Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 16, 2012

In a campaign speech before a partisan crowd in Roanoke, Virginia, President Obama hymned the praises of government as the provider of all good things, while rebuking business owners for their supposedly misplaced belief that they ?build? wealth as individuals:

?If you?ve got a business ? you didn?t build that.  Somebody else made that happen?. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people. You?re not on your own, we?re in this together.?

This is why, he maintained, it is proper to ?ask for the wealthy to pay a bit more? ? as if taxation backed by the threat of lethal force were merely a polite request.

Like most people of his ideological bent, Obama either cannot or will not distinguish between society ? which is created through peaceful commerce and other forms of private cooperation ? and the state ? which is built on conquest, coercion, and confiscation of wealth. Government produces nothing; it is an exercise in pure consumption and, usually, the destruction of capital. As Nietzsche famously said, everything the State has is stolen ? and Mr. Obama?s entire career has been devoted to this variety of institutionalized theft.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 13, 2012

The City ofNorth Las Vegashas declared itself an economic ?disaster area.?

?We are in a fiscal emergency,? City Council Member Wade Wagner told the Washington Post. ?North Las Vegas is ground zero basically for foreclosures in the nation?. So because our property taxes have declined so much, we really had to invoke this [emergency statute].?

Like many cities across the nation,North Las Vegasspent extravagantly during the housing bubble, ramping up salary and benefits packages for employees and beginning construction on a $130 million City Hall. The city faces a $30 million budget gap, and a disastrous ?BBB? bond rating from Fitch Ratings.

Sixty-six percent of the city?s budget goes to ?public safety? ? mainly the police and fire departments. Owing to the influence of government employee unions, this is a city where a typical police officer can receive more than $200,000 a year in salary and benefits.

Absent the emergency declaration, mandatory police and fire union pay increases would mean gutting other services ? such as libraries and rec centers. The public employee unions have gone to court to challenge that declaration ? and preserve their pay increases in the midst of the city?s fiscal disaster.  People like that don?t make a particularly sympathetic proletariat.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 11, 2012

On July 4, a San Antonio police officer spotted Destiny Rios walking on a city street and asked her name. After discovering an active warrant for prostitution, the officer attempted to arrest Rios. Two other officers arrived, handcuffed her, and threw her to the ground, where one of them struck the screaming woman at least nine times.

Rios is 5?1?? and weighs 126 pounds. She is also pregnant. A horrified eyewitness who captured the assault on video recalled: ?All I heard was her yelling to get off me. I heard her yell `I?m pregnant. She was already cuffed and they started to beat her.?

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus insists that there was nothing amiss in the behavior of his officers. Beating a prone, tiny and handcuffed woman is justified, he said, ?in order to get her to comply.?

This is at least the third recent high-profile case of police abusing a pregnant woman: A near-term pregnant woman was kicked in the stomach in Georgia?s DeKalb County, and another was tasered in Chicago.

Police actions of this kind in a foreign country would be condemned in a State Department human rights report. In the supposed Land of the Free they?re considered entirely appropriate.

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

July 12, 2012

Frederick Simms was stopped by a Washington, D.C. police officer on May 29, 2011 for making an illegal turn. Following the standard script, the officer lied by claiming that he smelled the aroma of marijuana. A search of the car revealed a handgun, which Simms had legally purchased. Simms was arrested and his car impounded.

Simms was acquitted of all charges the following December, but the D.C. municipal government retained possession of his car in order to steal it through ?civil asset forfeiture.? That process didn?t begin until more than a year after the initial traffic stop ? and District authorities told Simms that it could take up to a year longer.  A fee of $1200 was demanded from Simms merely to request a hearing to challenge the initial seizure.

Federal District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ? in a fit of atypical good sense ? ruled that it was an ?irreparable harm? for the district to keep Simms?s car. However, he required that the innocent motorist pay a $1000 forfeiture bond ? that is, a ransom to get back the car the police had stolen from him until a judge decides whether the thieves can keep it.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 10, 2012

More than sixty years ago, The New Yorker magazine published a short story by Shirley Jackson entitled ?The Lottery.? Residents of the small village described in the story drew lots in an annual ritual that ended with the winner being stoned to death.

During the Vietnam War, that story obtained a grim resonance as the federal draft lottery selected young men to serve a potentially fatal term of military enslavement.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan, has demanded the re-instatement of conscription, insisting that it should be made universal in order to avoid what he considers the inequity of the Vietnam-era approach to military servitude.

?I think we ought to have a draft,?McChrystal declared during the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. ?I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk. You make that decision and everybody has skin in the game.?

McChrystal?s use of a gambling metaphor is telling, if inadequate: When those who presume to rule us decide to go to war, they don?t have any ?skin? in the game; instead, they are gambling with the lives of other people.

Conscription is unconstitutional and anti-Biblical ? and, in a word, anti-American.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 9, 2012

When New Hampshire Governor John Lynch signed HB 146 into law on June 18, the Granite State became the first in the nation to enact a measure explicitly recognizing and protecting the indispensable right of jury nullification.

There is nothing novel about the principle and practice of jury nullification. At the time of the American founding it was well and widely understood that the chief function of citizen juries was to force the government to prove its case against a defendant ? and the validity of the law in question.

In contemporary America, however, trial by jury has been all but abolished in practice. Reviewing recent Supreme Court rulings, legal commentator Adam Liptak of the New York Times observes that in its just-completed term, the High Court ?has turned its attention away from criminal trials, which are vanishingly rare, and toward the real world of criminal justice, in which plea bargains are the norm and harsh sentences commonplace.?

The fact that the right to a trial by a jury of one?s peers, which is supposedly sacrosanct, has become all but extinct illustrates the extent to which the U.S. ?justice? system has become Sovietized. The overdue counter-revolution has begun in New Hampshire.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 6, 2012

Andy Griffith, who passed away at the age of 86 on July 3, was a universally beloved and multi-faceted entertainer best known as the firm but easy-going Sheriff Andy Taylor. It?s worthy of note that in a career spanning six decades that included scores of film and television roles, stand-up comedy, and a very successful run as a gospel singer, he is best remembered as a character devoted to protecting the innocent ? and upholding individual rights.

When the occasion demanded it, Sheriff Andy could be very stern and forceful in the defense of person and property.  Sheriff Andy never looked for an excuse to throw his weight around. He was never happier than when his jail was empty, his town was quiet, and the inhabitants of Mayberry were able to pursue their business on their own terms.

In one particularly memorable scene, Sheriff Andy patiently explains the concept of Due Process to his earnest but misguided son Opie, who had surreptitiously recorded an incriminating jailhouse conversation.

Law enforcers are plentiful. Peace officers, however, are a vanishingly rare breed.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 5, 2012

Houston resident Eddie Bassett has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for possession of cough syrup found in his vehicle during a traffic stop.

After Bassett was stopped for speeding, the officer spotted a plastic Coke bottle containing a red, viscous residue. Bassett was convicted of illegally possessing cough syrup without a prescription ? and received an enhanced sentence because of a prior felony involving what was described as ?essentially the same thing.?

Lexington, Texas resident James Anderson was stopped by a police officer in tiny Manor, Texas, for an expired registration tag.

Anderson, who suffered knee and back injuries while serving in the Army, had two bottles of ibuprofen, one of which had ?the prescription label scraped off? ?a technical violation of a state ordinance. The search also turned up a concealed weapon for which Anderson had a valid permit.

Anderson was handcuffed and stuffed into the unventilated and practically airless back seat of a squad car, where he passed out from heat prostration. While he was detained and unconscious, one of the arresting officers stole $150 from his wallet.

Yes, a government war on drugs means arresting and imprisoning people for possession of cough syrup and headache remedies.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 4, 2012

America is a nation born in a revolt against taxation ?which is a proprietary claim made by a ruler on those who inhabit what he claims as his domain.

In antiquity, the tem ?tax? referred to a physical challenge to travelers in the form of a tap on the shield performed by the ruler?s revenue-gatherers: This was essentially an ultimatum to pay the demanded toll, or to engage in combat.

A scholarly essay entitled ?Tenting, Toll, and Taxing? published by the Western Political Quarterly in 1966 pointed out that this practice was eventually applied to anybody who was born and lived within the ruler?s claimed jurisdiction, on the assumption that such people were intruders and trespassers by virtue of their very existence.

The word tax in its many contexts ?always retains the basic idea of a charge brought against an intruder; to be taxed always implies an element of trespass, and the paying of a tax always has the flavor of appeasement,? the essay pointed out.

We?re often told that only death and taxes are inevitable. But they?re better described as interchangeable, since taxes represent the incremental theft of one?s life.

This is worth pondering today, as we celebrate the heroic tax resisters who founded the country we love.

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

Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

July 3, 2012

In conducting this year?s annual Chicago gun ?turn-in,? the police networked with dozens of local churches ? counting on local shepherds to play the role of Judas Goats in the civilian disarmament drive.

Like similar ?buy-back? programs elsewhere, the Chicago event was essentially a taxpayer subsidy for petty criminals, who were able to get cash for stolen firearms ? or simply to get rid of old weapons they no longer considered suitable.

For promoters of citizen disarmament, the real scandal was the fact that a pro-firearms group called Guns Save Lives was able to turn in old, rusty firearms and BB guns and use the money obtained ? more than $6,000 ? to fund a summer camp to teach gun safety to teenagers.

 ?We host the gun turn-in event on an annual basis to encourage residents to turn in their guns so we can take guns off the street, and it?s unfortunate that this group is abusing a program intended to increase the safety of our communities,? lamented police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Putting money in the pockets of street criminals is perfectly all right ? but the thought of law-abiding citizens using that money to teach youngsters the essentials of responsible firearms ownership was simply unconscionable.

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