Where's the beef (with capitalism)?

Over at Arm Your Mind for Liberty, a recent article takes issue with capitalism. I read this article with great interest because (I assume) it grew out of a discussion between myself and the author as well as some others regarding capitalism. When I read it, though, I couldn't find that the "beef" is really with capitalism at all. Before going too much further, we should probably start with a (common) definition of capitalism, but I'm not going to attempt to define capitalism in great detail. It seems that if you ask ten different people, you'll get ten different answers about what capitalism means to them as the linked article states:

‘Capitalism’ is a funny word. It means so many different things to so many different people, that it’s become entirely useless as a basis for any kind of rational or constructive communication. [...] Some will mention wage labor, others exploitation and yet others will talk of free trade. But I think the defining feature is the ability to accumulate lots and lots and lots of stuff (capital).

Fair enough. The ability to accumulate lots (and lots and lots) of stuff, or capital, is most assuredly a characteristic of capitalism and, as we will see, the article's main problem with it, so let's focus our attention there. Before we do so, the original article takes a slight detour:

And then, most importantly, [a characteristic of capitalism is] to have a third party protect your ability to control that stuff even when you’re not using it. That third party, of course, is the state (the government). [...] Without this ability to accumulate and have your title to said stuff protected at little to no cost to yourself, things like wage labor, exploitation and managed trade could not happen. These all depend on the power imbalances that stem from the state protecting capitalists’ control of their property.

Whoa, wait just a minute! Now, we're not talking about capitalism any more. We're talking about a state-directed ("managed trade") and state-enforced ("stuff protected at little or no cost to yourself", presumably via taxation on the whole population and "power imbalances" in the form of state-chartered police and enforcement mechanisms) economic system, our current system, what many call crony-capitalism. So, we can already see that the author's problem is not with capitalism, per se, but with crony-capitalism and the state enforcement of it. The author continues by stating that he doesn't "think capitalism would survive without the state".

But we're not talking about capitalism any more. We're talking about the state. The author offers no evidence or theories as to why capitalism cannot or will not exist without a state other than to say, "I don’t think a non-aggressive organization will go to the same lengths as the state to protect property". This is demonstrably false, however:

Just think for a moment about the following:

• Who is responsible for protecting you at most major shopping centers? Ever see a private mall cop? I bet you have.
• How about casinos? Almost all casinos have private armed security.
• What about at the dance club? Ever see a bouncer throw out a belligerent drunk?
• What about at the university? You’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a public safety officer and a cop. Many universities have private police forces.
• How about warehouses, ports and apartment complexes? It is not uncommon to have private security guards protecting all of those. My apartment complex has its own security.
• Airports used to be entirely protected by private security – and guess what? No one was complaining about being molested. Further, after 9/11, it was the airlines who made real improvements to security by putting in steel cockpit doors and arming the pilots.
• Banks? - Almost all bank cash transfers are dealt with by way of private armored car, and many banks have private armed security as well.

Now I've been drawn into a digression about capitalism on a larger scale. Let's return to the accumulation of stuff in the original article and look at an example provided by the author describing his issue with it: "if someone fences off 1,000 acres of land but consistently uses only 2, I don’t consider that legitimate". This situation draws its basis from the Lockean idea of homesteading, that one becomes an owner of land by "mixing" his labor with it. I'm not going to argue whether fencing 1,000 acres constitutes a mixing of labor. A debate on such a matter is not likely easily resolved.

Instead, what if we arrived at this situation differently, voluntarily? Let's assume two people and call them A and B. Each of them own 501 acres (via legal means, homesteading or otherwise) and farm the entirety of their respective plots. A and B both consume only what they need to survive and sell the rest of their produce into the marketplace. A saves the proceeds from his sales under his mattress while B spends his money on vacations and house keepers and other consumable goods and services. (One has to wonder, at this point, if B has a claim to A's money since storage under A's mattress is not "productive" use in B's mind.) At some point, bad weather conditions befall A and B. A, having saved his money, is able to buy what he needs from the marketplace, but B has nothing. Seeing B's plight, A offers to use some of the rest of his savings to buy 499 acres of B's land. B, needing to feed himself and his family, reluctantly agrees. Now A owns 1,000 acres, and B owns 2. We've arrived at the evil capitalist situation described by the author in the original article, but we've arrived by completely legal and voluntary means.

Let's assume that A, having just bought the land and exhausting much of his savings, does not have the capacity to expand his farming operations into his newly acquired 499 acres. When the weather improves, does B have a legal right to reacquire the land, via homesteading? What if B had kept the land but sold his farming equipment to A to pay for his food? Now that B is incapable of farming his land (and has no reasonable prospects for doing so since he has no farming equipment and no savings with which to buy any), can A also freely acquire B's land under the homesteading principle?

The author of the original article seems to think so: "If someone needed land and had a solid intention to use it to sustain his life, I would support that person in any attempt to homestead a reasonable parcel out of the 1,000 acres". B, in our example, has every "intention to use [the land] to sustain his life" as well as others'. The author goes so far as to suggest that force is an appropriate means to affect this outcome:

In a stateless society, people would be freer to rise up against people who attempt to control more property than they actually use. Acting in concert, great numbers of people could, in the worst case, purchase arms, form a defense force and fight capitalists on a more level playing field. Squatters, worker-owned cooperatives and similar direct actors would take control of more of the capitalists’ property. In the process, their power would be eaten away.

In fact, A has saved B's life as well as his family's, and in return B should have the right to use violent force to take back from A what was voluntarily given/traded (by B himself!) to A? What the author is suggesting is either a clear violation of the non-aggression principle or will require a state, with a legal monopoly on the use of violence, to forcibly give A's land to B.

The only other argument in favor of what the original author is suggesting hinges on the word "reasonable". Perhaps 1,000 acres is an "unreasonable" amount. Much like the hypothetical debate about homesteading to which I alluded earlier, a common definition of what is "reasonable" is not easily resolved. As an example, here are a bunch of pro-gun people on a pro-gun forum disagreeing about what "reasonable" gun laws would look like. At any rate, the example I gave above works with any sized parcel of land. In fact it becomes even more difficult to reason out on a smaller scale. Consider if A and B each owned two acres and A bought 1 acre from B. A is in a much better position to farm an additional 1 acre than he is an additional 499. What if A incrementally continues the process, voluntarily acquiring parcels from C, D, E, etc. in a similar manner? When does the amount of land that A owns become "unreasonable"? Does the situation change if A rents the land back to B, C, D, E, etc.? Who makes that decision and who enforces it? What authority does this entity have when A can show that his property was acquired legally? None, according to the author of the original article: "If a person prospers legitimately, I have no basis to challenge any accumulation of wealth." Wait, what? Does B have a claim to A's legitimate accumulation of wealth (in the form land) or not?

In short, capitalism, true capitalism, is not an economic system that is imposed on anyone. It is an economic system that arises from, or rather is the result of, voluntary interactions in a truly free society. In fact, the economic system proposed in the original article is not only incoherent but, in the author's own words, requires violent enforcement. I suggest that the author's "beef" is not with capitalism but with a free and voluntary society.

I can haz liberty now?

Late last week the New York state senate passed a bill allowing same-sex marriages in the state. A few years ago, I would have seen this as a great leap forward. When California had its big argument about Proposition 8 -- which sought to constitutionally declare that only a marriage between a man and a woman would be recognized by the state -- I argued with anyone and everyone that its passage was wrong because, at its core, it denied to one group of people rights that were granted to another group. I still believe that to be true, today, but what happened in New York last week caused me to see things a little bit differently.

Coincidentally, a blog post at mises.org, today, links to an article that argues that libertarians should support New York's action:

[W]hile agreeing that the long-term goal is separation of marriage and State [...] given the slim chance of separation happening any time soon, classical-liberal principles require the State to treat all citizens as equal before the law.

The author of the original post sees it differently:

[O]ne needs to separate rights from privileges and [...] increasing the relative size of a privileged group does not constitute a step in any valuable direction (at least from a libertarian point of view). [...] Equality under the numerous government laws is not only impossible (since pretty much all of them constitute privilege), but may be directly counter-acting the cause of liberty.

There was a time when I subscribed to the former view. Somewhere along the line, I came to embrace the latter. Let me explain.

Rights vs. Privileges

Up until I embraced this latter view, the difference between a right and a privilege never entered my mind. In reality, my conception was that a right was something that one had or acquired under the law. My definition of "right" was closer to that of "privilege". Since the two are going to be treated as separate from here on, it is worth defining them:

right: a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral
privilege: a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most

A right exists independent of any governing body. One has a just claim, for example, to his/her own body. After all, it doesn't make sense for anyone else to own it. Therefore, as the owner, one has a right to do with his/her body as he/she wishes. A privilege, on the other hand is something that is granted to one person or group. Voting is an example of this. While women and non-whites got the privilege long ago, it is still denied to felons in a number of states. This brings up an important distinction between rights and privileges. Privileges are granted and, therefore, can be (legitimately) taken away; rights are preexisting and cannot be (again, legitimately) taken.

In addition, it is worth distinguishing between positive and negative rights. At its simplest, "a negative right forbids others from acting against the right holder, while a positive right obligates others to act with respect to the right holder." Libertarianism says that no person has the right to use or threaten another with force. This is, in fact, a negative right. Every person has the right to be free from the aggressive violence of another. In fact, civil rights such as freedom of speech and association and the right to bear arms all arise from this notion. None of these acts, in and of themselves, are aggressive in nature.

Under the idea of negative rights, two people have the "right" to voluntarily associate with each other in whatever manner they wish. Absent a government (and/or a church), a "marriage" is simply a compact or contract between two people and has no meaning beyond the participants in the contract. That is, I may welcome you into my house, but your marriage does not obligate me to also welcome your spouse. On the other hand, when someone says that he/she has a "right to marry" under the (government) law, he/she is asserting a "positive right". What that person is really saying is that he/she wishes -- is entitled by right -- to be afforded the privileges conferred upon other married people.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that these privileges eventually obligate others to act in a certain way, under penalty of government force, with respect to the marriage contract and its participants even though these "others" have nothing to do with the contract. The solution is equally obvious: leave government out of marriage completely.

But what of the first author's view that the goal should be equality under the law? Shouldn't gays who love each other and, if not for existing law, would marry be granted the privileges that accompany that marriage? Let's look quickly at the "spousal privilege" as it relates to testifying in court for an answer. The spousal privilege refers to the idea that a person cannot be compelled (via government force) to testify against his/her spouse at trial. But what of people who don't wish to marry? What of close friends? This "privilege" does not extend to them. Therefore, in this context, while gay marriage brings gays on equal footing with straights -- and doctors of various types, I might add -- it leaves a very sizable portion of the population out in the proverbial cold, still subject to being compelled to testify. Other benefits not granted to unmarried people include tax breaks, visitation rights, special immigration status, inheritance, etc. There is still no equality under the law, yet nobody that I am aware of is questioning this inequity.

Liberty as a privilege

Now that I've, I hope, made the right vs. privilege distinction clear, I think it is safe to say that, by and large, the rest of the population does not readily acknowledge this distinction. Instead, most of the population views the right to associate (via marriage, gay or otherwise) as indistinguishable from the privileges that come with the state recognition of that association. As such, arguably, this entire situation could be viewed as a group of people begging an even smaller group of people -- politicians -- to please, please, please grant them their liberty when it was the very institution for whom those politicians work that took it away in the first place.

Maybe marriage is a bad example, though. By that I mean, we can't rightly infer the intentions of all people who demand "marriage equality". Having muddied the waters by giving state sanction and privilege to marriage, the government has inextricably linked liberty/rights to privilege such that the population no longer recognizes the difference. And now, we arrive at the real reason I am not head over heels about the recent happenings in New York. The government has transformed liberty and natural rights into privileges.

Marriage, admittedly, is possibly not the best example. So, let's turn our attention to the right to keep and bear arms. In California, among other places, the right to carry a gun in public has been all but completely denied. Open carry of a loaded gun has long been illegal. Open carry of an unloaded gun has been legal by virtue of the legislature not realizing that it had not forbidden it, but it is quickly working to rectify that. Concealed carry is only an option if one lives in a rural area or is buddy, buddy with the sheriff of his/her county. Carrying a gun in an urban area of California is, no doubt, a privilege reserved to government officials and those that donate to them.

Let's go a step further. Earlier, I mentioned that each person is the proper owner of his/her own body (if for no other reason than because no other owner makes any sense) and can do whatever he or she wishes with it so long as the action does not violate another's ownership of his or her body. If this is true -- and it would be impossible in my mind to argue differently -- then one has the right to put whatever one wants into his or her own body. This includes not only so called illicit drugs but prescriptions as well. Why should one have to obtain permission from a doctor who has in turn been granted permission from the state to get a prescription?

Maybe drugs aren't your thing. Perhaps you like milk? I hope it's not raw milk. The FDA doesn't like raw milk and has even gone so far as to say that individuals do not have the right to eat what they wish. The FDA is quickly moving in the same direction against mothers who share breast milk.

All of these liberties have been transformed into government-granted privileges. As if that wasn't bad enough, the system is self perpetuating. As a monopoly provider of law and enforcement, the government has been put in the position of having the power to deny a right by law and enforce that denial through its police power, thus rendering it a privilege. Citizens are left with two options, neither of which is appealing: 1) ignore the law and risk ending up in jail, or 2) beg the government to recognize/grant their liberty.

The latter option seems to be the government's approved method of attempting to maintain/regain one's liberty, and there is a very simple reason for that. To utilize this method is to implicitly acknowledge that liberty is a government-granted privilege.

An ounce of prevention

I don't like the TSA. I think what it does is an affront to liberty, to moral sensibilities, and certainly to the Constitution that supposedly defines U.S. federal power. That is not to say that I oppose transportation security; I just happen believe that the damage done by the TSA to the aforementioned list of things far outweighs whatever benefit it might be providing. As such, I would characterize it as useless. That much is probably obvious to anyone reading this, either because you've read my other writings or because you're aware of my run-in with the TSA. What is probably unknown to most is that my encounter with the TSA has turned me off to reading about it and, even more so, to writing about it. Being a bit of a news junkie, I tend to remain "aware" of most major occurrences involving the TSA, but I don't, as I imagine most people believe, go out of my way to keep up on every little detail concerning it. In fact, I tend to ignore most of the stories I see about the TSA because I get a very "resistance is futile" feeling whenever I do.

Part of the this feeling comes simply from the fact that no matter what the TSA does, no matter how badly it screws up, the (government) solution has been and will always be to throw more money at the problem. Why people accept this situation is completely incomprehensible to me. Just from a purely economic perspective, it's preposterous. The TSA is a monopoly, and its parent, the federal government, openly and actively uses its monopoly position and power to not only prevent but prohibit competition. This is something that that same federal government makes illegal in the private sector. Moreover, the TSA continues to fail to carry out its own mission statement in which it claims that it "protects the Nation’s transportation systems ...". The TSA has racked up a number of high profile failures on this front including the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the loaded gun that cleared screening, and the failures of its own internal tests. The TSA can't even design tests for itself that it can pass (even after the 4th or 5th try depending on which story you read). If the TSA was a private company, it's stock would be worthless, and it would be out of business.

But the continued influx of money, increase even, allows the TSA to continue to fail to uphold the second half of its mission statement as well: "... to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce". The TSA's website expands on this principle stating that it is composed of "people who conduct ourselves [sic] in an honest, trustworthy and ethical manner at all times". This stands in sharp contrast with reality.

Freedom? I certainly wasn't "free" to move about the country, no pun intended. My "freedom of movement" was conditioned on being groped by a thug in a government-issued costume (h/t William Grigg for that phrase; he likes to call them tax-feeders instead of thugs). It's very fitting that the very first definition of freedom is "the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint" because that is exactly the opposite of what the TSA offers. And what happened to me is, by no means, an isolated incident. The TSA recently went so far as to screen passengers (read: violate their freedom) after they had disembarked from an Amtrak train in Savannah. TSA's "Blogger Bob" tried to explain this away as a Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) operation but then, at the end of the explanation, says that "this particular VIPR operation should have ended by the time these folks were coming through the station". Not only does the TSA's right hand not know what the left is doing, but its explanation that "disembarking passengers did not need to enter the station" and therefore willfully submitted themselves to the search is at odds with a first-hand account stating that "[T]here were about 14 agents pulling people inside the building and coralling [sic] everyone in a roped area".

Honest and trustworthy? Ethical? Finding stories about the TSA stealing from passengers is not a difficult task. A quick search turned up this blog post on the TSA's website in which the TSA talks about the theft for which it is responsible. That post is from early 2008. In late 2008, TSA screener Pythias Brown was arrested after "appropriating" over $200,000 from airline passengers. Long aware of its problems, the TSA has yet to do anything about them. Theft is still a problem for the TSA, but it's not just at the lowest levels as even managers have been found to be accepting "kickbacks" in return for "looking the other way". The TSA has also become very adept at lying to the traveling public as one commenter at the TSA's blog points out. In November of last year, the TSA said that those under 12 years of age would receive a modified pat-down when extra screening was required. Today, the TSA said that the pat down it gave to a 6 year old, in which the agent used the front of her hands for the majority of the pat down and even put her hands inside the child's waistband and shirt collar, is standard operating procedure just like for those over 12. And, of course, there's still the "debate" about exactly how much radiation you get from the TSA's AIT machines and whether or not they can store pictures.

Yet, the TSA remains in business, which brings me to the other reason that I don't typically follow stories about the TSA. Initially, the response to my encounter was very positive (for/to me and the cause of liberty). But as my story reached more and more people, I was subjected to very visceral reactions to what had happened. Many called me an attention-whore, claiming that the whole thing was set up. Some suggested that instead of blaming the government for trying to feel me up, I should blame the terrorists who made the whole thing necessary. But the majority, in various colorful ways, simply said that it was this way or the highway. That is, get felt up or get blown up, and this is the reason that I don't like hearing about the TSA. People are so afraid that they accept the TSA as a given. It makes me angry to read stories or responses along these lines knowing that no amount of rational discussion can be had about what the TSA does (or doesn't do) because the thinking behind those stories and responses is based on fear. No rational or logical discussion can be had with someone who is arguing from a place of fear.

It's a funny thing, emotion. In spite of seemingly infinite documentation of TSA abuses and screw-ups; in spite of the evidence that one is more likely to die in a car on the way to the airport than on the plane or that the odds of getting a fatal cancer from one of the TSA's AIT machines is roughly equivalent to a terrorist attack on a plane, we continue to allow the TSA to go on about its business in the name of "prevention". In fact, I would argue that more liberties are lost (or given up) in the name of prevention of some "terrible" event than any other cause. Guns are taken away and demonized to prevent crime. Gay marriage is outlawed lest it lead to the decay of society. Drugs are prohibited on the grounds that people might overdose and hurt themselves. Gambling is made illegal because people might overindulge and lose their money. Parents aren't allowed to pack their children's lunches because they may not be healthy "enough". Privacy and due process are lost in the name of preventing terrorism. The list goes on and on.

What happens when the prevention, the supposed "cure", becomes worse than the disease, though? Statistics show that guns save more lives than they take. Drug policy actually leads to poor quality drugs and criminal violence. Our government carries out due process free assassinations, and when we find out about it we only dare to question the secrecy of the operation not the legitimacy of the killing. Most damning of all, though, is the article that I found at the end of a link embedded in the story about the 6 year old girl that was patted down this week. TIME asked a child psychologist to explain how to make TSA pat-downs less traumatic for children. What is wrong with us when we're so afraid of our own shadows that we're willing to let government goons touch our children? Have we really come (read: regressed) so far? We're willing to accept the (false) choice: see our children naked or touch them all over. I really hate to play the "think of the children" card here as it is an appeal to emotion and not rationality, but I think it is in order. We've regressed so far that we're even once again willing to accept the "following orders" defense. Says a TSO:

I come to work to do my job. It is not up to me to decide policy, it is up to me to carry out my duties as dictated by the Transportation Security Administration. People fail to understand that neither of us are happy about the intrusive pat down I am carrying out. I am polite, I am professional [...]

And we eat it up. There was no end to the number of people who told me that I was a jerk during my encounter and that the TSO was very professional. I can only assume that the logic, if there is any, behind such an argument is that we should willingly give up our liberty if the government simply asks nicely enough.

And liberty is exactly what this should all be about. Our federal government was instituted to protect our liberty, to "prevent" infringements of it. But "infringe" is exactly what it does. Each of those preventions I mentioned is, in reality, an infringement of liberty. For example, gun ownership is not an aggressive act against another. Gay couples don't infringe anyone's liberty by loving each other, nor does a drug user in his use of drugs. Each of these acts does not, in and of itself, constitute an infringement of liberty, but our government restricts, if not outlaws, each of them which clearly is an infringement. And so 1984 is upon us as the government has taught us all to master the art of doublethink. We simultaneously believe that government protects our liberty while at the same time believing that "prevention" is a valid form of that protection, and if we allow it to continue then something is wrong with us, indeed.

Non-infringement vs. Protection

GeorgiaCarry.org sued the state of Georgia to be able to possess their guns at a church. They were joined by the minister of the church and had the church's permission. That wasn't sufficient, though, because Georgia (apparently) has a law forbidding guns in churches.

The district court ruled for the state:

Defendants’ third objective, protecting the free exercise of religion, is an important governmental interest. The free exercise right is enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution. Although the Constitution protects a person’s right to free exercise only against governmental intrusion, it is clear that the protection of religious freedom against private bias or coercion is also an important governmental goal. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a) (prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of religion). Prohibiting the carrying of firearms in a place of worship bears a substantial relationship to that important goal by protecting attendees from the fear or threat of intimidation or armed attack.

I don't even know where to begin. A private entity wants to allow guns on their own property, but the government says, "no". The people's right to keep and bear arms can be infringed because of the possibility of "private bias or coercion"; that is, the government can take action because a crime might be committed, in the absence of any evidence of said crime. None of this even addresses the idea that because the private property is a church, the government is treading dangerously close to first amendment violations, itself. None of this matters to the government, though. It has "governmental goals".

And that's where my real issue lies. The government's "goal" is not to protect free exercise of religion from anyone except itself. In other words, the government's role is not to protect free exercise of religion. It is to not infringe upon it.

Government wants bigger government

As I thought about what I wrote yesterday, something hit me that was completely lost on me when I wrote it:

Congressman Robert Brady (D-PA) is proposing that the ban against threatening the president be extended to all federal officials (presumably congressmen, judges, etc.) Congressman Pete King (R-NY) is proposing that guns not be allowed within 1000 feet of "powerful federal officials".

I included party affiliations behind each congressman's name to show that the knee-jerk reaction wasn't limited to either party. What didn't hit me at the time was that the limitation on free speech was proposed by a Democrat, and greater gun control was proposed by a Republican. Did these gentlemen forget which party they are members of? I doubt it. Rather, in a rush to take advantage of the crisis and the public's visceral reaction to it, they simply revealed their true, statist colors.

"Tone down the rhetoric"

This is a topic that I really didn't want to weigh in on, but I keep reading about it, and I'm having a hard time not responding to others who have written on it. First, some background: in case you've been living under a rock for the past few days, you've likely heard about Jared Loughner. In response to his shooting spree, much has been written about Mr. Loughner's politics, the politics that may have lead to his actions, and the politics to come.

As to Mr. Loughner's politics, I don't care. In the immediate aftermath of his actions, much was made of his anti-government stance. For many this seemed to place him firmly on the radical right side of the political spectrum. Shortly thereafter, an old friend (acquaintance?) of Mr. Loughner's began tweeting that Mr. Loughner was "quite liberal". And neither side can distance itself from him fast enough. Let's keep our eye on the ball here, though. The shooter is now in custody; he ought to be given a trial and, if convicted, made to answer for his crime(s). The end.

But that's not the end, and we can't keep our eye on the ball. Instead, we're being told to "tone down the rhetoric". Clarence Drupnik, the sheriff of Pima county, where the shooting occurred, has been making news because of comments he made after the shooting, mainly this one:

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous.

I've seen it pointed out that there is nothing inherently political about this statement, and in a vacuum, I would agree. Unfortunately, we don't live in a vacuum, so let's call a spade, a spade. Mr. Drupnik is referring to those on the political right and those who oppose (big) government. (Note that those are two distinctly separate groups.) Based on his statement, Mr. Drupnik thinks that those groups are responsible for Mr. Loughner's actions. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, John Fund thinks that Mr. Drupnik, himself, bears some responsibility for Mr. Loughner's actions. You know who's really responsible for Mr. Loughner's actions? That's right; it's Mr. Loughner.

Unfortunately, though, we're all about to be reminded that our liberty is in the hands of the worst members of our society: those who commit these atrocities or those who pass laws in response to them, take your pick. In its all too predictable knee-jerk reactionary way, congress is already proposing a slew of new laws to "keep this from happening again". Congressman Robert Brady (D-PA) is proposing that the ban against threatening the president be extended to all federal officials (presumably congressmen, judges, etc.) Congressman Pete King (R-NY) is proposing that guns not be allowed within 1000 feet of "powerful federal officials". (Right, the guy who was willing to ignore the law against murder is suddenly going to respect this law. Good thinking, congressman. I'm reminded of the wisdom of Jerry Seinfeld, or at least his writers, here, "You can make all the laws you want, he's still gonna bother people.") What's good for the goose is apparently not good for the gander, and the gulf between what's acceptable for those in power and those who aren't grows ever wider. Isn't anyone disturbed by the fact that federal officials deserve "more" equal protection under the law than the rest of us mere "people"?

Toning down the rhetoric isn't about restoring civilized debate; it's about stifling dissent. It's about chipping away at rights (supposedly) protected by the 1st, 2nd, and 4th amendments. It's about making abundantly clear exactly who rules over whom. Don't misunderstand; I am unequivocally not supporting threats of or actual violence. However, there are already laws against such things. Passing new ones like those described here are about separating the "rulers" from the "people" so that the people can be better controlled.

Gun control at VT

Yesterday, Colin Goddard penned an op-ed piece for CNN. Mr. Goddard is a graduate of Virginia Tech University and an assistant director of legislative affairs at the Brady Campaign. He was also shot, apparently three times, during Seung-Hui Cho's shooting spree at VT back in 2007. In his op-ed, he attempts to make the case for keeping guns off campus, but he also raises a number of other issues that should be given a second look.

The mental health response also failed at Virginia Tech, as it has in other multiple shootings elsewhere. In almost every case, there have been friends, teachers and others who knew the shooter was troubled and likely dangerous. In many cases, including the Virginia Tech shooting, the shooter had sought help, then fell through the cracks due to weaknesses in the system. No one in a position of authority to act listened to and properly reported the warnings.

The shooter was apparently mentally unstable; however, he had the presence of mind to seek out help for his condition. The VT review panel that investigated the incident found that Mr. Cho had a history of mental problems but that none of them were shared between his high school and the college or even within the college due to officials' concerns that to do so would violate federal and/or state privacy laws. The panel's report also cites failure on the part of the Cook Counseling Center to "provide needed support and services" to Cho in 2005 and 2006.

Mr. Goddard points to Mr. Cho's mental health issues and the fact that the National Instant Criminal Background (NICS) Check System, the FBI check mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, should have prevented Mr. Cho from purchasing his weapons.

Seung-Hui Cho was the subject of a court order finding him a danger to himself or others because of mental illness. That court order was not submitted, allowing him to pass two background checks, purchase two guns and kill 32 people and himself.

Mr. Cho purchased his guns via the legally approved method. He would have had to lie on his ATF forms, but the NICS check cleared him. In spite of Mr. Goddard's calls to "do more to keep guns from dangerous people in the first place", the NICS database check that he points to actually worked exactly as it was supposed to work. It's only as good as the information contained in the database, though, and the government (via the court that adjudicated Mr. Cho mentally ill) failed to properly populate said database.

Mr. Goddard then goes on to rail against the so-called "gun show loophole":

Also--startlingly--felons, the dangerously mentally ill and just about anybody can buy firearms without the background check or any paperwork at all. I'm not talking about on the streets or from the "black market," but in public from "private sellers" at advertised events, such as gun shows and in newspaper and catalog ads. In the transactions in which NICS background checks have been done under the Brady law, 1.9 million purchases of guns have been stopped since 1994.

The word "loophole" in this situation a misnomer. What Mr. Goddard refers to is the legal sale of firearms from one private party to another. The fact is, that in most of the country, private parties can sell firearms to each other without any kind of paperwork or records in much the same way you would sell old furniture or a refrigerator. To combat this problem, Mr. Goddard implies that this law should be changed to require NICS checks for all sales. Wait a minute. Didn't Mr. Goddard a few paragraphs back point out that the NICS check doesn't work? Mr. Cho, after all, underwent a background check and passed.

Then there's the statistic that 1.9 million gun sales have been stopped since 1994. According to the Brady Campaign's own website, 4.5 million new guns are sold each year. That means that 2.6% of gun sales have been stopped by the NICS check. (It also means that 97.4% are legal purchases by Mr. Goddard's standards.) Even that incredibly low number of purchases that are stopped is still misleading when you consider that many non-violent crimes and even dishonorable discharges (for things like being gay) from the military disqualify one from gun ownership. False positives in the system (think TSA-style no-fly lists) are also part of this number. In short, one can't conclude, on the basis of Mr. Goddard's statement, that rejection of a gun sale by NICS equates with the stoppage of crime.

But how many dangerous people bought guns through public sales where they knew there would be no background check? We can't know because there aren't records of those transactions to begin with. However, one instance everyone should remember is the Columbine High School massacre. Three of the guns used were purchased through private sales without background checks at a public gun show.

To bring home his point about how great NICS will be for preventing gun violence, Mr. Goddard appeals to the public's emotions by bringing up the Columbine High School tragedy. We've already established, though, that Mr. Cho (the Virginia Tech shooter) underwent a background check and passed. The Columbine tragedy is unrelated in this way to the Virginia Tech massacre. A closer look at the Columbine tragedy reveals, though, that NICS probably wouldn't have helped there either (and didn't since the system had been in place for nearly 6 years). Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris obtained some of their guns via a straw purchase. Another was purchased from a friend (an illegal sale because the two were under 18). The methods via which the two obtained their weapons were already illegal. The NICS system does nothing to prevent illegal sales.

Having, in his mind, adequately demonstrated that NICS is the solution to all the country's gun problems, Mr. Goddard now begins to attack the idea that law abiding citizens should be allowed to carry guns on campus.

Forcing colleges to allow students to carry concealed weapons isn't a solution and it could easily make matters worse. It effectively rewrites the book on how police respond to a situation with an active shooter. The one student with the gun would no longer be the only target -- that person could be one among several or more.

Mr. Cho killed his first victim at 7:15am. He then returned to his dorm room, changed his clothes, and went to the post office around 9am. He then returned to campus (about two hours after the initial attack) and began killing again. Someone called 9-1-1 at this point, but Cho continued shooting for another 10 or so minutes before killing himself. Police would not have been an issue here because they didn't arrive until after the entire episode had concluded. Assuming that Cho hadn't killed himself, it is likely that had students been armed, they would have killed him or at least slowed his progress. Finally, does Mr. Goddard believe that the crazy guy carrying two guns, twenty magazines, four hundred rounds of ammunition, and walking around shooting indiscriminately is indistinguishable to the police from law abiding citizens, guns drawn but most likely cowering under a desk? The victims are the ones not aiming their guns at the police. Let's give people and especially our law enforcement officers at least a little bit of credit here.

The system failed at every step of the way. Mr. Cho was unable to get the help that he requested for his mental condition. The NICS database failed to stop Mr. Cho from purchasing his weapons. The university failed to notify students that a shooter was on the loose that morning (leading Mr. Goddard to go to class when, in his own words, he would have stayed home had he known about the shooting). The police (campus and local) were unable to stop the shooter before he ended his spree by killing himself. The only thing that even had a chance of stopping Mr. Cho sooner was an armed response by the students themselves.

As Mr. Goddard himself says, "Once someone is on campus with guns and intends to kill, we've already lost." "Intends to kill" is the key phrase there, though. Armed, law abiding citizens could have prevented the loss from being as great as it was. In spite of that reality, Mr. Goddard ends his column by extolling his readers to listen to a statement by the head of the NRA in 1999 following the Columbine shooting denouncing guns in schools.

We believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America's schools, period ... with the rare exception of law enforcement officers or trained security personnel.

This statement is obviously taken out of context since Mr. LaPierre was referring to guns in high schools being handled by minors. More importantly, though, it should be noted that Virginia Tech was already a gun free zone prior to Mr. Cho's shooting, and we all know how that turned out.

Just... hold on a second

I came across a number of weird/wacky news stories this morning, and since I didn't really feel like writing very much, I was going to just post a few links with some commentary to accompany them. Then a friend of mine posted a link to an opinion piece entitled "Just Stop" over on the Mesa Democratic Club's website. Well, I loves me some politics, so I went over to read it. The article started out well enough (read: I agreed with it), but then it lost me. Since this friend of mine and I have agreed not to discuss politics over our social network of choice, I decided to write this post.

The article starts out pointing out that Sarah Palin is not a "political outsider", that the Tea Party is not an independent group, and that John McCain no longer has any discernible political positions outside of whatever it takes to get elected. These are all excellent points with which I could not agree more. It's at this point that our respective positions diverge.

Stop pretending that the deficit we’re all facing is the fault of President Obama and the Democratic Congress. During the Bush administration, we went from a surplus to a massive deficit, largely thanks to two wars that were never (until Obama) added to the federal budget—wars, in other words, fought entirely on credit. We compounded the problem with tax cuts that largely benefited the wealthy, and a huge Medicare increase, and all those were also on credit. When the economy tanked in fall 2008, Bush quickly pushed through the TARP bailout, adding to the deficit (but pulling the economy back from the cliff).

President Obama is not entirely responsible for the deficit. He is quickly adding to it, though. Yes, Obama added the wars to the federal budget, but that does not change the fact that they (along with the much of the rest of the budget) are still paid for on credit. And while Bush may have pulled the economy back from the cliff, he did not change it's direction; it is still headed that way under Obama.

Stop pretending that the near-ruinous economic crash that we’re still reeling from was Obama’s fault, too. The root causes stretch back decades, to a continued process of deregulating financial institutions, allowing them ever more leeway to prey on the vulnerable, to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them, and to manipulate financial products that were ultimately guaranteed to fall apart.

And stop pretending that Obama and the current Congress should have been able to fix the two above problems in 18 months, when it took eight years to create the first one and literally decades of foxes guarding financial henhouses to create the second.

Again, the author is correct that the economic crash was not caused by Obama, and that it is unrealistic to think that the government would be able to fix it (I would argue, in any amount of time). The author implicitly places the blame on the private sector, however, when he talks about mortgages and financial products. Those mortgages that people couldn't afford were promoted and backed by the government in the form of Fannie and Freddie and FHA and VA loans. Obama has continued this process with the homebuyer tax credit and the HAFA and HAMP programs. For non-mortgage related financial instruments, look no further than the Federal Reserve serving as the "lender of last resort". Even though the Fed is nominally a private entity, it's ludicrous to think that they really are, and when banks get into trouble, the Fed bails them out via the power of "printing" money, a power that Congress abdicated to it long ago.

Stop pretending that saying “No” is the same as governing. We pay our legislators good money to go to Washington and make difficult decisions that keep the country moving. By voting “No” on every bill, by refusing to negotiate in good faith, by deciding that short-term political advantage was more important than the everyday lives of Americans, the Republicans set back our recovery, made needed reforms fall short, and put our lives and our economy at unnecessary risk.

I hate the idea that governing means "doing something". Saying "no" is a legitimate act, one in which all politicians engage because nobody can agree on the exact role of government. In this way, saying "no" is doing something. That is not to say that Republicans are not being obstructionist for political gains; however, the author would be better advised to point out Republican hypocrisy on things like expanding Medicare under Bush but railing against the PPACA, now.

Stop pretending that the economy is magic. You can’t continue to give millionaires and billionaires huge tax cuts, make tiny, cosmetic cuts at the margins of things, and still reduce the deficit. You can’t create jobs without spending money. Tax cuts for millionaires and up are not stimulative because those people don’t spend the money from the cut—it’s not like you’re giving them a wad of cash and sending them to the store. When you put an unemployed person to work or give a tax cut to a poor or middle class family, that’s exactly what it’s like—they go buy things they need and those dollars flow through the economy, creating jobs and wealth everywhere they go.

I'm not sure anyone is pretending that the economy is magic; however it is far more complex than most imagine. Not only that, but the government via regulation or the Fed often arbitrarily moves the market in ways that could only be predicted by magic. The author is correct that tax cuts (to anyone) won't balance the budget. He is mistaken, though, if he thinks that tax increases will do the job, either. Federal spending is out of control, and the only way to save this country's economy, over the long term, is to start cutting Social Security, Medicare, the military, everything.

And stop talking about stimulus. It's too bad that people believe that Keynesian economics preaches deficit spending. Keynes, mistaken as I believe his theories to be, spoke of stimulative spending out of savings. Yes, it takes money to create jobs, but it also takes money to keep those jobs. To think that the government (or anyone) can throw a one-time bucket of cash at the economy to "unstick" it is ridiculous. It will only lead to the government having to throw ever increasing amounts of money at the economy. It's amazing to me that most people agree that easy credit was the proximate cause of the economic conditions in which we all now live and at the same time believe that if the government just borrows more from China that that will fix the problem. We will end up back in this very situation again, only it will be much, much worse.

The things that Pelosi and Reid have supported these past 18 months have been programs that will help America move into the 21st century. Health care reform, in spite of great efforts at pretending, is not a “government takeover” of health care—it institutionalizes, in law, the presence of the health insurance industry, and gives that industry millions of new clients.

Whoa! Stop right there! Did you catch that? The government, under Democratic control, via the coercion of law, just delivered millions of customers to the health insurance industry. It's not just the Republicans that are in bed with big business.

It will, in the long run, reduce the deficit and create a healthier nation, by allowing more people to get preventive care and long-term care and keeping the sick and impoverished from turning to emergency rooms when there’s a crisis.

This entire problem was created by the government in the first place, though.

Stop pretending that “lifelong politician” is some kind of curse. Most people who hold public office do so because they genuinely want to help people, they genuinely want to make government responsive to the needs of their fellow Americans, and they’re willing to put themselves on the line every few years to get the chance to do so.

Here's a thought experiment: If "most" people who hold public office genuinely want to help people and make government better, why hasn't it happened?

Stop pretending that “big government” is the problem. When’s the last time you were seriously inconvenienced or injured by something that big government did?

Gay rights, TSA body scanners, highway checkpoints, the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretaps, extra-judicial assassinations, indefinite detentions, inflation, etc. Don't tell me that (some of) these don't affect me. When one person's rights are trampled, everybody's are, and that's just at the federal level. Not only that, but all of this ignores the fact that every year I have to fill out a number of forms figuring out, on the government's behalf, how much money they want from me, and then send them that amount under the threat of force if I either figure wrong or don't send the right amount.

Stop pretending that anybody’s going to come and take your guns away. [...] There’s no truth to it, there’s never been any truth to it, and if you actually believe it, you just might be so simple-minded that you shouldn’t be trusted with a firearm.

They may not be trying to take them away, per se, but the laws (at least in CA) are clearly not conducive to gun purchases or ownership. One must wait 10 days to purchase any gun, even if one already owns one or one hundred of them. AB962, once in effect, will make the mail-ordering of handgun ammunition illegal and require fingerprints be taken of law-abiding citizens when they do purchase ammunition. It is illegal to actually carry one's gun in a manner that would actually allow it to be used effectively in self-defense, and many counties around the state deny CCW applications to all but the wealthy and connected.

Perhaps the author can explain to me why the BATFE and the state of CA keep records of gun sales if not to retain the possibility of rounding up guns in the future. I realize that that has a bit of a "tin foil hat" sound to it, but it is a legitimate question.

The author goes off the rails at this point with a lot of name calling. He tries to bring it home at the end, though.

Finally, stop pretending that voting doesn’t matter, and don’t let the 2010 Class of Crazy take office and convince you otherwise.

A variation on the previous thought experiment I proposed is apropos here: If voting mattered, why is government the way that it is? Perhaps it's because we've gotten the very government for which we voted. Voting doesn't matter and arguably does more harm than good. A voter is statistically more likely to be killed going to or coming from his/her polling place than to cast the deciding vote in an election. I refer the reader my previous posts on voting and the nature of government.