Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

November 23, 2010

During a visit to 19th century feudal Iran, British historian Arthur Arnold observed that government agents were ?free to extort all that [they] can get, upon condition of making a certain annual payment to [the central government in] Tehran. [The people are] kept in perpetual disorder by the demands of armed men, who plunder under the pretense of [law], and who ? are scarcely preferred to robbers.?

The same can be said of police agencies that seize money and property through the contemporary process of civil asset forfeiture. The victims of those confiscations are people who are never formally accused of crimes.

Ten years ago, attempts were made by Congress and various states to reform the practice by forbidding police to profit from asset forfeiture. The Justice Department, however, nullified those laws by permitting police to keep eighty percent of whatever they confiscate in joint operations with the Feds.

Officially sanctioned robbery of this kind grows increasingly common as the productive economy dies.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.