That "Rightwing Extremism" Report

Dear Republicans, Do you regret creating the Department of Homeland Security yet? Are you ready to apologize?

That's the first thing I thought when I read that DHS report. Like an earlier report from the Missouri Information Analysis Center report that instructed law enforcement personnel to watch for cars with Ron Paul or Libertarian Party stickers, it has the right in something of an uproar.

As you may know, the report warns law enforcement agencies that there "may" be a rebirth of right wing violence. It warns, among other things, that returning veterans could be turning violent. Another passage that has attracted unfavorable notice is this one:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

As others have said, this means there are an awful lot of potential terrorists out there. Aside from the fact that these people are casting their net way too widely, I am not as stunned by this development as many others are, for two reasons.

First, I hate to say this, but the general idea behind the report -- that there is a substantial possibility of right-wing violence in our future -- is probably true. I predicted it almost half a year ago:

Obama's party will not only control the White House but both houses of Congress. I don't expect them to be magnanimous in victory. They have suffered (how they have suffered!) eight years of not getting their way, and they won't have to take it any more. This will make a lot of others feel helpless and unrepresented by the system.

This of course is exactly how Obama's party has acted since re-taking power. In fact, they have been quite a bit more in-your-face than I thought they would be. I see no outreach there at all, and a lot of slash, burn, and trample. As I pointed out in these earlier comments, there are some people on the right who, when they feel that the political system has made them powerless, are apt to exert their power in brutal ways. The notion that violent rightwing extremists are a myth is itself a myth. Law enforcement people should indeed be on the lookout for it. I hope they are.

Second, it is true that the Democrats are probably going too far in this direction, but who gave them the opportunity to do so? When the Republicans created this new "security" apparatus, especially the DHS itself, there were plenty of us to predict that, when the Democrats eventually return, they will use it in ways that the Republicans do not approve of. This was a good reason to not make these changes in the first place.

Democrats and Republicans are both similar and different. If you give them an apparatus for snooping and spying, Republicans will sneak around looking for "Islamofascists." Democrats are also willing to sneak around -- they are similar in that way -- but they will be looking for "right wing extremists" instead of "Islamofascists." During the first Islamist attack on American soil -- the original bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 -- the attention of the Clinton Administration was completely absorbed in what they thought was the real threat to America -- those scary gun-toting Christians in Waco TX.

Now that the Republicans have given them the gift of an improved apparatus for living out one's favorite paranoid narrative, we should not be surprised if they once again pursue a narrative that is not the conservative one. We saw this coming years ago. It will not do to start sniveling and whining about it now. Instead of complaining about the people who are using the apparatus, we should look at the apparatus itself.

Taxation and Liberty

There are a couple of things that are disturbing about this clip, taken at one of the nation's many Tea (= "taxed enough already") Party protests today (Wednesday).

As a political philosopher, I suppose my reaction might seem eccentric. -- What disturbs me is: "liberty ... what does that have to do with taxes?"

Okay, here's the thing. Paying taxes is not the same thing as giving gifts. Nor are taxes membership fees. I cannot resign from the USA, as I can from a club. A tax is an coerced payment, extracted via the threat of a prison sentence and, unlike a membership fee, it is unconditional. There is no good or service that I get if I pay my tax but otherwise not. My government will not withhold from me protection against invasion by the Canadians or the Mexicans if I don't pay my tax, as a club would withhold the privileges of membership were I to fail to pay my dues. No, I am forced to pay, whether I want to or not, and whether the benefits are worth the expense or not.

The only way I can avoid a tax is to leave family, friends, and home to travel to a land where ... I will also have to pay taxes.

If you think that freedom is abridged when I am coerced ("negative freedom"), then every increase of taxes is a reduction of freedom.

Of course, you may think of freedom as the capacity to choose between options ("positive freedom"), but in that case the same result follows. Before my money is taken from me by the government, I have the power to choose how it is spent. After it is taken, the government makes that choice. Now, some of the things it chooses to spend my money on are in my interests, so I don't perceive these choices of theirs as a reduction of my positive freedom: things like punishing violent criminals, building roads, or maintaining the air traffic control system. These are things that I would choose to spend my money on if I could. But, as far as I can tell, by far most of the things the government throws my money at are not like this at all. They include:

• Maintaining a national "defense" establishment larger than those of the entire rest of the world combined.
• Maintaining a government schooling gulag that my wife and I tried to escape from by sending our son to private schools that better suit our educational philosophy, while being forced through taxes to pay for the government system at the same time. After three years and a second mortgage on our house, we ran out of money.
• Keeping over half a million people in prison (mainly for possession of marijuana) to make sure that I don't take any drugs the government doesn't like.

Taxation has a great deal to do with freedom, but mostly not in a good way.

Piracy: The Free Market Solutions

What did the captain and crew of the Maersk Alabama have in common with the victims of the Binghamton murders?

Both were unarmed and defenseless against evil.

In the Binghamton case, this probably had to do with the fact that government offices, such as immigration services centers, tend to be no-gun zones. In the case of the commercial ship, the reasons are more complex.

Jane Jacobs told a story in a brilliant book years ago that is very much to the point here. During the Middle Ages, she says, the rising merchant class of the island nation of England found that to really prosper they had to cross the seas to conduct trade in other lands. But the seas were swarming with pirates, and they lost ships and treasure. But they found a solution. Pooling their resources, they built a flotilla of armed ships. Then they gave the ships as a gift to the king, with the request that his men go out and clear the seas of pirates.

Why, having the resources and the ships, didn't they themselves go out and kick pirate butt?

There are at least two sorts of reasons. First, trading and fighting force with force are two very different skill sets. The solution to the problem of the Maersk Alabama is not to say to the crew, "Here, have some guns!" They are not trained in their safe and effective use. There are indeed a number of reasons why they don't want to be so trained.

As Jacobs points out, traders and professionals in the use of deadly force follow moral codes that are profoundly different, and they generally do not mix very well. Trade is based on on a respect for human rights -- the main ones involved admittedly are property rights, but they are rights nonetheless. To trade valuable goods with a complete stranger who is armed would mean worrying about whether he might just kill you and take your goods for free. If the Maersk Alabama had been armed, there are ports in the world that would not have allowed it to dock. Its mere presence would constitute a security risk.

What is the alternative to do-it-yourself security? There are plenty of people who are saying that the only long-range solution is to go in and "fix" Somalia. I think these are the same people who "fixed" Iraq, Afganistan, and Vietnam. Remember them? I think such people are much more dangerous than the pirates. If they have their way, they will take far more lives and destroy far more treasure. Come to think of it, they already have.

But there is a third way. For a fee, private firms who specialize in protective services, will protect your ship. Depending on the policy you purchase, they may put armed guards on your ship or, if for any number of reasons you don't want to do that, you can take out a fancier and more expensive policy and they will escort you with a convoy of armed boats through pirate infested waters. The latter sort of policy would solve the unable-to-dock problem. You can rendezvous with your guard boats at a pre-arranged point and part with them after passing through the dangerous waters, at which point their check will presumably be in the mail.

Like everything else in life, the third-party security alternative has both positive and negative aspects. But with time it may prove far preferrable to both alternatives: either continuing to count ransom and pirate violence as an expense of doing business, or allowing liberal imperialism to shove us into yet another political black hole in the Middle East.

Either one of the main free market solutions have one big advantage over any government solution: They will be paid for by the people who benefit the most from them. And they will be paid for if, and only if, they are worth the cost. And that's something you sure can't say about Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
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Added later: I just found this on the web (hat-tip t o Lew Rockwell):



Here is an article in Politico about Rep. Paul's proposal.

U. Ends Graduation Prayer: What Message Do They Send?

This morning on Fox News Meghan Kelly did a segment on the breaking news that the University of Maryland Senate has voted 32-to-14 to end the practice of a officially-offered prayer at graduation ceremonies.

Kelly and her guest from the Heritage Foundation made some alarmed sounds about threats to religion, displaying this recent Newsweek cover. My first thought was "32-to-14? Don't these people have a quorum rule?" My second was surprise that they still had a graduation prayer. U. of Maryland is obviously a government-funded institution. That was why own university dropped the prayer in 1976, as a result of a complaint from then-student Annie Laurie Gaylor.

A quick search revealed something that the beautiful and brilliant Kelly, who also happens to be an attorney, failed to mention: the legal argument for the move, which had nothing to do with whether America is a Christian civilization, was the separation of church and state.

One opponent of the vote argued that rescinding the practice could "send the message" that secular speech is superior and religious speech is inferior. Ah, yes. That argument. It really brought back some memories for me. I recalled that, during the tumultuous discussion leading to my own university rescinding the last of its speech codes a few years ago, one opponent argued that it will be difficult to abolish the code without "sending the message" to students of color that we don't care about them and might event think that racist speech is acceptable. I think this is a very common sort of concern. I am sure that one of the main reasons why we do not end the War on Drugs, despite its horrific expense in terms of the liberty, property, even the very lives of so many people, is that ending it would "send the message" that drugs are okay and possibly even a good idea.

As it turned out, ending our censorship code did not send a racist message at all. The reason is that the discussion that led up to it made it perfectly clear what the reasons for the move were. This is one of the reasons why democracy is better than dictatorship: there is always a discussion in which reasons are given and explained. Rulers can't just do things and let people guess what the reasons are (except of course when we can't have a rational discussion because it's an "emergency"). As long as there are not too many haters around who attribute dishonorable motives to their opponents, the principled grounds for policy changes can come clearly through.

Liberals and conservatives are united in trying to use institutional arrangements and coercive rules to send messages about their preferred values. I say, in the immortal words of Sam Goldwyn, if you want to send a message, go to Western Union. Do it at your own expense.

Follow Me!

I've added a gizmo on the sidebar to the left that enables you, with a mere left-click, to "follow" this blog. If you are a blogger at blogger.com, this means that when you check in at your dashboard you will see the header of my most recent post. I've found this a handy way to keep up with blogs that aren't updated every day (like this one!).

The Binghamton Murders

With economic hard times upon us, we will be seeing more violence like the horrors in Binghamton New York, and as a result more calls for gun bans. In light of that, I can only link to my post on the Virginia Tech murders from two years ago. I would just have to say more or less the same things over again.*

One small point: As you can see from this map (click to enlarge) New York does not have a shall-issue concealed carry law. What they have is what is known as a may-issue law. What that often means is that, technically, you can get a permit to carry a weapon, but you have to convince the police that you have a "good reason" to have a gun. (A lot of police seem to think that if there is a reason you might actually use a gun then that is a good reason to not let you carry one.)

If New York had, like most of the US, had a shall-issue law, that would have increased the likelihood that there would have been a law-abiding citizen near the atrocity who could have brought the killer down before he shot his last victim and blew his own brains out. As it was, his victims had to wait for the police to respond to a 911 call. The police did a good job of getting there fast (2 minutes, according to the police department) but even that was not fast enough to prevent any murders.**

... unfortunately, I can't make the same point about the multiple murder in Pittsburgh, a story that broke after I started to write this post, in which three police were on a domestic battery call were ambushed by the batterer. There just are no magic bullets for these things (no play on words intended).
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* One thing I might change: in the original article, I suggested that the rules should allow any law-abiding person at a university or college to be armed. For reasons of safety, I would now probably support some sort of age-requirement for concealed carry, which could limit it to people 21 and older. Also, it might be good for schools to limit it to teachers and other school staff.

** Later: Looks like I spoke too fast in giving the police even this faint praise. According to this news story: "Police heard no gunfire after they arrived but waited for about an hour before entering the building to make sure it was safe for officers. They then spent two hours searching the building."

Defaming Religion

I suppose everyone knows by now that last week the grotesquely misnamed Uniited Nations Human Rights Commission has voted through a declaration that "defaming religion" is a human rights violation. It received 23 votes in favor (including various Muslim states and Hugo Chavez' Venezuela), 11 against, and 13 abstentions. I would love to know who the thirteen quivering weasels are who abstained, but I can't seem to find that information. Last November, the General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the governments of the world to punish people who "defame" religion.

I have been slow to comment on these developments because everything I could think of saying was pretty obvious, even hackneyed, viz:

• The notion of "defaming" an idea is a sinister and illegitimate concept.
• Individuals have rights, religions do not.
• Defaming religion is a human rights violation is a human rights violation.
• What do you expect from a club (the UN) all of whose members are states?
• It is no surprise that the UN Human Rights Commission has fallen into the hands of people who abuse, trample, and urinate on human rights.
• When countries like Canada and Germany (both of which have national hate-speech laws) vote against an attack on free speech, you know it's got to be outrageous.
• First they came for Alec Rawls, but I didn't agree with Alec so I didn't speak up...

... well, I still can't think of anything to say about this that hasn't been said before. There doesn't seem to be anything to be learned here that we didn't already know. However, sometimes the obvious must be said. Originality is a lot less important than freedom.