Recently in Liberty vs. State Category

Dave Ridley has some decent advice about how to deal with cops if you have to. It never is good to provoke the folks with guns and a presumed monopoly on local or 'state' power. This is especially true at the outset of a special family trip. Fifteen years ago I didn't back down when the trooper told me I had a suspended license and shouldn't be driving to a Red Sox game. Fortunately my 'client' (the reason I considered it work) flashed his license and volunteered to drive after realizing we might miss the game if I didn't back down quick.

A couple weeks ago, I backed down because I didn't want to disappoint my wife and son as we set out for a game this summer. I always slow down when I enter East Chatham because I too, live in such a small hamlet just over the hills. In fact, the trooper who passed just before this one, didn't have cause to stop me in the village proper as we passed. Apparently the one who sits right at the sign that changes it to 55 did, as I naturally increased my speed leaving the village down the straight away. As we were pulling into the house right there, he flew past and had to turn around at the Cottage Diner. It was enough time to shuffle everyone inside before the incident continued. While I'm no Dave Ridley, my limits of respect and caution are honed enough to know the limits of my rights and his presumed authority over me. I was none too happy about being told to get back in the car and he knew it.

Dear Professor,

I recently had the opportunity of hearing one your commentaries on a local public radio station. I hope that the transcript, podcast, mp3 or whatever is available soon so I can better determine what you actually said as I drove to my next service call.

While I dropped out of formal education sometime after a bachelor's degree, I do pride myself on being somewhat aware of my surroundings and have managed to survive until the ripe age of forty. While that may not qualify me to take umbrage over issues of the world with someone like yourself, I do question your recent commentary about Al Gore's energy call in the next ten to twenty years.

You see, it's not that I don't believe the world is warming based on carbon emissions, it may in fact be doing so. It's the idea that we somehow have to act collectively to solve this problem. I'm somewhat partial to the school of Austrian Economics, the basis of which were many writings by Ludwig Von Mises. The basic idea is that centralized planning doesn't work and never will. They never taught me that back in seminary and I often resent it.

Somewhere in the bowels of the Albany bureaucrazy a satisfied group of middling freedom apostates will be studying the effect of violent video games on children. This little piece of legislation was recently signed by New York Governor David Paterson. Given Mr. Paterson's age and visual disability I highly doubt that he has any understanding of modern video gaming. He doesn't seem the type to spend an all nighter with buddies at a LAN party or partake in the satisfying camaraderie of online companions exploring the World of Warcraft.

As someone who has been associated with computer games their entire life, I would submit that the violence of the state is a far greater risk to our society than the blips that pass before us on screens that elicit nothing more than an active imagination. A video game has never bombed a third world village, never drafted young people for war and never imposed a tax with the threat of violence behind it. As these folks gather in plush conference rooms with hot coffee and fresh pastries, starting a flurry of communication to tackle the project and justify their violence based salaries, I would submit that labels and other niceties that will be affixed to these products will do nothing to slake the thirst of gamers for their free market products that hurt no one but the occasional bruised sensibility that passes for the modern, effete progressive on a high horse.

One wonders if the old 3D Caveman game applies in this situation. After all that was a world premised on survival and violence. And while it probably has passed it's life cycle in the real gaming world, it's still violence right ? I'm guessing the anti-statist world of Grand Theft Auto is the target of this inquisition, not the cuddly metro cavemen we see on the Geico commercials.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The problem with the Constitution is that a priesthood took it over about two hundred years ago. That order comes in two flavors, red & blue. While many on both sides of the 'guns' issue will have a field day of discontent and celebration, any cause for such has long been lost in a ghastly display of reason based on hierarchy and plain old power.

Seems to me that the average folk throughout the ages can easily interpret the second amendment as simply " Well, we had to take up arms against Britain, you never know. So let's not abridge the right to do so." That's now called 'originalism' (though its doubtful that any current justice in that camp would deign to come down to such prosaic and simple language or justification, they still have to hang out together), and while its often rendered quaint by the devious and cunning brutes who feel their relationship to power entitles them to decree, it has become the last weak stand by those who counter the blue players on the board near check mate time.

I can never understand why my fellow citizens run to their elected officials in order to enforce common sense and decency.

This last Monday I mentioned to my wife after going swimming with the kids, that I should go down to the Town meeting and see what my fellow citizens have in store for me. I regret not going now after copping out about heat, time and other previous wasted efforts of energy that is government and its muted participation. It seems like governmentis has creeped in the form of a 'noise' ordinance however and July 14th is on my calendar now.

While some in the minarchy camp are deriding the effort of Crispin Sartwell and his challenge to statists everywhere, I'm rather enjoying these YouTube spots. It's kind of like bite size packages of anarchy in University quality lectures, without having to get a parking permit. While we may be no closer to the pure Pennsylvania ticket (especially now that Kent has moved away) the challenge of the state as legitimate continues. Perhaps political posturing and pandering aren't the way as technology opens these new paths. But I do wonder what would have happened to Thoreau's soul had the Internet been available 150 years ago . . .

Despite all the ruminations about the LP and it's odd place in the Universe, one has to wonder if voters ever read articles about the sleazy activities of Democrats and Republicans and even care. I suspect that they do not.

But if they did and wanted to do anything about it on a meaningful level, could they ? After all, the either/or aspect of the process offers few choices in most races. As much as we may gripe or complain about third party choices/efforts for President, there are little to none in terms of choices in most Congressional and local races. While the smug anarchist may find delicious humor or satisfaction in this fate, the average person is left wanting. Not so much in terms of their own immediate benefit, but more in terms of meaning and hope. After all, hope and meaning are what the big players ply their craft in. Yet when it comes down to it, the background noise and real happenings are disgusting examples of cronyism and the pathetic need for attention amongst their fellow parasites as the rest suffer. Even the good anarchists couldn't avoid this if their intentions were noble and hearts pure and power to absolve the state absolute. Sleaze begets sleaze.

Late one Friday afternoon last Fall my father and I jumped into his van to get my car down at the dealership. It was a fairly decent week as far as business goes and we were happily discussing the weekend's plans and not paying very much attention when the State Trooper SUV flew by us around the Elk's club. Of course when he wheeled around and stopped us for simply not having our seat belts on, he had our undivided attention. While my Dad may be getting too old for the fight, I snarled back at the cop that " I don't believe in the law " for the reason I wasn't wearing mine. While I usually just buckle out of habit anymore, occasionally I do get stopped for forgetting. This might be due to the exponential growth of the police state in the northern part of our sleepy little county, but I still can't forgive Papa Cuomo for this horrible law.

This upcoming week New York has once again decided to sweep its citizenry with the insidious demand that they protect themselves from the potential medical costs the state might incur if they were injured in an accident because they were not wearing a seatbelt. Last year there were over fifty nine thousand tickets during this time. If at least fifty thousand were successfully prosecuted at a hundred bucks a pop, that's a cool five million in local and state coffers. The jury's still out whether it saves any lives.

But there has never been any question that this law was one of worst rationalizations to continue the machinations of the nanny state and so many others that have followed. Is saving a single life from itself worth the cost of abandoning the principles of individual rights and self ownership ? While this is the crux of libertarian values, few recognize it as such any more. What we did to the cop that day is kind of funny.

As hardcore libertarians decry the recent controversy at LPHQ and shake their fists at this horrible and obvious capitulation to statism, one wonders how their ardent advocation of free markets and spirit can possibly have any effect in a world of real power. And while the ED who contributed to this flap is gone, the howling and the frustration is blamed on politics and the unworthy who would continue to participate in it. Yet the examination of why we continue and the nature of that fight must always be examined in context.

This past weekend I resisted the temptation to hit the Sunday morning political yap circuit in favor of some Netflix online. I came across one of my favorite flicks, The Mission. It is a story about the Jesuit Missions and the conflict between the Spanish and Portuguese colonial powers during the 1750s, near what is now Paraguay and Brazil. Starring Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons, it tells the story of the conflict between eternal love on Earth and the power of the state and church on the people who would promote that love here on earth. In many ways it parallels the hideous contradiction that Libertarian politics has become. At once, it is the unique assertion that a non-violent attitude and approach will always suffer in an arena rife with hypocrisy, hate and acknowledgment that a monopoly of force is the only way to achieve the 'good'. I'm pretty sure George S. and Chris Wallace & Matthews didn't go into quite this that morning.

Jeff Dulgar, a columnist at the 'Daily Nexus' at the University of Santa Barbara has created a snit piece about third parties and the Libertarian Party particularly. While this appears to be the indulgence of a youthful prattler for the status quo, as a former Californian, I have many Republican relatives on the left coast who feel the same as Mr. Dulgar, even if it is based on vague assumptions and chocked with common platitudes.

While it may be acceptable to engage in Limbaugh tactics when it comes to smelly liberals and the like, Dulgar displays his ignorance of the Third Party fight as well as any apologist for the Red & Blue. It may indeed be inevitable that the two parties will win based on the winner take all aspect of the system, but it is by no means certain that alternative issues and concerns will be well placed in the mainstream sensibilities. Asking activists to play in the muck of pluralism is one thing, but projecting one's own failure is another. The Ron Paul campaign is evidence that any 'libertarian' spirit in the GOP tops out at 3-7% of those eligible voters. Mr. Dulgar really ought to check with his comrades in the duopoly about the battle for ballot access, the war on drugs, the national debt, creeping Empire and the free bottle of pills in his grandmother's medicine cabinet. Sorry, but I remember Jim Jones in the seventies and I'd rather not be associated with the ultimate ruin of the country at the hands of mealy mouthed politicians who will do anything to get elected.