On the Boston Lockdown

Immigration, Police Statism, Private Crime, The Left, The Right, Totalitarianism
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One doesn’t have to be any sort of radical to be appalled that thousands of police, working with federal troops and agents, would “lockdown” an entire city—shutting down public transit, closing virtually all businesses, intimidating anyone from leaving their home, and going door to door with SWAT teams in pursuit of one suspect. The power of the police to “lockdown” a city is an authoritarian, borderline totalitarian power. A “lockdown” is prison terminology for forcing all prisoners into their cells. They did not do this to pursue the DC sniper, or to go after the Kennedy assassin, and I fear the precedent. It is eerie that this happened in an American city, and it should be eerie to you, no matter where you fall on the spectrum. You can tell me that most people in Boston were happy to go along with it, but that’s not really the point, either. If two criminals can bring an entire city to its knees like this with the help of the state, then terrorism truly is a winning strategy. (And we should also keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of the massive police response did not aid in capturing the suspect—it ultimately turned on that old fashioned breakthrough—a normal denizen calling the authorities with information.)

If America suffered a bombing like the Boston Marathon atrocity every week, America would feel like a very different place, although the homicide rate would only be about one percent higher. I acknowledge the maiming was on a mass scale, but this kind of attack has to be taken in perspective in terms of how much of a risk it poses to the average American, because we have to consider what response the people would tolerate in the event of more frequent or far worse attacks.

If the people of the United States will cheer seeing a whole city shut down, even for just a day, in the event of a horrific attack that nevertheless had 1/1000th the fatalities and about two percent of the casualties of 9/11, what would Americans support in light of another 9/11? What about a dirty bomb going off in a major city? The question has nothing to do with what government wants to do, or whether police statism is a goal or simply a consequence. What will the *people* want and expect the government to do if tens of thousands were chaotically killed and injured in a terrible terror attack, or if many small attacks hit the country? I fear they would welcome the abolition of liberty altogether, given their reaction to last night. That, of course, is altogether the wrong response. If we cannot look at the police reaction last night very critically, there is really no hope for even moderate protection of our civil liberties today.

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Maybe The Journal News did us a favor after all

Firearms, Private Crime
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Print and online media were predictably flooded with stories on guns and gun control in the week following the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Few stories, however, attracted attention like this one published by The Journal News, a White Plains, New York-based paper, which included an interactive map pinpointing the names and locations of registered handgun permit holders throughout two suburban New York counties. The Journal News did nothing wrong in obtaining the information; handgun permits in New York are public records, and a Freedom of Information Act request was all the paper needed to get them.

Although legal, their action is problematic for other reasons, not the least of which is that the story accompanying the map starts off with the shooting of a local woman by her mentally disturbed 77-year-old neighbor, who “had amassed a cache of weapons — including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition — without any neighbors knowing.” Which seems to beg the question of how a map of registered permit holders might have alerted this person’s neighbors to his firearms ownership status. Also, there is no way of knowing who owns rifles and shotguns, even though they’re just as lethal as handguns, because New York does not require ownership permits for them. So what legitimate public interest is served by a newspaper outing legal handgun owners, who presumably (because felons cannot own firearms) have not committed any crimes?

Whatever their motivation, The Journal News was perhaps not prepared for the firestorm of criticism it ignited, which has prompted them to hire armed security for their editorial offices:

The armed guards — hired from local private security companies — have been stationed in The Journal News’s headquarters and in a satellite office in West Nyack, N.Y., since last week, said Janet Hasson, the president and publisher of The Journal News Media Group.

“The safety of my staff is my top priority,” Ms. Hasson said in a telephone interview.

Quite understandable, but for a newspaper that apparently believes the presence of guns in their readers’ neighborhoods constitutes a safety risk they should know about, doesn’t it strike anyone as ironic that it would then hire people with guns to protect its staff? The only point they seem to be proving is that guns help people feel safer. So wouldn’t a neighborhood full of legally-owned firearms be among the safest places to live? We already know the answer to that¹.

¹ With the caveat, of course, that mandatory gun ownership is no more libertarian than gun restrictions.

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On the sexual (and political) exploitation of children

Police Statism, Private Crime
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Jerry SanduskyOf all the child sex abuse allegations levied against retired Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, none perhaps is more disturbing than the report that he used his non-profit foundation Second Mile to gain access to young boys — not only for himself, but for donors to his organization.  Sexually assaulting children is by itself a monstrous act to contemplate; the idea that they may be pimped out to others is nearly unfathomable.

Yet to hear the mainstream media report it might lead one to believe that the problem of child sexual slavery is reaching horrifying levels in the U. S., and while it’s certainly not something to be ignored, it’s also not the “epidemic” the alarmists — and especially law enforcement — have portrayed it as.

One example of this media-fueled hysteria is a report released in September 2010 by the Women’s Funding Network, which earned them a national spotlight, not to mention an invitation from a House subcommittee, before which WFN chief program officer Deborah Richardson breathlessly warned that child prostitution was “exploding” in the U. S. — anywhere from 20 percent in New York to 65 percent in Minnesota.  Lock up your daughters!

The study focused in particular on classified ad sites such as Backpage.com and Craigslist, whose adult sections, it claimed, were enabling the rapid expansion of the child sex trade.  Craigslist succumbed to pressure brought by numerous U. S. Attorneys and closed its adult section, but The Village Voice, whose parent company owns Backpage, decided to do its own review of the study, and found it was based on looking at the pictures of girls in sex ads on the Internet — and making assumptions that a certain percentage of those ads must be for underage sex workers.  There was nothing remotely scientific about the data acquisition or methodology; the research group almost literally made up most of the data.

Craigslist sex adDespite its questionable methods and conclusions, the study’s findings blew across the media landscape like a summer wildfire.  Its numbers were reported without any critical analysis in papers such as USA Today and the Detroit Free Press, and cited by actress (and sex trafficking activist) Demi Moore, whose Web site still links to the WFN study.

None of this means that the child sex trade doesn’t exist, or that there aren’t a lot more Jerry Sanduskys lurking out there.  But it does mean that publicizing bogus studies without any critical context can lead to bad policy decisions by lawmakers and law enforcement agencies.  And we end up with Megan’s Law and Jessica’s Law and the Adam Walsh Act and other ill-conceived laws, all named after dead kids to make them seem critical to civilization’s continued existence, and not the further expansion of state power that they really are.

The air had barely escaped an Orlando courtroom following the Casey Anthony trial, in which she was found not guilty of murdering her two-year-old daughter, before an activist began pushing for a “Caylee’s Law”, which would have made it a felony for parents not to report a missing child within 24 hours.  It is precisely during these times of high emotion, when sensationalized cases of crimes against children make headlines and inflame radio personalities, that such laws should not be considered.  For they often serve only to increase the power of the police state without doing much to protect their intended beneficiaries.  Politically popular and emotionally resonant they may be, but dead kids make for bad laws.

Raising awareness of social ills is important, but so is truth and justice, and the media serve neither when they engage in reporting that looks less like responsible journalism and more like alarmist propaganda for an ever-encroaching state.

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Parallel Justice in Germany

Democracy, Legal System, Police Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law
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According to Deutsche-Welle, Muslim communities in Germany are often seeking private arbitration in criminal cases, in opposition to the state “justice” system. This apparently alarms some people. It is a common cry among the politically active conservative set that the liberal embrace of multiculturalism is leading to a fragmented Europe. Consider this note from the article, however:

“When a serious crime is committed, German police step in to investigate what’s happened,” he said. “But parallel to that, special Muslim arbitrators, or so called peace judges, are commissioned by the families concerned to mediate and reach an out-of-court settlement. We’re talking about a tradition that’s more than a thousand years old in Muslim societies.”

I wonder how long it will take for someone to claim that the practice of a 1000+ year old tradition is the result of modern liberalism’s undermining of European values? I’m sure they’ll work out a way to prove that in centuries past, Muslims (and other religious groups) in Europe deferred to secular, socialist democracy.

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Anders Behring Breivik and Norwegian Prisons

Legal System, Libertarian Theory, Nanny Statism, Private Crime, Private Security & Law
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The latest news from Norway is the prison that might, for the next 21 years, be a home for Anders Behring Breivik. After reviewing the videos and photos, I must say, Ohio State offered me no better when I went there on scholarship some years ago (and my scholarship was only good for four years). My dorm mates were generally more presentable, perhaps, but I never got a hot blonde personal trainer. Halden Prison almost seems designed to entice the vacillating young psychopath, who has not yet worked up the gumption, to go ahead and follow through on his dreams.

It is a subject that, for the modern American, is begging for ridicule and parody. I myself nearly dipped into it in the first paragraph, and I admit that the idea of a man murdering so many innocents and thereby earning an all-expenses-paid stay at the Halden Resort rankles a bit. The fact that the descendants of the Vikings are responsible adds another fascinatingly perverse element to it.

And yet… does the modern American, currently occupied with mocking Scandinavia, not have a closer target for his contempt? Is the prison system that he is forced to subsidize any less perverse and appalling? Might one not even argue — I almost hesitate to type the words — that the Norwegian way, though indisputably stupid, is superior to the American way? Not if one is running for office, of course, but those of us not connected to politics, i.e., those of us who can still afford to use our thinking organ, might wish to examine things with a critical eye.

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