The Libertarian Solution to Police Brutality?

Getting one's rights abused by the government is awful because in general, people tend to have little chance of getting restitution against their abusers. Government has more financial muscle (by stealing from everyone else) and it's various laws that give agents of said abuse sovereign immunity to prevent accountability. This along with the libertarian understanding of history are why many if not all view government as evil. One can argue that police brutality is one of the worse abuses of government given how much of a presence police have in the general populace.

Unlike conservatives (with very few exceptions) who think police brutality is a myth (or alternatively think certain groups of people deserve it from initial contact), libertarians of all stripes know that abuses from armed agents (along with their unions) of government are a serious problem that needs to be addressed. People that actually see that there is a problem want to know what can be done to stem the abuse and hold abusers accountable.

While filming police (tactics promoted by excellent organizations such as Copblock and Photography is Not a Crime) has increased attention to the issue and exposed lying cops, the actual accountability is far and few in between. Filming also comes with risks, with police confiscating recording devices and deleting the footage along with arresting them on bogus charges. Along with independent citizens filming there have been suggestions that having police wear body cameras would help stem abuse but so far the results are mixed. Some suggest to working within the system to remove bad laws that police use to harass people that cannot fight back. Within the system one has to attack and dismantle police unions (which for some reason anti-union conservatives won't attack) who are very responsible for the little to no punishment police receive when they infringe on the rights of the citizenry. Full and complete end of all victimless crime laws (drug, gun, etc) would also stem much of the harassment of lower income people.

With the continuing of militarization of police there must be a call to limit police interactions and government is not going to help with that. The solution is to use alternatives to relying on government agents. Those solutions would be the following:

1. Cell 411

Cell 411 is a free emergency management mobile service. Create your own personal network with friends and family that you trust in case anyone needs help. In addition it's useful for those who engage in protests and activism with it's option for live broadcasting. Think a more personal version of a neighborhood watch.

2. Asserting Your Right to Bare Arms

A common trope that police worshipers like use against their critics is that without them nobody would protect you. Never mind the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. Libertarians believe gun rights are an absolute and that everyone has the right to defend themselves and carry arms. Banding together with other gun owners who distrust police to patrol neighborhoods with deter potential criminals who see that they'll get shot. In addition any potential police harassment will shine a light on the conservative lie that police won't confiscate arms.

3. Creating private defense/security companies

The private sector has a significantly better track record than the government (parasite) sector and security is no different. When Detroit went bankrupt many of the government "services" were cut back including the police. In enter Threat Management founded by Dale Brown a private security firm that does the same thing government police do but without violating the rights of people. For more information on Brown here are some interviews with Copblock, Tom Woods and Jeff Berwick.
3. Avoiding the police and Blue Lives Matter when possible

Defense attorney's make their case (Part 1 and Part 2) that one should never talk to police. This should also should apply to people who apart of Blue Lives Matter. Not wanting to associate myself with cops and conservatives are one of the reasons why I personally am not a member of any gun groups. Statists don't like being challenged and sometimes may get violent (either directly or indirectly) when they are. De-associating one self from open authoritarians of all political stripes who may or may not make use of Swatting when these types of people hear of your views can help with preserving your own personal liberty.

Part of the reason for using alternative solutions to government is to deny government revenue. This is why I view protesting as pointless and ineffective. This may different depending on the state but in my state of New York, police are paid overtime when out covering protest gatherings. As we libertarians know, a cop's "paycheck" is in reality a welfare check so by protesting people are in fact increasing the tax (read stolen) money given to the parasite class. Not to mention that government will always try to infiltrate these protests with agitators to get them to turn violent in order to justify more liberty crackdowns.

I'm not going to sit here and say these solutions will put the government monopoly out to pasture overnight. However it's been long overdue to get people to realize that individuals must provide their own self defense.

The Hillary Clinton Non-Indictment was Predictable

To those of us who have been paying attention for awhile, we saw Hillary Clinton getting left off the hook by the FBI a mile away. Some of us are actually laughing at it. In reality the whole investigation was nothing but a dog and pony show. My question is, did the Hillary non-indictment actually wake more people up to the joke that is the U.S. justice system or is most of the anger just because of Hillary Clinton?

I see all over social media people saying that the "Republic is Dead" and that "Justice does not exist". The truth of the matter is that the republic has been dying a slow death for decades; from Lincoln suspending Habeas Corpus, Woodrow Wilson arresting and deporting critics of the U.S. entry into World War 1 and the Japanese interment under Roosevelt are examples in U.S. history of politicians flat out abusing the citizenry and never facing punishment. Sure once in a while the people are thrown a bone but overall punishment for the big offenders is far and few in between. I also notice that majority of these people that are saying this are also ones who are against police accountability or label any type of reform to police militarization as "being soft on crime" among other things.The reality of the fact is that if you're against holding one section of the government (the enforcer class) accountable don't freak out when another section of the government (political class) gets the same kid glove treatment.

I've have been saying for awhile that in the U.S. there are three types of laws:

One set for politicians, their cronies and their enforcers,

A second set for celebrities and athletes

and last a third set for the rest of us 

To quote George Carlin: "It's a big club and you ain't in it"

The next question is are the people that are angry actually ready to hate the state or do they just want their brand of socialism in charge at the District of Criminals. If one just wants a leader wearing their colors then they have learned nothing. Most people who just want a different criminal in charge just want the state jackboots to go after their respective outgroups while pretending to be for liberty.

Secession, decentralization and nullification are certainly steps forward, at the bare minimum those who support secession (including myself) recognize that Washington D.C. is beyond reform and other methods must be explored. I'm not going to claim to have the grand answer but an important step is to realize that no matter who is in charge the state is 100% evil.

Secession is a Libertarian Value

While the Brexit has yet to be fully completed, secession has become a hot topic on the political forefront once again. Secession has unfortunately gotten a bad reputation due to being wrongly and exclusively tied to the U.S. Civil War and slavery. This is a tactic is used by statists to discredit the idea of secession. While the Confederate States of America did want to secede from the U.S., that doesn't tell the entire truth about the concept of secession.

What is secession exactly? Well wikipedia defines secession the following way;

the withdrawal of a group from a larger entity, especially a political entity (a country), but also any organization, union or military alliance. 

Using this definition how can anyone think that secession would be a bad thing? Another way to view secession is that it's a political divorce. Last I checked divorce is a pretty socially acceptable thing now a days. Just how when two married people no longer decide that they can make a union work they agree (or one serves divorce papers to the other) to go their seperate ways, political entities should be allowed to do the same thing when they feel that the relationship no longer is mutual beneficial.

Secession is a libertarian value because libertarians advocate for self rule, self determination and decentralization. Secession is a important step to achieving those three goals. This is why the Brexit vote happened. The British were tired of being ruled by unaccountable people in Brussels, Belgium and decided that they had enough of being involved in the European Union. Despite my own personal view (the Anarcho-Capitalist view) that people don't need a ruler, breaking away from a ruler of a large entity to a smaller one (who in theory is more directly accountable) is still a good idea. It's also why I support the Texas Secession movement despite being from New York. As a matter of fact I support secession of all fifty states from the United States Federal Government. Let Hillary or Trump be left to rule the District of Criminals and that's it.

However libertarians shouldn't just cheer one secession movements, they also should be leading them. Lets be honest winning the White House isn't going to be happening anytime soon, the Libertarian Party having one of the best opportunities in decades essentially blew it when it nominated Gary Johnson and Bill Weld as their 2016 Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.
Before that, the original libertarian Tea Party movement (the one that was birthed out of Ron Paul's 2008 campaign, not Glenn Beck's crocodile tears) allowed itself to become corrupted and statist after foolishly extending hands to paleoconservatives, warvangelicals and neoconservatives who then in turn kicked libertarians out. Taking advance of the secessionist sentiment along with taking them over and leading them would be a boon for liberty. What I mean by such a take over is to get into high positions in these movements and diminish the statist conservative (sorry for being redundant) voice. History has shown that conservatism isn't about liberty but just a different breed of statism. Just how they pulled the rug out from under us, it's time for payback while advocating for liberty at the same time. Libertarians (yes even the non-politically active ones) should use these movements to spread the ideas of liberty such as ending the fascist Drug War, the welfare state, warfare state, national security state, showing that taxation is theft among others. Such an opportunity to push real liberty can't be overlooked.

Here is a few secessionist movements that exist already:

California National Party

Republic of New England (site) (Facebook)  (Twitter)

Texas Nationalist Movement (Site) (Twitter)

What I Learned About the Democrats Sit-In

So with currently no action on barring people who are the authoritarian no-fly list from buying guns. Democrats including prominent civil rights figure Jon Lewis have staged a sit-in on the House floor. I personally don't see this sit-in accomplishing anything than getting attention in the media and creating funny internet memes. On one hand a government doing something outside of passing more statist legislation that will continue to erode our rights to me is a good thing. Politicians should sit around and do nothing more often.

The reason for this sit-in should also put to bed the notion that the left is for civil liberties. With some rare exceptions such as Glenn Greenwald who has been consistently against the national security state since 9/11 majority of the left has made it's peace with the national security and warfare states. Alternatively you could say that they were just anti-Bush, anti-conservative (not that I don't disagree with that sentiment) and just were anti-police state out of spite rather than actual interest in defending civil liberties. However it's not just the sit-in that points this out, it's been the entire Obama error, the anti-war left fire more or less died (again some very small exceptions) and the left learned to love the police state. Sure they do a dog and pony show for issues such as police brutality but in reality it's just all bark and no bite. There have maybe a time when the left actually defended civil liberties but that time has lone passed.

Don't get me wrong, this doesn't mean I all of a sudden I trust conservatives with civil liberties. No way in hell this current episode in political theater changes that. I've said for years that conservatism (and all three flavors; paleoconservatism, neoconservatism and neoreactionary) and liberalism are just two different flavors of socialism. I still hate conservatives but one can't help but see that the left's latest stunt makes conservatives appear in a better light on the surface. Sadly there are still libertarians of several stripes out there who think that movement can work with conservatives but that's another argument for another day.

In conclusion with very few expections such as Rand Paul, Justin Amash along with Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich (when Feingold and Kucinich were in office) liberalism and conservatism has no interest in protecting our liberties. It's foolish to think otherwise. They'll do their respective songs and dances to show that they are somehow different from their "opposition" but in reality they don't want to roll back the state just be in control of it.

  

I'm a Gun Owner and No I won't Apologize

Sadly another mass shooting has happened and has taken the lives of many innocent people who just trying to have a good time. Predictably, the left had attacked gun rights with some calling for an outright ban on the Second Amendment. Whether these new attacks lead to legislation is unknown at this time but how the left continues to lie about gun owners and pushes another attempt at this collective responsibility bullshit.

One of the principals of libertarianism is individualism; you own yourself, your responsible for yourself and you are your own man. The left thinks as a gun owner I'm some how responsible for the massacre that happened in Orlando. I'm not the one who pulled the trigger so how can left blame me or any other gun owner for what happened? This particular attack has no logic to it, does the left realize that this is the same collectivist blame that conservatives and neoreactionaries like to place on muslims, jews and non whites for when individual members of these groups commit crimes? The left is correct when they decry when these type attacks happen but have no problem using them for their own statist agenda. Then again the left is no stranger to hypocrisy nor do they care about being called out on as such. I refuse to bow down to pressure from any statist to apologize for something that I did not do.

Collective punishment and blame runs counter to a constitutional republic given how in constitutional republics everyone is equal under the eyes of the law. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, Greece under the Junta (1967-1974), North Korea, Cuba, Spain under Franco are examples of countries who believed in collective punishment. Those in favor of collective punishment don't care about facts and innocent until proven guilty, all that matters to them is that if one belongs to a group of people, expresses a particular opinion, engages in particular activity etc that person is guilty and is responsible that simple association. Alternatively collective punishment and blame can be viewed as guilty until proven innocent which puts the burden of proof on the accused as opposed to the accuser.

The left says that they just want to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. On the surface of this statement isn't evil because who wants thugs and terrorists to have guns to kill innocent people? I would wager not many people. However in reality people who wish to harm others are going to do it anyway whether there is a law on the books or not. Criminals don't care about legitimate laws thats why they're criminals. All gun legislation does is harm innocent people. Background checks, lists, databases, mental health screening, ammunition stamping does nothing to prevent future tragedies but cause more red tape for innocent people to defend themselves. Also not just red tape that such measures create, seeking government approval to exercise one's right it creates a tool in which people can use against political enemies.

Some on the left say that only the government should be armed. The same government that has agents that willingly violate the 4th amendment? The same government agents who openly violate the rights of people knowing full well they'll get away with it if they ever reach a courtroom? This kind of logic is insane.

Historically gun control was started to prevent newly freed slaves from defending themselves from people who wanted to harm them. Today's gun regulations can still do just that. For example lets take someone who is gay, some in this country still think homosexuality is a mental disorder. A state with mental health screenings as a precursor to obtaining a firearm could be used against a gay individual who wishes to arm themselves. Similar gun control measures can be used against other groups of people by those who issue gun licenses such as county clerks and sheriffs. Why should the rights of individual be subjected to the approval of others? When a right is to be determined to be granted by another then it's no longer a right it's a privileged and last time I checked the second amendment is not a privilege but a right.

In a free society there will always be bad events, bad people and bad situations that's the reality. No piece of legislation will ever fully eliminate the horrible elements of society. However it has been proven statistically that the more armed a society the less likely tragic events such as what happened down in Orlando will happen. Criminals like easy targets because an unarmed person is less likely to deliver any serious harm to a criminal. If the left was ever actually serious about protecting the rights of minority groups (they weren't) then they would ditch gun control and allow gays and minority groups to arm themselves to defend themselves from those who wish to harm them. Also not just them but everyone.

Libertarian Infighting Needs to End

There are several different ways to cripple if not outright destroy a movement. Infighting in my opinion has to be the worst among them because it destroys a movement from within. Infighting causes movements to take sight off of the enemy, view themselves as the enemy while the main goal becomes swept under the rug. It's bad enough when one has to worry about their enemies attacking them while not being sure if the ones you call friends won't sucker punch you.

Over the past week or so I noticed on twitter various libertarian anarcho-capitalists I follow attacking each other because some are advocating voting for one of the Libertarian party candidates in the presidential election in November. For the record I don't vote as I like many anarcho-capitalists view voting as a waste of time because the system itself is rigged. However I won't attack a fellow libertarian for voting like I would attack a liberal, a conservative, or a neoreactionary on their brand of statism. In Man vs The Welfare State, Henry Hazlitt said that libertarians need to attack from multiple directions if the movement has any hope of advancing real liberty. Hazlitt is right in that regard, especially in today's world where statism has morphed into several different forms.

Getting into awful and hateful arguments because some in the movement are pushing others to vote is a waste of time. I was watching a YouTube video between radio host Scott Horton and Jeffery Tucker in which Horton said that he views the Anti-Trump and Pro-Trump groups getting into fights as when red shirts were getting into fights with brown shirts in 1930s Germany. These are the types of groups libertarians as a whole should be fighting with, not with ourselves. There will always be people within the movement that people will or won't like. I'm sure those who are reading this can name three to five writers, podcasters, speakers, etc that they like or have a problem with. Libertarians should be attacking warmongers, protectionists, economic interventionists, anti-government accountability groups, those who hate individual rights and believe the "greater good or the majority" takes precedent, anti-self defense groups, drug warriors, those who support foreign aid, etc. These are the people who are enemies of liberty not ourselves.