My fifteenth-anniversary piece is here.

[NB: I wrote this piece for the Libertarian Perspective over a week ago. It hasn’t gone online yet, so I’m posting it here.]

The Formula for a Police State
by Anthony Gregory

On the night of March 15 in an Oceanside, California, parking lot, after a dispute over one car cutting off another, Frank White, an off-duty San Diego police officer, shot five bullets into Rachel Silva’s car, hitting her in the arm twice, shattering a bone, and striking her eight-year-old son in the leg. She was unarmed. She has trouble moving her arm and might have permanent nerve damage.

Oceanside Police Captain Tom Aguigui promises that the department is pursuing “a very fair and complete investigation” to determine “why this whole thing happened,” but many details are being concealed from the public.

What does seem apparent, however, is something of a double standard. First, after Silva was hospitalized, the authorities decided to drug test her. Officer White, the one who did the shooting, was not tested. San Diego Homicide Lieutenant Kevin Rooney explained that police, whether on- or off-duty, are not drug tested after involvement in a shooting, barring some sign of intoxication. It is yet unclear what Silva’s alleged signs of intoxication were or why shooting someone after a traffic dispute isn’t probable cause for testing the way that, say, reckless driving is.

Nor was Officer White arrested. The Oceanside police did question him—while he was accompanied by a supervisor from his department, an attorney, and a police “peer support” representative. He is currently on paid leave.

Silva and her attorney have filed a claim for damages, in which she says she and White were yelling at each other when White pulled up on the right side of her car and began shooting as she tried to drive away. This account might help explain the bullet holes in Silva’s windshield and passenger side window, as well as why White’s driver’s side window was broken.

Silva has two DUIs on her record and was driving on a suspended license, leading some to question her credibility, and yet it is hard to imagine things going the same way if White were not a police officer. If police arriving at the scene found an unarmed woman blacking out from massive blood loss, her young son bleeding, her car shot up, and an angry motorist having clearly done the shooting, would they have decided to drug test the shot woman and not the shooter? Considering the injured child, would they have let the shooter go so easily and kept such strict control over the investigation? Would they have characterized their probe as an attempt to discover why he did it—not just to find motive for what appears to be an open-shut case of criminal road rage, but seemingly to find an exculpatory explanation?

What if the tables were turned: if White had been an ordinary citizen and Silva a police officer—even an armed one? Does anyone truly believe the investigation would be undertaken in an identical manner?

Indeed, the very fact that this investigation is being approached secretively and as a special case shows there is something fundamentally flawed about the way police are viewed in our culture and by the police department itself. It should make no difference who did the shooting and who was shot. All that should matter are the facts of the case and whether the shooting was an act of aggression or self-defense. In a free, just society, police are not held to a different standard—unless, perhaps, a higher standard; after all, they are the ones paid by taxpayers to uphold the law.

Having a double standard that favors police is the formula for a police state. Whether in investigations, arrests, trials, or punishment, police should never get away with anything for which a member of the public would face severe consequences. A police state is at our doorstep when the public fears the government and law enforcers enjoy impunity for negligent or malicious behavior. Freedom and justice are empty promises without equality under the law, including for the lawmen.

Frank White should be regarded innocent until proven guilty. But does anyone think he’d be treated the same way if he were not an officer of the law? Or that if found guilty he’ll get the same punishment that Silva would have if she had shot him and his son? To ask the question is to answer it, which is a sad testament to the current state of the rule of law.

[I will be keeping up on this a bit. Not much in the last week has come out to add much clarity to the situation, though apparently Silva has a new attorney and there is some evidence she was in retreat when White shot her.
Also, a new claim on the boy’s behalf accuses White of pointing the gun directly at him.]

I was thinking about this a lot last night, and we all like to bash the government, but perhaps we are missing some perspective here. First of all, we are, whether we want to be or not, at war, and we must face this reality. America’s enemies are determined enemies of freedom itself and, as clumsy or heavy-handed as our government can be, we need to keep in mind how much worse we’d be if conquered by radical fundamentalist extremist Islamist fascists. Bush might not be ideal, but at least we’re not being ruled by Saddam Hussein, without whom the entire world is much better off. Thus we must also be easier on agencies like the Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security, and be willing to bend such quint laws as the Bill of Rights so as to allow for more rigorous interrogation and surveillance of people who might very well mean to do us harm.

Furthermore, the economic situation has gotten me thinking. Can we really trust an unhampered market to foster financial stability? Clearly, the subprime mortgage mess shows that the answer is no. The Federal Reserve might not be a perfect institution, but we have avoided Depression for six decades and perhaps with some tweaking, the Fed can help forestall a disaster today. It is realistically our only hope. It just needs more tools to keep the economy afloat. The proposals from the Treasury to give it oversight power over financial institutions, insurance companies, hedge funds, banks, mortgage firms and other such bodies is a good starting place. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the market functioning at all without the basic infrastructure provided by government.

Furthermore, government can be a great force for social progress. Where would we be without government restrictions on guns, drugs, religion, family affairs and community standards? Not just local but national leaders must be brought in to help manage society toward a more moral, more equal, more patriotic future.

Perhaps the problem isn’t so much big government, but poorly run government. Indeed, maybe we actually need more government to help even out some of the crinkles in the private sector. What if health care were free here, like it is in much the world? And what are we to do about anthropogenic climate change? Surely, getting government off our backs will do nothing to stop the relentless warming of the earth. Many Americans have far too much money anyway; surely, a slight increase on their taxes could be directed toward cleaning up the planet.

And it really is unfair, now that I think about it, that some people have more money than other people, anyway. We are all humans. Yes, we have different abilities, and different needs, and for this very reason, perhaps, we need some sort of government of the workers to help distribute goods from those who are able to provide to those most in need. (If this were achieved completely, I might then humor the idea of getting rid of the state. But first thing’s first.)

Of course, the US government is uniquely suited to this task, and all tasks, which is why I’ve begun favoring its expansion so as to provide the fruits of liberty and prosperity to all people everywhere. Ours is an international struggle, but perhaps it must all be directed by American leadership, considering our nation’s long and proud history of spreading freedom and fairness throughout the globe.

However, this cannot be done so long as we let our narrow, individualist impulses determine the direction of our great society. Individual autonomy has led to a breakdown of the family. Yes, it might have accelerated in the hedonistic 20th century, but I think the problem goes back further to voluntary marriage. Why should people get to choose something as important as who their mate will be without some national consensus, some guarantee that their decision is best not just for themselves, but for all of society?

Speaking of which, society is not going to function much longer if we maintain our reliance on unhampered labor markets. Unions should be made mandatory for all economic sectors, but that’s only the beginning. With the inability of economic actors to act rationally in a consistent manner, we need government to step in and improve the labor market with meaningful incentives. However, the pro-market crowd has a point about the efficiency of business and private enterprise. The best of both worlds, then, would be a conscripted civil labor force, all put under the control of local, market players. I’m thinking this will also cut bureaucratic costs: If American workers fail to meet a quota, their overseers in the private sector will simply steer them back on course by incentivizing good behavior. I think the threat of a lashing will keep America’s workers from going idle. (Some will compare this to chattel slavery, but indeed it will be fundamentally different: although the federal government protected that peculiar institution, it did not have the proper regulatory bodies to adequately ensure fairness and dynamic competition. The idea that privatized conscription is similar to slavery is as absurd as the idea that privatized welfare is similar to private looting.)

Each economic sector, for that matter, should be regulated by a new system of guilds. An economy of free and open competition requires a baseline of rules and standards. Not everyone should be trusted to go into business doing something, without the experts in that field agreeing he’s ready.

I think another area where America has gone astray is the unregulated freedom of people to leave their property to the heirs of their choice. We should bring back primogeniture, and, while we’re at it, reconsider entail as well.

As for religion, either the state should mandate one faith for all Americans (and all foreigners fortunate enough to be liberated by US forces) or it should simply outlaw it altogether. Either way, we’d at least have national solidarity and religious conflict would be a thing of the past.

These modest reforms I propose would surely be difficult to enact in the current political climate. Perhaps, then, we must begin a campaign of thought correction among dissenters. All publications must be approved by central administrators. Thinking is not something to be trusted to the masses, anyway.

Oh, and I’m also for vouchers now.

Yesterday I watched two movies, both of which I enjoyed: Doomsday, and There Will Be Blood.

Doomsday is a dystopian film taking place in Britain. Scotland has been quarantined in the wake of an apocalyptic viral epidemic. The totalitarian British government has hid the fact that there are survivors. There is lots of action and violence. Killer flick. Especially attractive from a libertarian point of view.

Yet the movie is campy. You need galvanized cable to suspend your disbelief, it is so heavy. The movie is, like much political science fiction, quite cheesy at times. It rocks. And it rocks in a libertarian way. Yet the art does not compel me as much as my favorite art.

There Will Be Blood is based on a novel by progressive-era muckraker Upton Sinclair. This book attacks bourgeois America and highlights the dysfunction of the oil industry at the turn of the century up through the late 1920s – a time when Standard Oil and Union Oil dominated the market, a time when burgeoning competition decentralized the economy while antitrust law and other duplicitous progressive reforms moved to consolidate power back in the hands of a few firms. Of course, Sinclair didn’t generally tell it that way, and his novels became accepted as history, and that historical interpretation became a key portion in the general outlook on the era that came to justify, in most Americans’ minds, the great departure from American liberalism in the first quarter of the 20th century.

And yet, despite being pinko propaganda – and despite the fact that I really did enjoy Doomsday quite a bit — There Will Be Blood was a far superior film. It was a beautiful, amazing work of art.

Doomsday, with its guns, its women, its explosions isn’t a bad attempt. Not a failed project. Not at all. It’s just that, movies like There Will Be Blood have the instant feeling of being a classic.

Even if you disagree on these particular examples, you must concede there’s a point here: Proponents of statism, especially left statism – but also national statism – make great art. They touch people. You might give libertarian art bonus points in your appraisal, and I do too, but I can’t pretend that libertarian quality is the same as artistic quality. At the latter, we have a comparative disadvantage.

Why is it that works of art with libertarian themes tend to suffer from a campiness that makes them less persuasive, less touching, than the art produced by nationalists and collectivists? I’m not so sure. Our philosophy – the philosophy of liberty – is surely idealistic. Is it perhaps to cerebral? Not romantic enough? Too systematic? Does it simply offer no comfort? Do people seek art for similar reasons of insecurity that they tend to find comfort in the state?

I agree with the unusually artistically adept libertarian writer – and of sci-fi, no less! – L. Neil Smith when he says, “You Can’t Fight a Culture War if You Ain’t Got Any Culture!” Whatever it is that makes the socialists such convincing and powerful artists, the party of liberty needs to catch up.

Here’s an op-ed I wrote:

Some conservatives might conclude that Governor Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of presidential candidate John McCain only proves that true conservatism has left the Republican Party. McCain has indeed diverged from supposed conservative values in many areas. And so has our governor.

McCain criticized President Bush’s tax cuts. Schwarzenegger has delivered some of the largest bond increases in California history.

McCain has attacked Bush on global warming and even forced the first significant Senate vote on climate change. Schwarzenegger has also confronted the administration on the issue, suing the EPA to allow Sacramento to impose its own, higher standards on carbon emissions.

McCain has mediocre ratings from the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America. Schwarzenegger has supported the Brady Bill, the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban,” mandatory safety locks, and other such anti-gun measures.

Just as many conservatives questioned Schwarzenegger’s Republican credentials, so they have been quite critical of McCain. Conservative diva Ann Coulter recently proclaimed on Fox News that she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if the GOP gives its nod to McCain–”because she’s more conservative than he is,” Coulter told fellow conservative Sean Hannity.

Meanwhile, McCain has been endorsed by Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman, a champion of big government across the board.

Is all this a sign that Republicans do not stand for the principles that they used to?

Not exactly. Republican politicians have always sided with big government, despite their rhetoric. President Bush gave us No Child Left Behind, enormous prescription drug entitlements, immense corporate regulation, and staggering spikes in domestic spending. His father raised taxes and signed the Americans With Disabilities Act. No less a Republican hero than Ronald Reagan raised Social Security taxes, increased tariffs, busted the budget and–in his earlier years as Californian governor–expanded social programs, passed the largest tax increase in state history, and signed landmark gun control legislation. Almost every Republican president in the last century oversaw significant expansions of government size and power.

So why have many conservative intellectuals and commentators tolerated all this social spending, gun control, meddling in education, violations of civil liberties and high taxes and debt? One reason: War.

Ann Coulter says Hillary Clinton, no foe of big government, is better than McCain because she would wage war more aggressively. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger and pro-war Democrat Lieberman hail McCain because of his military credentials and willingness to wage war. For the last six years, fiscal conservatives have held their nose and supported Bush, who has increased the federal budget by about 50 percent, all because of the war on terror and war in Iraq. Back in the 1980s, conservatives didn’t mind that Reagan actually increased spending much faster than President Jimmy Carter, since the money was ostensibly going to “national defense.” And today, most conservatives neglect the one Republican presidential candidate, libertarian Ron Paul, who has actually been talking about cutting taxes, regulations, and spending; eliminating the IRS, and protecting the Second Amendment. They oppose him because he has always condemned the Iraq war and supports bringing the troops home from Iraq and around the world, as well as repealing the PATRIOT Act and restoring the Bill of Rights.

Most conservatives are addicted to nationalist militarism, war, and empire and are willing to abandon their free market, smaller-government principles in favor of continuing and accelerating U.S. intervention abroad. Randolph Bourne trenchantly observed that “war is the health of the state.” No wonder the state keeps getting bigger under hawkish Republicans. When pressed, they prefer big government and war to small government and peace.

The lesson here is that if you want less government, you must first find a movement and a party that does not put a love of war above all other issues. Libertarians, unlike conservatives, recognize that the problems with big government at home also apply to big government abroad and that a free country with a constitutionally limited government is incompatible with perpetual war and global empire.

Here, Eric Garris and I lay out our argument for Ron Paul to ditch the GOP and his campaign’s conservative triangulation strategy, seek the Libertarian nomination, and keep on running.

And has energized what appears to be the largest libertarian youth movement ever. Here’s my article about it, including why the kids are alright, despite what the sectarian lifestyle libertarians, libertine conservatives, and curmudgeons have been saying.

Every year, as Thanksgiving and the Holiday Season roll around, we must all face the inevitable sight of politicians commending America, its military, its public servants, the spirit of giving, family, brotherhood, apple pie, and all the rest of the traditional subjects of adulation that only the misanthropic or unpatriotic would ever deride.

We are told to be particularly thankful for the public schoolteachers, the police officers, the legislators, bureaucrats, and especially soldiers.

Now, it is perfectly fitting to appreciate the humanity of everyone in our society, particularly in the holiday season. Yet neglected by most official hosannas sung for those whom we presumably owe our loudest thanks are the greatest public servants of them all.

I am talking about the merchants, the farmers and truck drivers, the waiters and waitresses, the storeowners and bag boys. I’m referring to the businessmen and businesswomen, the producers and sellers, the investors, the stockholders and brokers, and the people in all walks of life who serve their fellow humans every day.

These people aren’t usually considered public servants, but that is precisely what they are. By serving their customers, clients, and employers in the framework of the market economy, they create wealth where none before existed. In any voluntary market exchange, both consenting parties part with something they value less for something they value more. Whether it is labor, a good, or a service, each participant in the economy contributes something that ends up where it is most valued. Although most engage in transactions primarily for the benefit of themselves and perhaps their families, they cannot help aiding others in the process, both those with whom they directly exchange and, indirectly, all of us who buy or sell or work on the market.

Indeed, if it were not for the market, the politicians too would have no resources, no salaries, and much less to be thankful for. Whereas the so-called private sector produces wealth, the government produces nothing on its own; it gets its revenue purely by extracting it from the productive sector through taxes or inflation.

All the material wealth in our society was created by human effort, and we are an especially wealthy country because our economic system, whatever its many faults, rewards and encourages individual effort and channels it in ever more productive ways for the masses.

Thanks to the market—the sellers, buyers, producers, savers, and investors—most of us are able to appreciate a material wealth that kings and queens would have only dreamed about a hundred years ago. The market allows for a division of labor to maximize production to everyone’s mutual benefit. Free enterprise, grounded in private property, sends signals to entrepreneurs and producers of what the people most want and need, allowing them to find the most efficient ways of providing it.

Even the first Thanksgiving is widely misunderstood and taught as a lesson in communitarianism, when in fact the real lesson is the importance of private property for the sustenance of civilization. Contrary to myth, the Pilgrims had gone hungry primarily as a result of collectivist economic principles. Founded in 1620, the Plymouth Plantation began with a communal system of agricultural production. Without the incentive to work, many of the Pilgrims didn’t. As economist Dr. Ben Powell describes it, “Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.”

The Pilgrims survived by instituting just a little bit of market incentive. The rest is history.

Compared to the Pilgrims, Americans now have a thriving market economy, but it is far less robust and healthy than it could be, because of overbearing taxation and regulation.

We must thank the charitable activities of good men and women who give to the less fortunate. We must thank our families, our loved ones, and friends this holiday season. But if you’re thankful at all for your possessions, the roof over your head, the food on your table, the high living standards of modern life, and the vibrant culture around you, from the wondrous selection of cuisine to the grand displays of art, thank the millions of men and women and the market economy that made it all possible.