I Already Googled It

So—as mentioned in my last blog post—I visited a theatre festival—the Chemainus Theatre Festival—on Saturday for my father’s birthday.

The play was A Christmas Carol, and while I love the Alastair Sim version (1951)—I watch it every Christmas Eve without fail, as was my late grandfather’s (also named Robert!) tradition—this rendition was terrible. The script was terrible—important parts removed, ridiculous parts added (what an affront to Dickens’ masterpiece!)—as was—in my opinion—the cast. They had some punk ~13-year-old playing the Ghost of Christmases Past.

I did my best to sit respectfully throughout, although I did spend a large amount of time examining the lighting apparatuses…

ANYWAY, enough about this theatre festival—this post is tagged “Randian” and “Libertarianism“, not “I am now a liberal” (don’t worry, that category doesn’t exist).

I was wandering around in the lobby, when I found this gem:

Do you like theatre?

It doesn’t matter, if you live in Canada you pay for it anyway.

Don’t worry! If your business can’t convince its prospective customers that your products and/or services are worth their money, you can always appeal to big government and they’ll use the force of law to grab those same customers’ money and give it to you!

If the Chemainus Theatre Festival isn’t proof enough of this, see General Government Motors.

So I was at a theatre festival tonight for my father’s birthday—it’s a tradition—and while it was—typical of anything artsy—full of liberals, we did have a few good conversations.

(Do I over-use the em dash? Let me know—that’s what the comments are for.)

(There I go using it again…)

One of the conversations focussed around “the police state” that I see Canada slowly spiralling downwards into.  Problem is that most of the electorate are half-witted, short-sighted liberals…and soccer moms…but aren’t soccer moms really just a more specific kind of liberal?

Anyway, the conversation revolved around how nuances of law—such as “entrapment“—seem to have fallen into woeful disuse.  The conversation centered around this advertising push that the police are doing on the radio, where they emphasize the fact that 30-year-old police officers are posing as 15-year-old girls on-line to lure in sexual predators, leading to their arrest.

Now, I’m not one to support sexual predators—I’m of the opinion they should be shot—but I’m also not one—being a minarchist libertarian and all—to support wanton disregard for protections afforded by the law/Charter for good reason.

It’s fine-and-dandy to scream with outrage when a murder gets off because the evidence needed to convict him was “inadmissible“, but think of the precedent it would set if the evidence was admitted.  It would set the precedent that the police can pretty much do whatever they want.  Do we want this?  I know the knee jerk instinct of do-gooders (not to bash on do-gooders, but we all have knee jerk instincts that need to be critiqued from time-to-time…fortunately this is a very noble one) is to say something like “you have nothing to worry about if you have nothing to hide“, and while this argument may hold some water, what happens when the police become convinced that you’re guilty, and start harassing you?  What happens when the laws don’t exist to protect you from the criminals, or you from the police, but to protect the police from you?

It’s called a “police state“.  And we know how well that worked out for Nazi Germany.

The simple fact-of-the-matter is that these laws exist for good reason.  Sure they may sometimes seem unjust, but when you look at the waterfall effect of “correcting” these injustices, the culmulative effect is actually quite terrible.

Entrapment exists to prevent innocent people from being ensnared by the police.  Basically it means that you cannot be convicted of a crime that you were induced by a law enforcement official to commit.  This is why police officers undercover don’t pose as drug dealers, because a dealer solicits business, which—in the case of a police officer—constitutes entrapment.

Anyway, back to the sexual predators (I would say “paedophile“, but preying on 15-year-old girls technically makes you an “ephebophile“…bet you didn’t know that).  I simply can’t fathom how going on-line and posing as a 15-year-old girl to cause a sexual predator to engage in predatory activity doesn’t constitute entrapment.  But somehow, it must not, because the police are really gung-ho on this strategy.

In fact, that’s not the only loophole I can think of in this strategy.  What if I show up and some 30-year-old cop steps out of the shadows and tries to place me under arrest.  What does he do when I say “I knew you were a cop all along, and as per my Charter rights I’m innocent until proven guilty“?  Curl up in a ball and lament the fact that I’m the only ephebophile he’s encountered thus far who understands the legal rights in the Charter?

And then there’s the new DUI laws here in British Columbia, which basically make traffic cops judge, jury, executioner too.  All traffic cop and traffic law loathing aside (which trust me, I have plenty of), this is just an affront to our civil liberties.

Here’s a more recent article on the matter.  Let me begin my critique of this gem of statism by pointing out the fact that a police officer is leading a man—”guilty” (notice scare quotes) of DUI—away in handcuffs.  Now, if you handcuff me, you can bet that I’m going to consider myself detained.

Let’s see if Pierre Elliott Trudeau‘s Charter of Rights and Freedoms has something to say about that, shall we?  I just happen to have a framed copy on my wall…

…oh, look at section 9 and 10:

Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned.

Everyone has the right on arrest or detention

a) to be informed promptly of the reasons therefor;

b) to retain and instruct counsel without delay and to be informed of that right; and

c) to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful.

So, the way I see it, as soon as you slap the ‘cuffs on me, I’m being “detained” (since I can’t just walk off a free man), so I have the right “to retain and instruct counsel without delay“, and “to have the validity of the detention determined by way of habeas corpus“, neither of which I imagine that man received, given the content of the article.

This is the way the government does it: They expand their power slowly be selecting people you don’t want to raise your voice to defend; sexual predators, drunk drivers, gun owners.  They rob them of their rights and liberty, and then the merciless march continues, inch by inch, the people consenting and welcoming the iron grip of the state every step of the way, until eventually they find themselves crushed beneath authoritarian, arbitrary rule, which encompasses all aspects of their life.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

—James Madison

The Founding Fathers of the United States have something profound to say about everything, don’t they?

Now that I’ve railed on the police enough, how about a bit of defense for the men in blue?

Tasers.

Yes, that is all.  Tasers.  They’ve become a sensation here in the past few years.  Seems that people acting in an unlawful, unruly manner, feel ill used when they get ~15 000 volts to the chest.

Personally, if I was pulling the antics some of them were pulling, I’d consider myself lucky not to eat a few rounds from a GLOCK 17.  Maybe the police need to stop pulling out the Taser and start pulling the firearm, and people will stop complaining.

You may be thinking: Wasn’t this guy just ranting about the police state a moment ago?  In fact I was.  But that’s why this blog post is about “balance“.  The power of police to detain us and decide our fate has grown too large in some areas—the areas where the victim is someone people don’t feel sorry for (when was the last time you heard someone ask “Was he guilty?” in response to someone having been allegedly driving drunk? How about for rape?—but in the areas where the victim is someone people have a misplaced sense of sympathy for, the floodgates just open.

Here’s an article.  I had a good time reading that one.  Here’s a question for Beverly Grimolfson: Your son was in a store (i.e. on someone else’s property) throwing a drug-induced fit (not that there’s anything innately wrong with using drugs) and a police officer Tasered him (rather than shooting him) and now you’re crying about it as though it was some great injustice?

I’m sorry, maybe you should’ve raised your son to enjoy his drugs and still respect other peoples’ property.  Don’t finger point at the police because your son couldn’t figure out how to use drugs responsibly (the way they should be legal to use) and was on a “rampage“.

Maybe you’d be happier if the police officer had pulled the GLOCK?  Or perhaps you just think your son should be be allowed to go on a “rampage” through other peoples’ property?

Sorry, that’s not the way the world works.  It’s called respect, and apparently your son had none.

So—being that I live in Canada—I have plenty of reason to rage about statism. Not to say that others don’t have reason to rage more (Europe), but there are certainly people with reason to rage less (U.S.). I mean you talk about de-socializing healthcare here and you may as well be run out of town by villagers armed with pitchforks and torches.

Statism here—as in most places—is working as intended. We welcome the government into our lives with open arms, because we have issues with the ways our neighbours lead our lives, or the way we led our lives, and we want a solution. It doesn’t matter that we’re trodding all over others. As long as 51% want the government to do something—or don’t care if they do—it’s fine.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49.
—Unknown

Don’t let anyone tell you the above is Jefferson, that’s a mis-attribution (source).

People forget how they lived without the government in their lives.  Talking on a cellphone while driving was recently banned here in B.C., and it seems people have forgotten it was ever not illegal.  No one cares about the fact that the bad drivers are still bad drivers, and the people who could safely drive and talk on the phone at the same time are being unfairly punished, they saw something that they didn’t like, and they appealled to the state for a solution.  “Take my freedom!  Just stop him from doing that thing he does which doesn’t effect me at all other than in my irrational and self-righteous irritation!” is essentially their war cry.  They forget that—less here than in the States, but still—people died for and fought for their freedom—with arms, words, and votes.  And now they’ll just throw it away because they don’t like the fact that the guy in the next lane is trying to talk to his wife and get to work on time.

Amidst this avalanche of state power, sometimes there’s a glimmer of hope.  That came for me in yesterday’s Times Colonist—the local newspaper (and a very left-leaning one at that).

Here’s a link.

I’m not going to lie, I felt all warm and fuzzy reading that article, because I said all the same things when I heard about San Francisco’s ridiculous ban on Happy Meals.  It’s not the state’s responsibility to make sure children get proper nutrition, it’s the parents’.  And I’m glad not only that the mayor of San Francisco vetoed that ridiculous piece of legislation, but that a left-leaning newspaper in the area that I live supports that.

Truth be told, I’ve noticed more and more that the tide of statism is turning.  Maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t.  Whatever the outcome, the financial collapse in the United States had the unexpected side effect—because the egregiously statist and anti-capitalist bail out solution—of awakening a lot of people to the fact that maybe reckless expansions of state power aren’t the way to ensure a healthy society.  Maybe men can be left to manage their own affairs, rather than consolidating powers over the affairs of men in other men.

I was talking to a socialist yesterday, on an internet forum for random discussion that I frequent, and I he was talking about how—because of my libertarianism—I don’t “care for the weak and poor“.  He committed the quintessential fallacy of a statist—believing that you cannot force men to be good, because through force you remove all virtue from the act.

I came back with this (I thought after I posted it that it’d make an excellent blog entry, lol):

You really don’t get it, do you? Just because I’m not a socialist doesn’t mean that I don’t “care for the weak and poor“. You socialists think that the power of the law should be abused to accomplish every end, when it shouldn’t. To force a man to give to the “weak and poor” eliminates his personal choice — the virtue of the act — and makes you no better than all the other looters who’ve cropped up throughout history. You use whatever ends necessary to force your fellow man to behave in ways that you see fit, caring nothing for his or her conscience and free will. You’re no different than the Church, who burned heretics at the stake and abused its influence over monarchs to see its values institutionalized in law.

Just because I’m a libertarian doesn’t mean that I don’t “care for the weak and poor“, it just means that I find it loathsome to “care for the weak and poor” using money I acquired by stealing it from someone at gunpoint.

To think that you can do good with the product of theft — an evil — is the fundamental moral fallacy of socialism. Socialism is the dirge of altruism, for it bastardizes it to looting. Socialism is the dirge of goodwill, for it makes men not neighbours, but either vicious competitors for looted money or parasites who exist at your expense, off of the products of your labour, through no consent of yours.

The socialist is the one so arrogant as to believe he can live the lives of others better than they can. The socialist is the one so foolish as to believe that men cannot be left free to manage their own affairs — because they are too corrupt and selfish — and so proposes consolidating power in a state run by men. The socialist is the robber of free will and the destroyer of the natural upward surge of mankind. The one who would stop the man surging upwards — pulling everyone around him with him — preferring instead everything to remain static but “equal“.

I love this quote from Mark Munger, from a speech he made at the Libertarian National Convention:

As Thomas Jefferson said “it is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all”. Not “establish”, not “create”, “secure”. Government — if it is to be legitimate — must secure our rights to our persons, our properties, and our consciences.

[…]

We’re for a libertarian society, where a couple wakes up in their own home, on land they control and that they can defend. This couple formed a bond by mutual consent, without needing the license or endorsement from any outside agency. They send their children to a school that they have chosen, whose curriculum they endorse. When they go out to their car, they don’t take an ID. It’s no one’s business who they are or where they go, so long as they initiate no violence and break no laws. They work in jobs they’ve trained for; they enjoy the full fruits of that labour. They contribute to charities or work, or not, for causes they believe in, and are not forced at gunpoint to support causes they loathe.

What exactly do those schools, those jobs, and those causes look like? What will people do?

I have no idea. I have no idea! Isn’t it arrogant to think that I could know? Isn’t it despotic to think that I have to know, before we let them try?

We are for each American, for families, for groups of people working together to solve problems; serving their consciences, serving their goals. We’re for responsibility and choice. We’re for a government, for God’s sake, small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

Responsibility and choice.  I’ve never heard of two more beautiful goals.  Compare that to the socialist’s finger-pointing and force.

Which will you choose?

So government-run companies suck.

I hope you already knew this—or are at least somewhat accepting of/open to it—otherwise this blog—or, at least, the part tagged “Libertarianism”—is going to enrage you…

…you liberal.

Anyway, I was driving to hang out with a friend today, and listening to the radio—I don’t bother hooking my phone up to the car stereo unless I’m going to be driving for a while—and I heard a B.C. Hydro commercial.  Apparently if you buy a new fridge—one that supposedly uses less electricity—they’ll pay you $50.  That’s right, if you make a purchase designed to use less of their product, and thereby lower their profits, they’ll give you money.  Furthermore, if you get rid of an old fridge—one that chugs merrily along, consuming their product and making them money—they’ll not only send someone to take it away for you, but they’ll give you $30.

So, here’s a company—government-owned and -operated—paying people so they can make less money…

…and people wonder why the government runs a deficit…

…and why taxes are so high.

You don’t see a sign outside the Sony Store saying “You don’t really need a new T.V.“, nor do you see bakeries offering to subsidize you buying a bread maker—thereby making them obsolete or at least unnecessary—so why is B.C. Hydro doing similar things?

Statism, and liberals.

Goddamn them.