting the lesser of two evils doesn’t cut it for me anymore.
I tend to look at it this way. IF 100 million people vote, nationwide, and the winner gets 40%, the loser gets 37%, and third party candidates get the remaining 23%, then MAYBE the losing candidate might think about going a little more Libertarian next time. Or the winner might fear that close a margin, and do the same. Or, the American people might wake up and realize there are more choices than just a “D” or “R” after a candidates name, and try to learn a little more about the third parties. IF you cannot appreciate that mentality, that’s okay. But I hope that BOTH parties keep up the idiocies they have pushed, pissing off the people more and more every year, until enough people say “Fuck it, Libertarian CAN’T be any worse than Bush and Obama were. And at least they aren’t the same parties that put us where we are now!”
Neale(STRW),
Either you’re being deliberately obtuse or you are so emotionally invested in your position that you don’t realize how really dumb it sounds. Rather than apply a tactic that will allow you to win you’d rather continue to lose. Your choices are:
1. continue the way you are and always be on the losing side
2. take over the party of Lincoln by elevating people with Libertarian Ideals to positions in the GOP
3. change the election laws to allow open primaries
4. #2 & #3 and win control of the system and start engendering real changes.
You’re bogged down in the personality spins of the last election rather than looking forward and searching out real leaders with the agenda you need and want and the horsepower to get the job done. You sound desperate to get me to understand your perspective. I understand it and reject it completely as being ineffective as has been proven time and again.
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“Neale (STFU) said”:
“But I hope that BOTH parties keep up the idiocies they have pushed, pissing off the people more and more every year, until enough people say “Fuck it, Libertarian CAN’T be any worse than Bush and Obama were. And at least they aren’t the same parties that put us where we are now!””
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That’s pretty weak politically. And precisely why Libertarians are so easily marginalized.
Cutting off one’s nose to spite ones face is not a winning strategy. You do what you want. I want to win.
Let’s express the question slightly differently:
Given the character of their background and what the tenets of their religion have called upon them to do, should avowed Muslims be disqualified for later employment as police officers?
Given the character of their cultural background and the high level of violence perpetrated by them, should urban blacks be disqualified for later employment as police officers?
I could see violent criminal behavior disqualifying an individual from a career in law enforcement, but if military service is lawful (and you don’t indicate that it would not be) I don’t understand how you can justify excluding a _class_ of people from potential employment based solely on their last job.
Decisions as to the employability of any given _individual_, however, should be made after due diligence in the hiring process, and the decision-makers should share accountability for any mistakes made.
This would be consistent with a libertarian focus on individual rights and personal accountability without sliding into the laziness of group identification / minority politics.
No, there are no such things as rights. If anyone believes otherwise then offer a reasoned argument proving their existence. I haven’t seen such an argument from RD, particularly. I focus attention on him because he claims that another person cannot think while at the same time presenting no logical argument. If you dissect his lengthy messages you find that they consist entirely of quotes from eminent writers, striking of poses, and attitude. Which only proves only that he has a rec ording mechanism between his ears but not a thinking mechanism. Picture the nude emperor berating someone for being poorly dressed and you get the idea.
No, Neale, I haven’t been here before, and I wonder if you could please quote where I supposedly indicated I was “authoritarian.”
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Okay, Robert. If you’re not an authoritarian, you’re a fucking idiot.
And by “idiot” I mean a person perversely averse to abstract reasoning. Kinda barely human, if you get the significance of that appreciation, because abstract reasoning is really the only thing that differentiates H. sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom.
Damned funny, you are. Here you are, using language - the principal symbol set for abstract reasoning - on the Internet to deny the existence of an abstract concept (individual rights) while refusing to acknowledge the validity of any argument supporting said concept.
Look, asswipe (I feel I know you well enough to use your proper name), if you claim to be familiar with the works of Ayn Rand, you know - or should know - her full-monty discussion of individual rights and how she develops the argument that such negative rights derive from the nature of the human animal as a critter which survives by dint of his ability to reason.
As in abstract conceptualization.
Abstract concepts are not concretes. That should be obvious, but you’re an asswipe, and impervious to the obvious, ain’tcha?
Abstract concepts are tools of thought. Employing them can cause concrete elements to come into being. That computer you’re jerking off in front of, for example. That’s a concrete manifestation of abstract concepts developed through reasoned thought.
Now, abstract concepts tend to guide purposeful human action. Not much beyond an infant’s rooting reflex or the urge to copulate ISN’T guided by reasoning, by way of abstract conceptualization.
That Vaseline you’re using for jerking off, right now, for example. Jellied petrolatum had to be deliberately invented by Robert Chesebrough (probably why you picked “Robert” as your ekename on this forum, no?), whose abstract thought resulted in the production and marketing of the slimy stuff that keeps you from ripping all the skin off your dinky dork while you compulsively self-stimulate.
The concept of individual rights - specifically the negative call on other people not to violate another human being’s life and well-being, liberty of action and though, and holdings in both tangible and intellectual properties - was devised over thousands of years and came to be formally codified by thoughtful and intelligent people in order to set up a formula by which human beings can live in each others’ presence without killing each other.
And here you are, asswipe, whining that “here are no such things as rights.”
Tsk. Maybe we ought not to call you “asswipe.” After all, something that can be used to wipe an ass is at least transiently useful.
You sure as shit aren’t.
And therfore dreimal to hell with you.
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Matt Wigdahl makes a good point about the inanity of disqualifying individual candidates from service as police officers as the result of their membership in a particular group with a bad reputation (Muslims, blacks, whatever).
So how should we regard the active recruitment - even lowering the bar on standards of intellectual aptitude and physical ability - of blacks, women, and members of other “minority groups”?
Were there complete blinding in police recruitment, and were candidates selected on the basis of physical and intellectual performance on a schedule of tests, I don’t have much doubt about what the results would be.
Most people thus recruited into the police force would be white. Almost overwhelmingly, they would be male. Their mental aptitudes would be well above the norm. A lot of them might well be military veterans, including a large number of people with recent experience of combat in the Sandbox.
Since the ’60s, there has been an effort to make police departments (and fire departments, and emergency medical services) “look like America,” setting recruitment according to cadres supposedly representative of ethnic minority groups, and seeking gender balance.
Now, if we’re methodological individualists knocking around in this forum (asswipe excluded), does this manipulation of manpower in the composition of any government agency - but especially the armed thugs to whom the citizenry delegate the exercise of their right to retaliatory lethal force - suit our needs, our preferences, or our sense of morality?
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Dave, the fact that Barry the Stoner “is in the Casa de Blanco” is due less to the fact that libertarians - and the traditionalist conservatives - didn’t want to support Crash Test Johnnie (the “Enemy Ace” whose career as a naval aviator had involved permanently removing five tail number from the BuAer inventory) and a whole helluva lot more to the widespread understanding the Red Faction of our big, bipartisan Boot-On-Your-Neck Party had spent the previous eight years screwing the pooch to high-pitched yelps and squeals of agony.
And Johnnie wasn’t offering anything more than four more years’ worth of Dubbya dorkery.
Neale is right about the Republicrats going along with same-old/same-old, and in the run-up to the 2008 “advance auction sale of stolen goods” I repeatedly expressed my opinion that the Elephant People were throwing the election quite deliberately.
They nominated a washed-out, clapped-out, corrupt, wheezing, useless political hack with less charisma than the averaged beached whale.
Make that DEAD beached whale.
They “did a Dole,” same as in ‘96. They WANTED to lose the White House, and nothing you nor I nor Neale nor anybody else could’ve done would’ve made a damn’ bit of difference.
Lord, they had a gift handed to them in the form of Barry Soetoro’s inability to show a friggin’ birth certificate. They could’ve disqualified him from the election any time they pleased, forcing the Blue Faction to scramble for another candidate - probably the Woman With One Eyebrow - at the last minute and thrown the whole National Socialist machine (ACORNs and all) into chaos.
So why didn’t they, hm? Stupidity explains a lot about the Republicans, Dave, but THAT much stupidity? Nah!
Dave, bubbie, these elections - these “contests” between the Reds and the Blues - are about as unpredictable as Kabuki theater. Absent some sort of major shock to the system, the “go along to get along” crowd have scripted the proceedings like a professional wrestling bout.
It’s the job of us outsiders - the libertarians, the fiscal conservatives, the TEA Party types - to apply that shock, however we can manage it.
If we become yet another Republicrat constituency - as we have in the past - the whores spreading their legs in the RNC headquarters will take us very much for granted, and go hunting “in the middle” for flip-flopping votes.
And thus the Red Faction will only nominate flip-flopping candidates.
Had Crash Test Johnnie by some miracle won the 2008 election, do you honestly think that he’d be doing LESS damage than our Mombasa Messiah has been doing since he slimed into the Oval Office in January 2009?
Do you REALLY think that for one friggin’ minute?
Might could be doing that damage differently, but McCain - already a career RINO - hasn’t got a fiscally conservative bone in his whole thoroughly-prostituted corpus. And he wouldn’t know the Bill of Rights if you were to strap him down and laser-engrave it on his retinas.
Dave, your “go along to get something done” attitude is what makes the Republicrat machine such a bloody useless vehicle by which to drive towards government under the rule of law.
Fiscal conservatives have NEVER had control of the Republican Party. It has ALWAYS been the party of Clay’s “American System” of pork, protectionism, and counterfeiting. It’s just that since the New Deal, the National Socialists have gone over to the same agenda, but with even more rapine enthusiasm.
To get the Republicans’ attention, we’ve got to get their attention. Punishing them is a necessary part of the conditioning process. When they see that their “phoney baloney jobs” are in peril, and that the only way they can keep their perqs and power is to start making noises like they think the U.S. Constitution should be enforced, we can start backing them.
Not before. Not EVER before.
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@RD
Scatter gun Hyperbole aside, I don’t disagree with you on any of the points you raise. Everything you point out regarding the GOP is true. Which supports my idea by illustrating how Libertarians could easily suborn the GOP, insert people into the machine that more closely identify with the will of the people. Smaller (much smaller) foot on the neck in terms of taxes, social engineering, regulation, fraud, waste, suicidal foreign policy, add your own flavor of BS here. I never advocated “getting along to get something done” those are your words. I’m advocating taking over one of the two recognized political parties in order to initiate change within the system. The next step would make open primaries in all 50 states the law of the land. The first object of which is to reestablish “the will of the People”. I know the subtleties of politics escapes some folks (Neale STFU), the yelling and screaming, name calling and other childish nonsense that pervades the unwashed masses of the Reds , Blues and Greys (moderates), doesn’t serve any purpose other than to obscure the goal of returning the will of the people as the guiding force in America. “Opportunity in Chaos” describes how “WE” can regain control of the process that is destroying our way of life.
RD, you have all of the snotty bumper stickers memorized. That’s abundantly clear. You’re all over the place trying to get as much of that crap into your message as possible. Other than the occasional irrational outburst, you aren’t really adding anything to the conversation. Lot’s of absolutism, angry slogans and what amounts to tantrums, you sound more like an anarchist than a libertarian. Anarchy works when the strong murder the less strong to achieve chaos. That doesn’t make you a friend, it makes you a target. It’s attitudes like yours that assists the PTB in marginalizing Libertarians. Anarchists are NOT Libertarians and vise-versa.
BTW FDR, Harry Truman, Ronald Reagan, and JFK were all fiscal conservatives. I know you have a different interpretation of “Fiscal Conservative” than I do. It seems you have a different interpretation of History, Current events, politics and finance and just about anything else. I’ll just assume you popped sideways from a different reality than the rest of us. It’s easier and less hassle than engaging you in a flame war.
Your turn to have a go at me. This should be fun.
@RD (the little emperor). Once again, quoting Rand and posturing. Not one whit of reason - just parroting. A typical Objectivist. But not just a typical Objectivist: An Internet Objectivist! That is, someone who is not just purely a rote learner but whose aggressiveness is obviously heightened by his being behind the safety of his keyboard.
Dave (TFAH)- I guess I will just pry open your eyes and pour a little intelligence in there. Democrats AND Republicans are, over the next five years, going to be fully revealed as exactly what they have been for years- the same party. By now, even YOUR infinitessimal intellect has realized that the Republicans have received most of the blame for this little economic meltdown we are in. And over the next 3-4 years, everyone will know that the Democrats own the depression that is coming soon to a theater near you. By 2019, this nation will be bankrupted by the policies of BOTH parties, by design.
Now, Dave (TFAH), if YOU want to invest your energy into taking a Yugo and trying to convince America that it is the new Cadillac, go ahead. But keep in mind that branding works both ways. Yes, everyone knows the Republican brand. But it has become a shit brand, known by all to suck up to it’s masters on Wall Street. Everyone knows the Democrat brand. And THAT one has become a shit brand, as well. Everyone knows that they suck up to their masters, the labor unions AND Wall Street.
I think the surest sign of this is the fact that by all the latest polls, over 80% of American voters DO NOT TRUST WASHINGTON TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT!! Since 99% of Washington is either Democrat or Republican, that means that 80% of Americans DO NOT TRUST EITHER DEMOCRATS OR REPUBLICANS TO DO THEIR JOB CORRECTLY!!
So, since you love the idea of Republicans so much, support them. Try to change thir minds and make them libertarian in outlook. With rare exceptions, it won’t work. And when it does, they will be over-ruled by the Republican heads. I’ll CONTINUE to work for my ideals, with the party that embodies 99% of my principles. And every year, little by little, I’ll keep gaining, while you keep losing.
@RD and Neale (STFU)
You two are a waste of time. and 80% of all statistics are made up 100% of the time. Neither one of you want to have a conversation you want to bludgeon others into agreeing with you. I’m not interested in your hysterics and name calling. I offered a way where Libertarians could get recognition and respect and instead I get this horse shit from you two ignorant wastes of excess biomass. If you deem yourselves to be typical libertarians I want nothing to do with you. It’s because of knee jerk, hysterical little girls like you that Libertarians get marginalized. You’re the problem, and not even remotely part of the solution.
Laws against dueling keeps mouth breathing homnunculae such as yourselves alive. What a tragedy……
Meet me at the county courthouse lawn, Bath, New York at dawn, for pistols and coffee if you’d like, dickweed. I don’t mind if you eat a few federal hydrashoks.
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Asswipe (aka “Robert’), in #79 I didn’t quote Mr. O’Connor; I mentioned her published work on individual rights. When I quote somebody, asswipe, I use these little marks. I know that as a Brit, you don’t want to use the double ones (”…”), but that’s what is employed on this side of the water, and this is Web log in the American language. Look for them, and then you’ll know when somebody is pulling up a quotation.
You did claim to know all the stuff she’d written, didn’tcha? That being the case (what, were you lying about that? ), what need was there to recapitulate?
Anything else worth noting in that specimen of asswipe? Oh, yeah. Asswipe, you’re negative for occult blood right now. Still doesn’t mean you’re not overdue for your screening colonoscopy, which I understand is accomplished under National Health by shoving a length of PVC pipe up your tochus with a flashlight on the end of it.
Hey, you oughta enjoy that. Gawd knows, you’re dilated enough to hardly feel the insertion.
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I defined rights. you asked for clarification, and went over specific examples.
This is mine because I’ll kick your ass if you try to take it from me. That is yours because you’ll kick my ass etc. I’ll respect your stuff, you respect mine and we have time to do more than observe eachother and prepare for ass kicking contests.
we’ve just agreed on property rights.
Please don’t tell me there is no such thing as rights.
Al- there is no such thing as rights to such as Asswipe. Because his kind will use the police, laws, or other forms of force to TAKE whatever rights he thinks you don’t need. THAT is the very reason his kind loves gun control laws (no matter how they claim to support gun rights “but there need to be reasonable restrictions on……”). Because without gun rights, we cannot enforce our other rights.
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Neale, because individual rights comprise an abstract concept - something utterly intangible - it’s impossible for anyone to “take” them from anybody else.
The most that can be done is to violate them.
The focus on “gun rights” is natural, but it’s too limited. It’s the right to self-defense in broad that bears the better focus.
For example, in this discussion thread on police matters, consider the criminalization of ballistic protective garments. The so-called “bullet-proof vest” and other such passive means of mitigating ballistic wounding.
The government thugs do NOT want law-abiding private citizens to be able to acquire and wear anything resembling the relatively lightweight personal armor they themselves have come to rely upon.
What the hell?
It’s bad enough that the law-abiding private citizen is the focus of efforts to prevent him from acquiring, carrying, and effectively using firearms. But what the hell is the governmental interest in ensuring that said law-abiding private citizen should be deprived of the ability to SURVIVE gunshot wounds?
What’s next? The criminalization of first-aid kits?
The ostensible purposes of all statutory efforts to impair the exercise of the individual right to keep and bear arms are: (a) to reduce the access to weaponry among violent criminals, and (b) to reduce incidences of accidental woundings and death.
The actual EFFECTS of these laws and regulations we all understand and acknowledge. The person of criminal intent is not in the least deterred by the idea that Officer Friendly disapproves of him packing heat while en route to commit murder, mayhem, theft of property and whatever else is planned.
The guy who plans to break law “A” counts the incidental breach of law “B” nothing more than a necessary cost of doing “business.”
Senseless, of course. Unless the real focus is not upon the clumsy and the criminal but rather upon the law-abiding citizen.
So more revealing for me is the criminalization of bullet-proof vests.
Such measures say - quite clearly - to the law-abiding private citizen: “We, the goons of government, want to be able to shoot you efficiently and effectively with our issue popguns, and because of that you’re not allowed to acquire and wear Aramid underwear.”
Our “public servants’” concerted violation of gun rights among the private citizenry is malevolent enough, but what brings the point home more blatantly than the Malevolent Jobholder’s efforts to prevent the law-abiding private citizen from taking measures to keep himself from being easily and swiftly shot to death?
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Same as outlawing the use of Tasers, tear gas, and pepper spray. They want us TOTALLY helpless, defenseless, and relying totally upon the government for everything including doctor visits, food and clothing, housing, and even spending cash.
@RD
I just bought Level IIIa ballistic protection vest from Armor Express. $495. No one asked for my ID, reason or anything.
The law 18USC931 states:
(a) In General. - Except as provided in subsection (b), it shall
be unlawful for a person to purchase, own, or possess body armor,
if that person has been convicted of a felony that is -
(1) a crime of violence (as defined in section 16); or
(2) an offense under State law that would constitute a crime of
violence under paragraph (1) if it occurred within the special
maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.
(b) Affirmative Defense. -
(1) In general. - It shall be an affirmative defense under this
section that -
(A) the defendant obtained prior written certification from
his or her employer that the defendant’s purchase, use, or
possession of body armor was necessary for the safe performance
of lawful business activity; and
(B) the use and possession by the defendant were limited to
the course of such performance.
(2) Employer. - In this subsection, the term “employer” means
any other individual employed by the defendant’s business that
supervises defendant’s activity. If that defendant has no
supervisor, prior written certification is acceptable from any
other employee of the business.
SO RD are you a convicted Felon or do you live in Connecticut? (Same thing in most cases). Those are the only barriers to body armor purchase or ownership.
What planet do you live on?
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Dave, there are plenty of people with felony convictions in their personal histories, for the most part non-violent offenses. The practice of plea bargaining effectively guarantees this, as prosecutors load on the charges and - at the taxpayer’s expense - run the equivalent of an overwhelming assault on the private citizen whose means are such that legal defense is an effective impossibility.
Once a felony conviction is gotten, that individual is a felon forevermore, no matter that he is completely law-abiding henceforth. The objective seems to be turning the maximum number of Americans into felons.
Need I quote Dr. Ferris’ speech to Mr. Rearden in *Atlas Shrugged*? We are “a nation of law-breakers,” are we not?
But even those with such a conviction in their records have a right to self-defense.
Indeed, their NEED for the means of self-defense is commonly far greater than is that of those who have no such history.
And you conceive that because an “employer” certifies “that the defendant’s purchase, use, or possession of body armor was necessary for the safe performance of lawful business activity” is required for on-the-job utilization (and ONLY on-the-job use) gives some sort of wash to this statutory infringement of the right to freely acquire such means of passive protection?
Hm. Dave, you’re rather foolish. Ever ask why there should be a statute such as 18 USC 931 in the first place? What is it that our “public servants” are trying to accomplish with the articulation of a criminal law with the objective of depriving the criminally convicted of the ability to acquire ballistic protective garments?
As I’ve observed, the person of criminal intent - with or without a record of criminal conviction - is never to be deterred from getting his hands on firearms, explosives, toxins, corrosives, pyrotechnics, knives, power tools, pickaxes, or blunt instruments suitable for cracking the human skull lie a cantaloupe.
“Let’s pass a law!” is going to do anything at all to keep such a person from obtaining a Kevlar vest?
And I delight in your interest in my own personal record of encounters with the thugs of civil government. Gotta go “argumentum ad hominem,” don’t you?
Well, you’re not doing dick by focusing on the subject itself.
But it reveals much about your own experience, doesn’t it?
What’s that old saying? If the conservative is a liberal who’s just been mugged, the liberal is a conservative who’s just been arrested.
You haven’t been arrested yet, have you, Dave? Well, your time will come.
And when you bought that “Level IIIa ballistic protection vest from Armor Express” for $495, did you have to have a “Mother-may-I?” note from the person who submits your W-2 form?
Hm. What if you were self-employed? Could you tender that certification on your own personal behalf?
Much to think about, Dave. Not that thinking is your strong suite.
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Going back to where this all started:
Would a combat veteran have fired sooner or shown more restraint at the Black Bridge when being pelted with rocks? Would he have acted as, more or less prudently than the Border Patrol agent involved (who for all I know was a combat vet)? Would his experience as a combat veteran affect his decision inappropriately? Would being out of the service x amount of time increase the probability that he acted correctly? While all of us are individuals what would be the average answer for most combat vets?
answer these questions then you can go back to El Neil’s original question with a basis for an intelligent answer. If the Black Bridge Incident doesn’t provide you with a yardstick to judge a police officer’s actions check your local news for a case where the officers involved had to make a hard call.
There are fascist jerks in uniform out there, and just plain jerks, There are also good men and women doing their best to protect their fellow citizens’ lives, liberty and property. Some of the worse are too well supervised to act out their true natures, some of the best are trapped having to play a rough game.
given that, would the average combat vet have shot sooner, at the same time, later or even at all?
Sorry. just can’t let go of original topic.
If the narco/gang war stays in Mexico I want nice mellow guys patrolling my hometown streets.
But if the cartels and their sicarios bring the fight to El Paso I want combat vets in Bradleys and Strikers and Apache Helicopters patrolling. Preferably Rangers, SEALS, Marine Recon, Delta, and Special FOrces types running self/home defense classes and heading up neighborhood watch patrols.
No doubt this is a bad case of situational ethics. Hope you don’t find this moral flexibility too detestable. I expect the first paragraph to be the one I will live under, God willing and the creek don’t flood.
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Anent the conduct of a combat-experienced military veteran in the incident at the Black Bridge, I think it probable that someone with a recent tour or two in Iraq or Afghanistan in his jacket would probably held his fire UNLESS his superiors had articulated an explicit policy of retaliatory weapons use under such circumstances.
The “rules of engagement” under which American and NATO service people operate in the Sandbox are restrictive, and designedly so. Like them or not, these people have been operating on the principle articulated by Kipling so long ago:
“This we learned from famous men
Teaching in our borders
Who declare’d it was best,
Safest, easiest and best —
Expeditious, wise and best —
To obey your orders.”
Remember “tooth-to-tail ratio” and what that means. The percentage of combat-experienced people getting out of the U.S. military is always going to be small, simply because the people with military occupational specialties whose time in uniform do not take them into places where they’re going to get shot at are overwhelmingly in the majority.
Those who ARE so trained and experienced have been through a purposeful mental conditioning process. They were trained and had functioned (if they got out with an honorable discharge, or are still on the rolls as reservists when they take jobs as policemen) to restrain themselves even if things went into the kimchee. “Fire discipline” needs understanding in any discussion of what happened on the Black Bridge,
A “combat vet” is perfectly capable of behaving like one of those “fascist jerks in uniform” if he’s given explicit orders to act thusly. If not (all other things being equal), he’s probably LESS likely to go juramentado when pelted with rocks than is the average feathermerchant with a policeman’s badge.
With regard to any desire for special operations people “running self/home defense classes and heading up neighborhood watch patrols,” Al, I think you’ve just shown that you’ve read John Ringo’s “Legacy of the Alldenata” novels and are familiar with the character of Jake Mosovich.
I am NOT of the opinion that those who govern in America would ever willingly engage a program in which the guys from the Special Warfare Center (and similar institutions) go forth to teach us “Joe the Plumber” common folk the practices which would make us more capable of defending ourselves against not only “the cartels and their sicarios” but also the thugs of the IRS and BATFE and DEA.
The Malevolent Jobholder has demonstrated repeatedly that his purpose is decidedly not “to serve and protect,” but rather to cripple and subjugate.
The military is structured and operated to serve the needs of those who govern, not to preserve the rights of the private citizen, or even - in truth - to defend the Constitution against its real enemies.
Its domestic enemies.
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RD- sadly, Jake was given a Dishonorable Discharge for refusing to disarm civillians during Katrina. He’s no longer available to give those classes on the government payroll. But he and his buddies will be in the trenches when they are needed.
The cops I know who are the least impressed with uniformed authority and BS rules and regulations are veterans. Conversely, the worst one I know regarding that BS is a veteran, too. I do find more of those who have never served to have the biggest chips on their shoulders, to be the most ego inflated JBT types around.
I’d rather be pulled over by a guy who hated stupid things like wearing reflective belts in a combat zone and realizes that every rule, regulation, or law isn’t passed by infallable genuises than a martinet who thinks that the law is the law and that’s all there is to it, regardless of how stupid it is.
I’d rather have my kids school in a district where I know at least some of the LEO’s will have the balls to go into a Columbine situation and have faced the elephant.
That gives one perspective, too. Facing life or death situations tends make other problems look a lot smaller.
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Tim, with regard to the military veterans you know who had become cops, how many of them were COMBAT veterans, or even veterans with combatant military occupational specialties (MOS) or the equivalent?
In addition to the differences between front-line grunts and REMF types in their respective attitudes to “stupid things like wearing reflective belts in a combat zone,” I’m given also to consider the cumulative effects of time under fire (facing “the elephant’) as a stressor rendering such veterans more susceptible to psychiatric decompensation when placed in similar situations as policemen than we might otherwise expect.
There’s “blooding” and then there’s pushing men beyond the breaking point.
As for “a Columbine situation,” you might take heart in knowing that such high-number casualty school shooting incidents are FAR more common in Europe (particularly Germany) than here.
Shows ya what “gun control” gets you, nicht wahr?
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Actually I was thinking in terms of the offer made by the military to resisrance groups in Red Dawn. I have a feeling that given a coice between self trained vigilante type militias and groups organized and controlled by SF types the Big G willchoose the latter.
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Al, I credit John Milius with both common sense and a respect for individual rights. That cannot be said of the officers of civil government in this nation.
Art - well, I consider *Red Dawn* to be art, whatever the limp-wristed “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” whine about it - is not uncommonly a more lucid articulation of principles than government policy could or ever would be.
But “given a choice between self trained vigilante type militias and groups [of private citizens] organized and controlled by SF types,” I bid you to consider that those who govern us would choose NEITHER.
They would have every able-bodies man of us die in agony, our wives and children raped to death before our eyes, before either alternative would be permitted.
What’s that line of Mr. Smith’s?
“Stupid, insane, or evil.”
Nothing else describes them.
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Considering the number of retired Green Berets in my part of the world it is a given that they will be involved in organizing armed civil defense if the Narco /gang war crosses the border. the question is if this will happen with or without state (Fed or Texas. makes no nevermind) control.
There are advantages to the single largest employer in the area being the Fort Bliss/ Beaumont Hospital complex.
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Anent special operations people and what they will or will not do when they join the civilian population, I have no proximal knowledge. While I have long had family in “the airborne community” - a branch thereof having settled outside the post at Fort Bragg - they have all been 82nd Airborne Division (with one wayward child in the 503rd PIR during Mr. Roosevelt’s War), and none have strayed into Camp McCall.
One nephew in the 3rd Marine Division, but he has been a stable, intelligent young man and is thus unqualified for Force Recon. He is our only contribution to the Naval Service in the past twol generations. (I don’t count, no matter the appearance of the suits they make you buy in the uniformed branch of the U.S. Public Health Service.)
I would think, however, that Fayetteville, NC, should be expected to present an extremely indigestible lump were large numbers of criminal miscreants to attempt the exertion of control over the Carolina Piedmont, the civil government in Raleigh notwithstanding.
Fort Bliss is the Army’s Flakschule, is it not? I understand that the 1st Armored Division is - finally! - being withdrawn completely from occupation duties in Germany and will headquarter henceforth in El Paso, but I don’t conceive of decades’ accumulations of former anti-aircraft people as presenting the sorts of rough-and-tough folks who constitute a significant deterrent against violent crime.
Correct me if I’m mistaken. My personal experience of the U.S. Army is restricted, and I have never been further west than Dodge City.
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Because of facilities offered (PX, Commisary, Beaumont Army Hospital) there is a large retired military community in El Paso area.
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Al, all other things being equal, the people who retire “just outside the gate” near any Army facility tend to be those who had been posted there either the longest or at the conclusion of their service. Such people have residential real estate and even business interests where they’ve been assigned for many years. Some “double dip” as contractors or employees of companies providing support to their former branch.
Thus you get lots of ex-Armor people outside Fort Knox, lots of ex-Airborne near Fort Bragg, and so forth.
Fort Bliss has been Air Defense Artillery (ADA) for decades. The 1st Armored Division is only lately shifting over there from Germany. I would expect a plenitude of former Patriot people, but not many people with advanced infantry or armor training as yet.
ADA guys are not what you’d call “death in both hands” kinds of people.
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Well we can always bring in the Texas Rangers.
I don’t think this is a difficult question.
The way to get the answer is to remind yourself not to abandon your principles. As you said at the beginning, ” I don’t like limiting a person’s freedom on account of what he _might_ do. I like even less the idea of limiting it because of what people like him have done before.”
That’s exactly the point. Wasn’t it Lucy Kropotkin who said “we gave up preventive law enforcement long ago” or something to that effect? Respect for individual rights means limiting people’s freedom only because their *actions* infringe on the equal freedom of others — not because they have the *potential* for such actions.
Similarly, respect for individual rights means recognizing individuals as such, not as members of a group.
Yes, of course there should be fewer cops, and yes of course, there should be few if any soldiers. But in fact the question applies to other cases, too.
(Should driving drunk be illegal on the grounds that it increases the potential of injury to others?)