I think what follows qualifies for the term.
I don't follow QandO Blog on a daily basis. I check in every so often. Last night I did just that, and came across this entry documenting the federal jury service of Dale Franks, one of the principal self-described libertarian writers of that blog. "Free Markets, Free People;" so they say. Well, let's see about that.
In short, "Mr. Rhett" got stopped at the San Ysidro border from Mexico into the U.S. while going about the affairs of his business: his life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Without putting up any resistance, or doing harm to a soul, border agents discovered he was transporting a significant amount of an herb that "the public," according to Franks, has deemed "contraband." (It's always convenient to have euphemisms close at hand; it really greases the skids when it comes to lying to one's self, or others.) Here's Franks:
So, essentially, we sent Mr. Rhett to a ten-year stretch on the federal pokey.
It was really an interesting process—from my point of view, if not Mr. Rhett's. Especially the deliberations. We really did go through the exhibits carefully, in some cases finding information that hadn't been mentioned in the trial. We had quite a bit of argument, and really questioned one another's assumptions and conclusions. And we did it all civilly.
It was a good experience. My only regret is that we really couldn't honestly find enough reasonable doubt to acquit Mr. Rhett. We really doubted he was the mastermind behind all this. He was just the driver. But, he was the one that got caught, and when you assume the risk, well, you assume the risk.
Well, at least "[i]t was really an interesting process," and "...a good experience." There's that. In my book, Franks is just engaging in a round-about way of describing a hard on, and hey, it only cost a peaceful man minding his own business 10 years of the time of his one and only life. Never discount the value of a hard on.
So, here are my three comments to the post, in rather quick succession (with an edit of two for correction):
I never imagined it could be such risky business running drugs with "libertarians" in the house.
Oh, well; you have traffic. There’s that. From the looks, little of it libertarian. But I suspect you know they know, a long time ago.
Here’s to fancy "legal" arguments. Argue it up, Franks. A man is paying 10 years of his life for the sake of your technical arguing prowess (if not hard on). I’m impressed.
***
"Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." — from The Law - Frédéric Bastiat
***
Franks:
"Well, I’m not an opponent of jury nullification, per se. I think I am, however, against its use to operate against a policy with which I personally disagree. I would push for it in a case of injustice, but, since I live in a country where the public ultimately sets policy, policy disagreements aren’t in my view, good enough to justify it."
First, nobody is or should imply that you had any obligation to put yourself at risk by scamming your way onto the jury so you could hang it. On the other hand, I would applaud such monkey-wrenching, considering that 10 years of an innocent man’s life is at stake — not to mention the disastrous long-term effect on any children he might have, wife, and other family. Did he employ people now out of a job? ...And other ["unimportant"] considerations like that.
You did, however, have a moral obligation to make your "policy" view clear to the judge and prosecutors, letting them know, in no uncertain terms, that if they put you on the jury, then it’s an automatic not-guilty unless they can show that Mr. Rhett actually objectively harmed somebody.
What is clearly implied by the quote, however, is that policy set in some fashion by what you term "the public" can’t rise to the level of "injustice." So, presumably, it would have been "unjust" had, for instance, the prosecutors misapplied one of the charges against him, or, say, demanded a lesser or greater penalty than "the book" called for.
So you’ve just redeemed Jim Crow laws, institutionalized slavery...hell, even the Nuremberg Laws. All "public policy."
I guess the only way to achieve outrage, in your mind, is if the numbers on your slide rule don’t work out just right and that exalted "public policy" isn’t quite efficient enough for your tastes. Then again, there’s also the hard-on element, as noted above.
In a sane, rational, and just world, you wouldn’t be able to live down taking 10 years of a man’s life in your entire lifetime without just cause; and stepping into a voting booth to elect people to enact "legislation" to assuage "public" irrational fear of "them drugs" — exposing "public" foolishness in falling for any hysteria professional liars dream up next — doesn’t count. I hope the few true libertarians who still come around here never let you forget who is the innocent man, and who is the guilty man. Wanna guess which one is which, and why?
Utterly disgusting, and you should be ashamed of yourself for the rest of your miserable life.
If you feel like chiming in, I'd suggest any comment you write would be better served over at that entry than here.
I just commented over there, he'll probably kill it.
My hands are actually shaking, I'm so pissed.
You know, when I read that last night that was similar to my reaction. Bea actually got irritated with me because she began to relate something or the other, and I just couldn't take my eyes off the screen.
I guess what made matters worse is that when I first started reading it, I expected first to be reading a story of how he got kicked out of the jury pool. Then, when that didn't happen, I expected to read how he either hung the jury or managed to convince them to nullify the law, and then to admit he voted not guilty initially just lured me in even more.
So, what a fool am I, I guess. I just couldn't hardly believe what I was seeing, and then to see all his choirboy commenters servicing his big fat hard on made it all the worse.
Well, at least I no longer have any doubt what that place is about, nor Franks, Henke, or even McQuain (though I particularly hate saying it in the latter case). I knew Bruce going back almost as far as Billy. And Frankly, Bruce's special place in Billy's heart & mind keeps me from characterizing the whole thing as widely as I'd like. There's simply no moral justification any longer for Bruce to keep teemed up with those two mutherfuckers. The fact he doesn't seem to do anything about it is disappointing, to say the least.
I know I say shit that riles other libertarians around here, and I'm in fact grateful when they get on my case about it — though it's not like I'm actually acting on any of my errors to lock people away.
I remember a McQuain who was a bit more humble, back in the day. Now he's defensive: no matter what, ever, that I see. He's lost all integrity, which is the natural result of getting in bed with the likes of Dale Franks and Jon Henke, those two mutherfuckers.
Bad apples strike again.
Bruce McQuain: you need to shut the fuck up and fucking do the right thing. No man, no man of integrity would allow himself to be allied philosophically and politically in activism with someone who would lock a morally innocent man up for 10 years, and that is exactly what Franks did. He'd have been white as the pure driven snow had he just ignored the summons, or clearly voiced his opposition to drug laws during voir dire. However, when he accepted appointment to the jury, and given his knowledge of the drug laws, war on drugs, general injustice of it, etc., he had a moral obligation to either hang the jury or convince the others to let the man off.
Rather, he boasts of his experience.
McQuain: you are in league with a moral criminal.
Can't really do it justice more than that last line.
Let's see, now the libertarian blogs I read are you, Billy Beck, and Samizdata. Dumped Reason and Qando like a pound of antimatter. Any others out there?
"McQuain: you are in league with a moral criminal."
You know, I brought this up to him a while back, though I don't know all the history you and Billy have with him. The upshot was that he accused me of practicing guilt by association, and a more or less mutual agreement that Q&O wasn't the best place for me to be leaving comments.
When the association is based around the issues in which the guilt was earned by one of them, and continues after something like this, damn right there's guilt by association.
"Let's see, now the libertarian blogs I read are you, Billy Beck, and Samizdata. Dumped Reason and Qando like a pound of antimatter. Any others out there?"
Well I can't say I'm not honored to end up on that shortest of short lists. I only check Samizdata now and then. Just too much volume and it takes too much time. I think the more popular "libertarian" blogs are, the less I'm going to be interested other than a post here and there where they get their principles right (they do fair amount of that, there).
From my perspective, this whole endeavor is necessarily about defining proper principles and honestly applying them to whatever situation happens to arise that a blogger chooses to highlight.
…Oh, in terms of the destructiveness and injustice of the state, no one does better work than Radley Balko. Not purely libertarian (in the anarchist sense), but the stuff he highlights meshes with the principles of anti-state better than any other blogger, I think. He works very hard at it, is meticulous and thorough, and the work he does is good work. I've called him "the world's most important blogger," and on the whole, given his wide audience and steadfast commitment to exposing injustice and brutality, I believe that.
I'm currently reading Lew Rockwell, but that's mainly because it's the go-to spot for by-the-minute Ron Paul news. If it's important, it's going to be there in minutes.
I like Karen De Coster, even though I disagree with her about personal financial matters quite often. She's a potty mouth, but does it in a smart way. She can really tear into someone when she gets going, and that's always fun to watch.
I like some of the libertarian anti-war stuff out there, now, since I think I've come full circle on that. I just haven't a whole lot of patience for it all the time and it's hard for me to completely put a finger on why. I think it's because of the attempt at blurring distinctions between actions taken by the American state as compared with wholly despotic nations in history. What's difficult is that I see where it's important to show that fundamental underlying principles are the same, but it's also important to draw distinctions in practice. We can hold the same depraved principle, and it's valid to point that out. However, it's what actions we take in pursuit of values that determines our relative evil.
Alright, I'm rambling now…
How could I have forgotten Balko? I'd consider supporting any organization willing to put him on their payroll. I'm already reading De Coster, she seems like a pretty sharp lady. Her post on Sullivan/Obama is pretty much what I was thinking, and it's mainly thanks to her that I'm back to square one on wondering who wrote the trash in the Ron Paul Report.
I read other blogs, but they're there to either study pathologies (Sullivan, DailyKos), or look for people who might be brought around to an anarchist way of thinking.
As for rambling, nah, you're not. Someone made an excellent point when they said warfare is the health of the state. After Iraq, the outright thievery practiced by Bush and his band of clowns is approaching the legendary, even by modern statist standards. Just don't say "our relative evil." Neither you nor I promoted Abu Ghraib or tolerated those who would, among a host of other things, so there's no real shared responsibility there.
The way Franks mocked the man whose life he destroyed was monstrous. It's a big joke to him.
Initially I was numbed by it. The very contradiction in the whole affair was so utterly wicked that it was like a long black veil of darkness blowing over the horizon, drowning out the sun, and the sounds in the distance were sounds of terror. A man's life is utterly ruined and a man with the sickening, utter cheek to claim adherence to a philosophy that naturally rises up against such evil is absolutely dandy and proud, yes proud, of the work he's done in ensuring such evil. The horror only grows with the moments passing in the knowledge of it.
JTK:
Yea, especially the bit about the man losing bowel control. Whether because of bad food on a trip across the border (and then being unjustly detained until he could reach a relieving point), or that the man understood how his life was just about to be shredded, the mocking and joking about it really illustrates and exposes the underlying cruelty in the whole business.
It all works towards dehumanizing the man, so as to excuse one's self and fool others as to what's really going on.
Brian is right. My outrage only grows.
I just put something on my site about this, though in the context of a much better story about someone who decided not to be the coward that Franks is.
(I'm not going to say that I'm "back" to blogging for any length of time, but…)
What I find most incredible is that Franks is the same person who produced an essay defending natural rights barely two years ago.
Quote:
If all rights are negotiable, then there are no rights at all. Your only "rights" are whatever privileges you can wrestle from an otherwise omnipotent sovereign.
One would think this includes the right to "contraband", no?
Yea, Jay, I happened to be around the day emails were flying back & forth between myself, Beck, and McQain — maybe another or two — as Franks was waking up to natural rights. I distinctly remember at the end of it one of us commenting that it was a good day.
That was evidently just theory, on his part, and now he's gone and irrevocably practiced.
They've got a podcast up now where Bruce and Dale discuss the comments from us "usual subjects" (currently the top story on the main blog page). Their rationalizations and the principles they invoke are pretty pathetic.
Rich,
And Frankly, Bruce's special place in Billy's heart & mind keeps me from characterizing the whole thing as widely as I'd like.
Neither McQuain, nor Franks, nor DuToit, nor Florack, nor any of the other conservatives that Beck flirts with are individualists. They are collectivists, root and branch, always have been, and likely always will be.
If they thought you or Beck were a danger to the American state, they'd happily put one in the back of your head themselves if that was what it took.
Some folks are born to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red-white-and-blue,
But when the band plays "Hail to the Chief",
Ooh, they'll point the cannon at you. — CCR
Lopez: You're http://www.honestylog.com/root/2006/09/why_lie_kim.html#comment-22413276> about a year behind the curve.
Re: Franks: Jesus H. freakin' Christ on a greased up telephone pole wearing a dashiki. What the fucking fuck, over? Didn't see that one coming.
I'm more astonished McQ is defending him so thoroughly. I was under the impression he cared about natural rights.
"Gee whiz, you know, he isn't bringing in something that's not going to hurt anybody, you know. But, you know, what if he wasn't bringing in something that wasn't going to hurt anybody?"
He must be speaking about mean old "assault weapons" there. They have the ability to do far more violence than a harmless brick of mind-altering cannabis. At least we get the cheery reminder that we can phone Congress to do something about it!
My disappointment is palpable. You know, Ron Paul crashing didn't really sour me on the libertarian philosophy. But really- what's the point of mounting a non-violent Danneskjold campaign when even the libertarians would have you imprisoned for it?
Well, at least I know exactly how the civil war would turn out, if it happened.
Sorry. When.
It is hard to get used to thinking in that manner.
Real quick, before I get to the other stuff. Kyle, did you see they blogged the same Levant bit you did.
The audacity! There's contextual compartmentalization for you. All in the ruthless endeavor of avoiding honesty and wide contexts.
I just commented on that Levan piece (real quick, again):
"Though Franks can never undo what he did in taking ten years of a man’s life who wasn’t hurting anyone, he should at least watch that video a bunch of times to see how a real man acts in the face of state authority."
"Neither McQuain, nor Franks, nor DuToit, nor Florack, nor any of the other conservatives that Beck flirts with are individualists."
Nor McPhillips. Indisputable fact. Well, Billy certainly doesn't need me to tell him who his friends ought to be. He knows what they are, and I think he's competent to deal with it.
Perhaps he thinks he can turn them, in time. He's in a better position than I to judge that cost/benefit.
What else can I say, other than that in his own writings, Beck never pulls any punches. He may not indict them directly, but he does by implication just about every day.
Oh, hey, I just got banned by QandO. Here's the post I was trying to make in the Levant thread.
State has a right to put a "verboten" tag on transporting certain items across their border. The debate here centers on if you believe the "verboten" designation is just for this particular product.
Yeah- they're blocking importation of marijuana because importing from Mexico is wrong. It's nothing to do with the fact they're trying to ban a perfectly harmless substance.
Puh-leeze. They're banning citizens partaking of a product, and the importation rules are just a subsect of that.
State does not have a right to place a "verboten" tag on publication of cartoons, or other speech (with the usual exceptions)
Sez who? You? The Constitution? Yeah, that's working out real well. A tyranny waged by fifty independent states is just as bad as a tyranny waged by one. The Constitution was supposed to prevent that. So who's really surprised when the state ignores the words as quickly as the principles?
Are you saying nuclear materials are the only thing that might be worthy of regulation at the border? What harm, however, is there in moving some plutonium about? Who’s being harmed exactly?
Oh, I get it now. It's a lawyer game, because the children are our future. Very slick, sir.
In answer to your question, I'll take the risk that the evil brown people are looking for the first sign of weakness, so that they can blow up every city and every nuclear missile. Vigilance is a good defense against terrorists: and there ain't a good defense against ICBM's. In fact, fuck it, I changed my mind. Now that I think about it just a little more, ship over the plutonium. America has lots of long friends who can reach and touch any one with a pillar of fire. If their people want to countenance our cities being nuked, then the response comes in kind.
The Russians, and the Muslims, are more rational than to simply destroy their entire civilizations. So you know what? I think I'll take them over you.
You probably weren't banned, trevalyan. They simply have an annoying potty-mouth filter. Clean up the effs, with asterisks and give it another shot.
Huh. Apparently some words cause the whole comment to be blocked. Okey-dokey, that's one strike against them I freely take back.
Oh, and Rich, thanks for pointing that out. I assumed my potty word would just be censored out automatically, not that the post would be banned. I only started posting on QandO recently.