Liberty Minute August 26 2014

The ubiquitous ?Ice Bucket Challenge? is seen by some as a noble philanthropic enterprise, by others as a harmless example of social media faddishness. There is a sense in which it is also a demonstration of the ethical dangers inherent in doing one's alms before men.

The challenge consists of people dumping buckets of ice water over their heads while promising to donate money to a foundation funding a search for a cure to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which is called ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. After thus immersing himself on-camera, the participant challenges friends or colleagues to do likewise.

This ritual could be seen as a form of narcissism masquerading as generosity ? and as Jesus said, when people publicly advertise their good works, they've already received their reward. In this case, furthermore, at least a portion of the funds being generated will be used to support embryonic stem cell experimentation, which requires the deliberate destruction of genetically complete unborn human beings.

ALS research can be done using adult stem cells, which can be harvested without destroying individual human beings. This means that the Ice Bucket Challenge combines an appeal to vanity while enlisting people to raise money for an incurably tainted undertaking.

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

Liberty Minute August 25 2014

One of the first things every police cadet learns is the necessity of documenting practically everything he does as an officer. This is especially true of any incident involving the use of lethal force.

On August 15, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson released an incident report regarding a robbery in which Michael Brown was a suspect. He then said that his department had released every available detail about the confrontation in which Brown was fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson.

Conspicuously absent was an incident report from Officer Wilson concerning the shooting. No report of any kind was completed until August 19, when the St. Louis County Police Department ? which is investigating the shooting ? released a document that was devoid of any details regarding that homicide.

In any homicide investigation, the suspect is questioned immediately after the killing, and discrepancies in his story are seen as evidence of criminal conduct. At this point, more than two weeks after the shooting of Brown, the admitted shooter has not provided even the first version of his story. What this means is that the official police version is still being written ? and we will have no way of knowing whether the story we hear from Wilson is reliable.

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

Liberty Minute August 22 2014

What if we perceived the fatal altercation in which Michael Brown was shot by Ferguson, Missouri Police Officer Darren Wilson as an incident involving an identified gang member and a gangster wanna-be?

Wilson was employed by a police agency that fuels a deeply corrupt municipal court system. In a detailed and well-documented report, Arch City Defenders, a legal advocacy group, describes how courts in Ferguson and other St. Louis suburbs extract ?exorbitant amounts of money? through practices that violate the constitutional rights of the communities they supposedly serve.

Judges and prosecutors in those largely black towns are private attorneys hired to preside over courts in which poor people are denied the right to counsel and often hit with fines that are triple their monthly income. Failure to pay those fines results in imprisonment , unemployment, and homelessness. Municipal courts in Ferguson and neighboring Florissant collected a net profit of $3.5 million in fines last year.

The Missouri state government has documented that blacks in that region are disproportionately subject to traffic stops, arrests, and seizures in order to feed this system of institutionalized plunder.

Michael Brown may or may not have committed a strong-arm robbery before his fatal encounter with Darren Wilson, who is employed by a political clique that routinely commits similar offenses.

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

Liberty Minute August 21 2014

?Don?t resist ? it will only be worse for you.? That?s the message of both the rapist and the police officer, as candidly digested by Sunil Dutta, a 17-year veteran of the LAPD who now preaches that doctrine as a professor of homeland security at Colorado Tech University.

Whenever a citizen is approached by a police officer, Dutta explains, ?here is the bottom line?: ?[I]f you don?t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, just do what I tell you.?

Yes, Dutta generously concedes, ?corrupt and bully cops exist? I know that some officers engage in unprofessional and arrogant behavior; sometimes they behave like criminals.? Nonetheless, he insists, such people are your social superiors whose commands must be cheerfully obeyed without hesitation, and ?the situation will not become easier if you show your anger and resentment.?

?Most field stops are complete in minutes,? coos the apologist for state-licensed aggressive violence. ?How difficult is it to cooperate for that long??

The same is true, of course, of most encounters between a rapist and a victim. The violation of a free person?s rights is not any less egregious for being brief.

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

Liberty Minute August 18 2014

George Hansen spent most of his public life as either a politician, or a political prisoner. Both of those roles were defined by Hansen?s implacable and uniformly commendable hostility toward the criminal syndicate and secret police organization called the Internal Revenue Service.

In 1979, Hansen published a slender but comprehensive book entitled To Harass Our People documenting the crimes and abuses committed by the IRS. Five years later he was prosecuted and convicted under the Ethics in Government Act for trivial violations of technical financial disclosure regulations. He spent more than a year in prison, during which time he was singled out for hideous abuse. This included ?Diesel Therapy,? a form of torture in which he was shackled hand and foot for up to 20 hours a day and shuttled from prison to prison in a bus by the US Marshals Service.

Once in federal prison he was forced to work in conditions involving prolonged, unprotected exposure to toxic chemicals. He suffered severe, irreversible damage to his legs, shins, teeth, and bones, as well as several vital organs.

The Supreme Court overturned Hansen?s conviction in 1995, but it couldn?t repeal the unjust punishment inflicted on him through the vindictive sadism of the Regime he had offended.

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

Liberty Minute August 19 2014

It took several days for Ferguson, Missouri Police Chief Thomas Jackson to identify Darren Wilson as the officer who fatally shot Michael Brown. Jackson also released a report suggesting that Brown had committed a burglary just before the encounter. Jackson later admitted that Wilson was not trying to arrest Brown for that violent felony, but had accosted Brown for jaywalking.

Even if Brown had committed a crime, Wilson would not have been justified in shooting an unarmed, fleeing felon. Eyewitnesses claim that Brown was shot while facing Wilson with his hands up in a posture of surrender. That claim is supported by the findings of an autopsy. Wilson will probably contend that Brown had ?charged? him in a threatening way, and that the shooting was justified under the so-called ?reasonable officer? standard.

As a defendant in a court of law, Darren Wilson would -- and must -- be presumed innocent. As a state agent, he cannot be. Police officers are authorized to initiate violence and escalate it until the victim relents or is killed. Because of "qualified immunity" they can escape legal and civil consequences when their actions are proven to be morally wrong and legally dubious. This is why we shouldn?t give cops who kill the benefit of the doubt.

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

Liberty Minute August 15 2014

Shortly after the creation of the city?s Police Department in the mid-1800s, the New York Times expressed misgivings about the agency?s use of lethal force in dealing with criminal suspects.

?The pistols are not used in self-defense, but to stop the men who are running away,? observed an 1858 New York Times editorial. ?[The guns] are considered substitutes for swift feet and long arms? [W]e doubt the propriety of employing them for such a purpose. A Policeman has no right to shoot a man for running away from him.?

In fact, the paper?s editorial board expressed doubts about ?the policy of arming our Policemen with revolvers.?  This wasn?t because defensive force would never be necessary or justified, but because of the promiscuous use of lethal force by police in circumstances where it was neither.

Two years ago, Chief Ken James of the Emeryville, California Police Department candidly stated that police don?t use guns for defensive purposes, but rather ?to intimidate and ? show power [and to] face any opposition that we may come upon.?

This is the mindset of an occupying army. It is that mindset, not just the hardware, that makes weaponry dangerous, regardless of the identity of its owner.

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

Liberty Minute August 14 2014

?We?ve heard a lot in the last number of weeks about what ? police officers shouldn?t do,? complained Patrick Lynch of the Patrolmen?s Benevolent Association, New York?s largest police union. ?No one?s telling us what ? we should do, when [a person] says, `I?m not going. I?m not being placed under arrest.??

?What is it we should do?? continued Lynch, his voice colored by theatrical incredulity. ?Walk away??

Well, why not? If the would-be arrestee isn?t involved in an actual crime ? that is, an act of aggression against another person ? a police officer shouldn?t consider an arrest to be necessary. The incident that inspired Lynch?s statement, the killing of Eric Garner, didn?t involve an actual crime. Garner, who had just broken up a fight, was suspected of selling untaxed cigarettes.

Lynch insists that ?The charge of resisting arrest ? exists to encourage those being arrested to comply with the lawful orders of police officers so that those officers do not have to use necessary force to make that arrest.?

The problem is that an unnecessary arrest ? like that of Eric Garner ? is an abduction, not a public safety measure. And in that case, the supposedly necessary force led to an act of criminal homicide.

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

Liberty Minute August 13 2014

For decades, left-leaning Americans have treated loyalty oaths as a symptom of McCarthyite authoritarianism. Leaving aside the fact that Senator McCarthy never endorsed the use of such measures, that critique is sound: Since governments draw their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, a government that requires a loyalty oath from its citizens is not worthy of that loyalty.

Now that an authoritarian leftist is in the Oval Office, the left has rediscovered the supposed virtues of loyalty oaths as a way of deterring what Mr. Obama calls ?corporate deserters? from moving off-shore to avoid punitive taxation. Writing in The Daily Beast, Jonathan Alter calls for the creation of a corporate ?non-desertion agreement.? He also suggests that Obama sign an executive order imposing a mandatory non-desertion oath on any company that has a federal contract.

Such an executive order might have the healthy effect of inspiring corporate leaders to renounce federal subsidies ? something increasingly difficult to do as the federal government absorbs nearly all of the capital in the American economy. Or it might prompt many corporations to flee in search of a less authoritarian country. The only way it could be enforced would be to create the economic equivalent of the Berlin Wall.

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

Liberty Minute August 12 2014

The bombing campaign against the terrorist group calling itself the Islamic State has inaugurated what will likely become the third Iraq war. The first was waged to compel Saddam Hussein?s regime to withdraw its troops from Kuwait, following an invasion that had the oblique approval of the first Bush administration. Recall that presidential envoy April Glaspie pointedly demurred when asked by Hussein about U.S. objections to a prospective Iraqi military move against Kuwait.

The second Iraq war resulted in the removal of Saddam, who had originally been installed in Baghdad with Washington?s aid and who received military and financial support during the 1980s. Saddam was replaced by a Shi?ite government that persecuted the country?s Sunni minority, precipitating a backlash that has facilitated the growth of the movement calling itself the Islamic State.

That movement coalesced out of radical elements of what is commonly called al-Qaeda. This includes factions that have received direct U.S. aid in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. Now Barack Obama ? acting, as usual, without congressional authorization ? has ordered a bombing campaign in what he says may be a very long conflict.

Rather than heeding the Founding Fathers? warnings against going abroad in search of monsters to destroy, our present rulers insist on building the monsters.

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