Movie Preview: Sucker Punch

Legal System, Nanny Statism, Police Statism, Pop Culture, Private Crime
By / / 3 minutes of reading
Share

Zack Snyder, director of 300 and Watchmen, has a new film project coming out in 2011 that may be of interest to genre-loving libertarians: the upcoming movie Sucker Punch. It may not have an overtly libertarian theme or plot, but it does appear to center around an issue that is relevant to libertarians, particularly women and libertarians interested in the time period in the US in which this film is set, the 1950s.

The premise and setting of Sucker Punch remind me of Angelina Jolie’s film Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood, written by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame, and set in 1928. Both films depict periods in the United States in which it was all too easy to commit someone, particularly a woman, to a mental institution against her will. In Changeling, Jolie’s character is involuntarily committed to the local hospital’s psychopathic ward by a corrupt cop for political/job preservation reasons. In Sucker Punch, the main character, Baby-Doll (what’s with the name?), is involuntarily committed to a mental institution and scheduled for a barbaric lobotomy. I suppose we’ll have to wait to find out why and by whom she was committed.

So, in Sucker Punch, as in Changeling, it appears we will be presented with a story illustrating (wrongful) involuntary commitment, the unequal status of women in recent US history, a struggle for freedom and to maintain one’s sanity in an oppressive medical institution where the authorities insist you are insane. Unlike Changeling, which was a historical film, Sucker Punch will be an action fantasy.

…

Movie Preview: Sucker PunchRead More »

Movie Preview: Sucker Punch Read Post »

Hunter S. Thompson’s Last Stand

Legal System, Non-Fiction Reviews, Private Crime
By / / 15 minutes of reading
Share

Dear Dr. Thompson: Felony Murder, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Last Gonzo Campaign
Ghost Road Press, 2010

by Matthew L. Moseley

Reviewed by Ryan McMaken

Hunter S. Thompson was one of the 20th century’s greatest literary social critics, and one of the most anti-authoritarian. In the tradition of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken, Thompson never flinched at exposing the hypocrisies and contradictions of American life and ideology, and his contempt for authority permeated not just his writing but his life as well.

Thompson killed himself in 2005, shortly before his remains were shot out of a giant cannon in Aspen, Colorado. Yet, right up to the end, Thompson made himself a gadfly and a nuisance and an enemy of the agents of the state who have so much power over the lives of the powerless.

In Dear Dr. Thompson, writer Matthew Moseley has provided an entertaining first person account of Hunter S. Thompson and his “Last Gonzo Campaign.” Through the book, which is both a true crime account and a study of Thompson the man, Moseley details Thompson’s involvement in the Lisl Auman case in which, Auman, then barely out of her teens, was kidnapped by a drug addled gangbanger who murdered a police officer. Later, prosecutors claimed Auman had assisted the murderer and, thanks to media hysteria and prosecutorial recklessness in the name of “sending a message” to cop killers, Auman was sentenced to life in prison without parole under the felony murder law in Colorado.

Then one day, while serving her life sentence in a Colorado prison, Auman wrote a letter to Hunter S. Thompson a few hours away in Aspen. Thompson’s assistant Deborah Fuller read the letter aloud to Thompson. The letter spawned the “Free Lisl!” campaign which would turn out to be Thompson’s last great campaign against injustice.

The Murder

Lisl Auman was handcuffed in the back of a police car in the parking lot of an apartment complex when skinhead Matthaeus Jaenig, whom Auman had met that morning, murdered a police officer.

Denver’s Westword newspaper provides a concise description of the scene: …

Hunter S. Thompson’s Last StandRead More »

Hunter S. Thompson’s Last Stand Read Post »

Rule By Overseer

Legal System, Police Statism, Statism, Totalitarianism
By / / 3 minutes of reading
Share

Radley Balko highlights the ridiculous case of a man arrested for interfering with police for filming them while they are on the job. Considering a passive observer, filming an arrest, to be “interfering” must be a special police corollary to the uncertainty principle that I missed in physics class. A friend asked the question, “how can one know what not to do?” This is a good question. If the laws on the books, and publicly clarified by the “authorities” are no shield, then what do we have?

As I mentioned before, police interactions with “civilians” are similar to the interactions between enslavers and slaves of the past. The rule on what can and cannot be done are set by the government official with whom you are interacting. Instead of rule by law, we have rule by overseer. Instead of viewing the police officer with whom you are speaking as a man as yourself, consider him a would-be slave master. He is has little reason to doubt his superiority to you. He has rights, and we have responsibilities.

How can it be otherwise? Whenever there is an asymmetry in recognized rights, there is great danger in interacting. During such interactions, the well-being of the oppressed is almost entirely dependent on the goodwill of the oppressor.

Consider the risks involved when an ordinary citizen has an interaction with the police. If a police officer is the violator, except in extremely egregious cases, nothing will happen to him. He will not be immediately fired after the accusation. A very bad outcome for a police officer will be him being fired, with no criminal record, and the ability to compete for a private sector job just like everyone else. Even in the case of him being prosecuted, he will likely be acquitted, and even if he is found guilty, he will be punished much less severely than an ordinary citizen.

On the other hand, consider the risk for a citizen. If a person with a regular job is arrested and held for several days, he may be fired from his job. An employer may not be able to afford to employ someone who is not at work, irrespective of the reason behind the absence. That means that even a misbehaving officer can ruin a person financially, even if that person is ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing. As I have mentioned before, this asymmetry is similar to that which existed between blacks and whites in the US (and especially the American South) prior to the middle of the 20th century. In such an environment, rather than being oppressive, segregation is actually desirable for the oppressed class. Unfortunately, the government does not permit mundanes, as the heroic William Norman Grigg calls ordinary citizens, to segregate themselves from the state.

Rule By Overseer Read Post »

An Issue of Monopoly Justice

Legal System
By / / 2 minutes of reading
Share

Vail Daily reports an interesting case:

Martin Joel Erzinger, 52, faces two misdemeanor traffic charges stemming from a July 3 incident when he allegedly hit bicyclist Dr. Steven Milo from behind then sped away, according to court documents.

Milo and his attorney, Harold Haddon, are livid about the prosecution’s decision to drop the felony charge. They filed their objection Wednesday afternoon, the day after prosecutors notified Haddon’s office by fax of their decision.

. . . Erzinger manages more than $1 billion in assets. He would have to publicly disclose any felony charge within 30 days, according to North American Securities Dealers regulations.

Milo wrote in a letter to District Attorney Mark Hurlbert that the case “has always been about responsibility, not money.”

“Mr. Erzinger struck me, fled and left me for dead on the highway,” Milo wrote. “Neither his financial prominence nor my financial situation should be factors in your prosecution of this case.”

Hurlbert said Thursday that, in part, this case is about the money.

“The money has never been a priority for them. It is for us,” Hurlbert said. “Justice in this case includes restitution and the ability to pay it.”

Some critics of libertarians claim that wealthy people could regularly “get away with murder” since they could simply pay restitution rather than be punished. This position makes the error of assuming monopoly justice, however. This case is a problem of monopoly justice, rather than of wealth. The fact that the state is the monopoly provider of justice means that the victim only has a single place to make a complaint, and if the prosecutor does not provide satisfactory service, he simply must live with being dissatisfied. There are no competitors to which he may appeal. Under a stateless system, arbitrators would have to produce rulings which tend to satisfy all parties. Without a state, a felony conviction would not automatically have the power to severely curtail a person’s ability to earn a living. Without a state, a victim would not be required to accept an “advocate” who disregarded the victim’s own wishes.

An Issue of Monopoly Justice Read Post »

Aphoristic Observation: Retributive Punishment Is to Restorative Justice as Egalitarianism Is to Equality

Legal System, Libertarian Theory, Private Security & Law
By / / 1 minute of reading
Share

Instead of raising the victim back up — to balance the scales of Lady Justice, so to speak — it seeks to drag the criminal down to the victim’s diminished level.

~*~

Cross-posted at Is-Ought GAP.

Aphoristic Observation: Retributive Punishment Is to Restorative Justice as Egalitarianism Is to Equality Read Post »

Scroll to Top