On the Banks

In Which a Bunch of White People Lecture Me on the Black Experience and I Am “Outed” as a Casual Racist

 

 

 

 

I’ve made a real effort in recent years to avoid getting into any political debates or arguments online, for what are probably obvious reasons to anyone who has ever engaged in them. So I was completely unprepared for the level to which online discussions had sunk in my absence.

I wouldn’t ordinarily write an entire blog post about a conversation I’d had on Facebook – certainly not one as deeply stupid as this conversation became – but I think there’s something important to be learned from this particular exchange. I see it as sort of a snapshot of what is going on all over the country right now. So I hope you’ll bear with me.

Here’s what happened: My friend (who I’ll call “Veronique”) wrote a post where she tried to explain the insensitivity of saying “all lives matter” in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, with an analogy to babies who have Down Syndrome:

“If I started a campaign/movement to save babies with DS from abortion and called it ‘Down Syndrome Lives Matter’ – would you be up in arms? Would you argue with me that all babies lives matter and try to negate my purpose in saving babies with Down Syndrome from the 92% selective abortion rate?”

I thought she made a good point, and I “liked” her post. I saw that someone else (I’ll call him “Pete”) had commented:

 

 

I responded with what I thought was a reasonable enough - and fairly innocuous - counterpoint. Here’s what happened:


 

 

 

In fact, I have read quite a bit about “white privilege”. I’ve even written a little about it. Here is why I think “privilege” is not a very good word to use in discussing racial (or gender, etc.) inequality:


“The word “privilege” connotes the possession not only of something one has not earned, but of something one really has no right to.  It implies a benefit that has been granted by someone else and that can and perhaps should be revoked by someone else.

"There is something insidious about this.  It is an upside-down way of looking at discrimination.  Instead of seeing behavior that ends up marginalizing groups of people as the problem, it turns our attention to those who are not marginalized.  To declare that they are thereby “privileged” is to hint that they are somehow culpable in the harm that has been done — whether or not any specific individuals ever actually engaged in discriminatory speech or actions themselves.

“Using the word in this way is also to accept bigotry as the default.  To assert that not being harmed by discrimination is some kind of “privilege” is to assert that oppression is or should be the norm and suggests, in a manner reminiscent of PC’s Maoist roots, that those who do not suffer from discrimination ought to.

“To declare that non-oppression is a privilege is to lay the intellectual groundwork for bringing everyone down to the level of the oppressed.  Wouldn’t empowering everyone be a more noble goal?”

 

But Pete is about to demonstrate another problem with the term: It has become little more than a bludgeon for shutting down opposing viewpoints or any kind of reasoned debate.

He has this down:

 

  

My friend – you remember my friend, the one who wrote the original post? – tries valiantly to defend me, and says she hopes we can all get along and be nice to each other. After this, Pete (still ignoring all of the points I have made thus far) decides to show some civility:

 

 

 

  

Julie agrees with Pete – which is a little strange to me, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never met Julie, and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know who my “friends of color” are. I’d like to hear more from her about how my relationships with them aren’t “real”, but I’m kind of afraid to ask.

Meanwhile, I make a mental note to speak with my black friends and gently ask them if they could try to be better “friends of color” and talk with me about the things they are supposed to talk about, so that I can score more Sanctimonious White Person points with my white friends (or, as in this case, with a bunch of white total strangers.) I’ll also ask them to be sure they hold the right opinions on these topics, because as Pete knows, all people of color think exactly alike and have the same opinions on important issues.

 

So just to catch everyone up:

This entire vitriolic exchange is happening because I said that I don’t believe everyone who says “all lives matter” is an actual racist. Because of that, I am now guilty of “…stupidity, arrogance and hate.”

I am also now someone who doesn’t listen to black people, even though I think that I do. And never mind that there ARE NO ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THIS CONVERSATION. Pete has taken it upon himself to speak on their behalf, and anyone who thinks that some black people might think things other than what Pete says they think is… I don’t know. A racist?


My friend (remember?) once again tries to rescue me. But I fear it is too late:

 

 

To be clear: I think all “Julie” is accusing me of is excusing casual racism, by refusing to call everyone who says “all lives matter” a racist. She has not yet said that I am guilty of “casual racism.” What is interesting though, is that Julie actually “liked” my initial comment, where I expressed the view that she now refers to as “casual racism.” So now I’m starting to wonder about Julie.

Note that there is no room for discussion here. The question of whether or not everyone who utters the words “all lives matter” is a racist is not up for debate. They have been declared to be racists, and so they are. And anyone who disagrees with that assessment is not “expressing another viewpoint”, but is “excusing casual racism.” Do you see how this works?

Pete has more to say. This time, it’s in the form of a weapon he’s been holding back the whole time: Words from an actual black person:

 

 

And I have to say, I’m taken aback. I truly hadn’t realized that failing to call people who say “all lives matter” racist could be so deeply upsetting to someone. I am really astonished at this man’s depth of feeling over this issue…

…Oh wait! He’s not actually talking about this issue at all, but about the recent demonstrations in Charlottesville where actual white supremacists marched in public and spewed actual racist rhetoric:

 

 

I make another mental note to ask my friends of color to please provide me with a sampling of quotes that I can pull out in situations like this. The quotes don’t need to be about anything in particular, as long as they are heartfelt. I can use them anywhere. And if my friends of color are “real” friends, they’ll do it for me, right?

I do see Pete’s point though. Shouting “racist” at everyone who sees the world differently than you do is probably a more effective way of getting through to them than is engaging them in a discussion as if they are reasonable human beings. I make another mental note about that.

It occurs to me that what is happening here, between Pete and Julie and me, is almost a kind of communication. It is of course not rational discourse – that would involve at least a pretense of listening to what the other person had said and responding to it. But nobody has responded to any of my arguments, other than to shout at me to check my privilege. And yet some form of communication is going on here. If not rational discourse, then what?

It seems to me that what is going on here is pure signaling. In the same way that ants signal to each other through pheromones, that they belong either to the same nest or to a different (enemy) nest, there is a kind of “communication” that happens in human society that consists of little more than sending signals to alert others as to whose side you are on.

I think I’m starting to get it now. I see what Pete is doing, and I think to myself, “OK, I can play this game too!”


So I try:

 

 

 I fear my comment might be a little ambiguous, so I elaborate:

 

 

 Another commenter (I’ll call her Brunhilde) jumps in:

 

 

Ladies, take note: Calling out a man on his sexist ways only counts if a lot of other women agree with you.

But I can see what Brunhilde is up to, and I’m going to “call her out” on it:

 

 

I’m starting to like this game!



Brunhilde doesn’t though:

 

 

 

So here’s another funny thing: Brunhilde ALSO “liked” my initial comment where I said that not everyone who says “all lives matter” is racist. But now she says I’ve been “called out” for my “casual racism”. I’m not sure where this happened, but it had to be somewhere between my initial comment and this last one. Yet I can’t find it. Looking back over the conversation, I see a lot of vaguely worded non-sequitors about “white people” and “racism”, but nothing about anything I’ve said or done being racist. Which only leaves my initial comments. Which Brunhilde “liked”. So now I’m starting to wonder about Brunhilde too…

Notice that Brunhilde has not been bothered by any of the vitriol directed at me throughout this conversation. I wonder why that is. Notice also that she stops just short of saying that she will pray for me. Wow, Brunhilde’s not enjoying this game at all!

But Pete’s back:



 

 

And now I truly am floored. I’m not sure how I expected Pete to react to my attempt to take the crazy up a notch in an already batshit conversation. I thought maybe he’d be angry at me for making fun of him. But this… I am tempted to feel bad for what I’ve said.

But then I realize that all he’s doing is more signaling. He’s Saying the Right Things when “called out” because it is literally the only thing he knows to do. And he has no choice but to Say the Right Things, because not to do so would blow the whole “calling out” game out of the water. I have no idea what Pete really thinks about what I’ve said, and he probably doesn’t either.

I realize then that my mistake lay in trying to satirize something that had already gone well beyond the limits of satire.

So why does this matter? Why have I just spent nearly 2,000 words, and why have you spent whatever time you’ve just spent, re-hashing one of the most unbelievably stupid conversations in the history of humankind?

Here’s why: Because what happened in this conversation is happening all over the country. It’s in the news, it’s on university campuses, it’s probably in a lot of the conversations you and I engage in every day. And I think it’s important for people to understand what’s going on. As I wrote above, it is a kind of “communication”, but more akin to the communication that occurs between insects than the kind that is required to build and maintain human civilization.

So here’s what happened in this conversation: I was a newcomer here. I only knew one other person, my friend who had written the original post. And when I joined in, I failed to send out the proper signals to let the others know whose “side” I was on. I also didn’t back down from my position and even argued with some of them, and I think, in a very base, very primitive part of the brain, that made me seem like some kind of threat.

So at some point in the conversation – pretty early on, I think – the substance of what I said no longer mattered. What mattered was that I wasn’t making the right noises, or sending out the proper tribal signals, to reassure everyone that I was a part of their larger “tribe” of “right-thinking people.” And without those reassurances, that base part of their brains concluded that I must be the enemy.

This is what tribal behavior looks like. It is what mob behavior looks like. It is groupthink at its ugliest, it is “us vs. them”, it is the rejection of reason in favor of base tribal allegiances and signaling. It is base, it is divisive, and it is destructive of human relationships and civilized coexistence.

There is a word for this kind of thinking. And Pete and Julie (probably also Brunhilde) wouldn’t like it.

 

 

 

 

 

War and Terror: the Hypocrisy Is Not the Point

 

 

Every time there’s a terrorist attack in a Western city, people like me start reminding everyone of all the brutal (and ongoing) attacks Western governments have waged on the countries the terrorists come from. We’re predictable that way. And maybe it gets old. Maybe it even seems petty to be pointing out hypocrisy at a time like this.

But the hypocrisy is not the point. The point is that all around us, people are responding just as predictably, with their immediate, reflexive, emotional appeals: Either to “come together and heal”, and “just get along”, or “throw out all the Muslims!” The two world views smash against each other over and over again and create the impression that the question of how to stop terrorism will be resolved by adopting the correct attitude towards Islam and Muslim immigrants.

Yet all the compassionate hand-wringing, and all the racist bellowing in the world will not solve the problem of terrorism because none of it addresses what is at its root. Those on both sides of the reflexive left-right spectrum resist digging at its roots. Like cats scrambling to avoid a bath, they grasp at whatever platitudes serve their world view, and absolutely refuse to consider that perhaps it is not just a matter of “good people” vs. “bad people”, or society as a whole not being “enlightened” enough. Perhaps it has something to do with a long history of violent intervention by Western governments who became accustomed to not suffering any consequences for their actions.

That this is even controversial to anyone is bizarre. The connection between military intervention and terrorism is well established, most notably in the 2006 study by Robert A. Pape. Pape compiled a database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world, beginning in 1980. He found that:



“The data show that there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions…

“Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland. Religion is rarely the root cause, although it is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations in recruiting and in other efforts in service of the broader strategic objective.”

And yet the debate still rages. Most mind boggling to witness is the blind rage of those who blame “Islam” and want to deport all Muslims, who they blame for the attacks – yet cannot fathom that people in countries brutalized by Western governments might be capable of feeling (and acting on) that same rage.

As long as enough people cling to their beloved nation states, then we will continue to see more of the same: Unrestrained, violent, military adventurism on the part of powerful states, and the much smaller, but every bit as brutal, violent responses of those lashing out against them in whatever ways they can. And what neither left nor right wants to acknowledge is this: When society allows for an institution to hold a monopoly on violence, on justice and its enforcement, it unleashes a monster into the world. We can pretend that “we” control that monster, either through Constitutional restraints or through the magic of Democracy. We can even pretend that the monster represents our interests and not its own. But the reality is that none of that is true.

The attachment that so many adults have to the nation states they happen to live under is hard to explain. But it is deadly, and this is nowhere more apparent than in war and the violence that ongoing war perpetuates. If you’re not willing to confront the evils of the state – including the specific state you happen to live under – then expect to see more of the same for a very long time. No well-intentioned pleas for compassion, changing your FaceBook status, or deporting all the Muslims from your country is going to change that.

  

 

What You Probably Don't Know About Healthcare in America - If You Watch Nothing Else Today, Watch This.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm going to say it one more time: Everything that is wrong with healthcare in the US is the result of government intervention of some kind. I'm sure some nitpicker readers will try to find some minor exceptions to this blanket statement - go for it. I'm eager to hear what you come up with.

In the meantime though, for anyone who is genuinely interested in making health care accessible and affordable for everyone, please take the time to familiarize yourself with the history of healthcare in this country (and elsewhere) so you can better understand how we got here. Also so you can see what is in fact possible - not because a bunch of geeky economists who understand these things say it's possible, but because it ("it" being affordable healthcare) is a part of our very recent history.

This short video (based on an article by Roderick T. Long) is an excellent place to start:

 

 

Of course this isn't the whole story. There's more, such as the role of Blue Cross and Blue Shield in using the government to shut out smaller competing insurance companies, and the way the AMA conspired with the state to restrict the supply of doctors and of medical schools. You can read more about that in this excellent little article by Dale Steinreich: 100 Years of Medical Fascism.

I'll say it again (like the broken record that I am): The problems we have with health care are the direct result of government interference in the market for health care. If you are someone who cares about fixing those problems, who cares about making sure that everyone has access to affordable medical care, then please take the time to educate yourself about the historical roots of those problems and please stop calling for more of what caused them as the solution.

 

 

 

Michael Owen Nails Pre-Existing Conditions Mandates

This is really one of the best commentaries I've seen on the uproar about the possibility that insurance companies will no longer be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. From Michael Owen, who you can find on FaceBook:

 

"Coming from the GOP, I'm sure whatever is in the bill the house passed today is awful. But I see a lot of emotional response, mainly around "pre-existing conditions." How awful it is to deny people insurance if they have a pre-existing condition.

"I'm about to say something that is going to hurt your feels. You cannot buy insurance for a pre-existing condition, not as a matter of "market failure", but as a matter of the definition of insurance. You cannot buy homeowner's insurance after your house burns down. You cannot buy car insurance after you've wrecked the car. You cannot buy life insurance after your spouse dies. That's not what insurance is. Insurance is the pooling of risk BEFORE something bad happens. That's what keeps the price down when it is allowed to work properly. Something bad but unlikely is costly (rebuild a house, get cancer treatment), so people pool their risk and pay a small amount up front. The pool then has the funds to pay out to those few unlucky enough to get cancer, wreck their car, or have their house burn down.

"I'm going to hit you in the feels even more: mandating that pre-existing conditions be covered by insurance completely breaks this. It is no longer insurance, and unsurprisingly, it makes costs shoot up. Imagine if the government mandated that insurance companies had to sell you a homeowner's policy, even after your house burned down. Who would buy a policy BEFORE their house burned down? You'd have to be a sucker to do so. The risk pool would collapse, with the only people buying policies being those that needed payouts. But of course there is no money in the pool. So of course to "fix" the market it just destroyed, the government then has to mandate that everyone buy into the system. Individual mandate; sound familiar?

"The problem with that is that the government has been intervening in healthcare and insurance for so long and so pervasively that the levels of coverage it has mandated and the services themselves have become so expensive that people can't afford them. So premiums ratchet skyward, as they have for decades, well outpacing the general rate of inflation. Low income people would be priced out completely. This is politically unpopular, so the government externalizes those costs onto taxpayers and other people via taxes, inflation, and higher premiums. Unsurprisingly, this causes massive friction, as it pits demographics against each other.

"The thing nobody want to hear is that the possibility of bad outcomes has a social utility. Because we might die, we buy life insurance to provide for our families. Because our house might burn down, we buy home owners insurance. Because we or our families might get catastrophically ill or injured, we buy health insurance. By doing this we set aside and do not consume now the resources that society needs later to deal with these crises. But because the government limits supply (licensure schemes, huge regulatory burdens that only a few large suppliers can navigate, intellectual property laws, coverage mandates, etc.; all of these supply limiting measures are in place to drive up profits for these industries) and subsidizes demand, prices skyrocket and fewer and fewer people can afford it. People of very modest means can afford technological marvels like smartphones and flatscreen TVs, but they can't afford healthcare and healthcare insurance.

"The natural operation of markets is to reduce costs. The market is nothing if not a giant machine whose purpose is to grind away costs. Consumer electronics are cheap and amazing precisely because they are relatively unregulated and unsubsidized. Healthcare and insurance are the exact opposite. If you really want to make healthcare affordable for everyone, get the government out of it completely and let the market treat it like flat screens and smartphones. Let charity handle the truly needy. The system we have now is making everyone into the needy."

 

 

 

What's the Story Here?

 

Last month, our daughter had her first grand mal seizure and had a visit to the local emergency room. We were mistakenly billed as "uninsured" and received the bill below (don't worry, it's being corrected). But that's not the real story. What's the real story (or stories) this bill tells us?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speechless in 2017

 

 

 

It’s been a weird couple of months. I’ve seen more people unfriend each other on FaceBook than in the past few years combined; There have been several reports of both Trump supporters and minorities being physically attacked; I’ve been asked to wear a safety pin to proclaim to the world that I am not a racist, because the presumption now is that everyone is a racist and you have to (secretly - only not so secretly) announce to everyone if you’re not; and the senior editor of ThinkProgress is afraid of his plumber. (This, based solely on whatever profiling techniques they use over at ThinkProgress - “…a middle-aged white man with a southern accent who seemed unperturbed by this week’s news.” - rather than anything resembling a conversation with the man.)

Here’s the thing: I’m a libertarian. I’ve been surrounded by people who don’t agree with me for as long as I can remember and it has never occurred to me to isolate myself from everyone because of our political differences. Certainly not to assault them. Nor am I filled with anxiety by the thought that people who work in my home might have different political views than mine. To me, you’re all a bunch of fascists. But I’ve somehow learned to live with you.

For me, watching people unravel over this election has been instructive. The - yes, I’m going to say it - bigotry of many on the left, in their caricaturing of Trump supporters, has never before been so blatant. Nor has the jaw-dropping, mass-hypnosis level of selective partisan-driven outrage. I understand that a lot of people are worried, upset, even frightened over the prospect of a Trump presidency. Good. They should be. But they should have been worried eight years ago, or at the very least, four years ago.

I was worried four years ago. And I was worried eight years ago. I tried in vain to get my Obama-supporting friends to see what I saw, but with very few exceptions (which I appreciated, thank you) I was met with silence, accused of mean-spiritedness or just told that I should “give him a chance” (did I have a choice?)


I was right in all but one of my predictions for the Obama administration, by the way.

So in case you (like some of my friends) somehow missed out on what’s been happening over the past eight years, let me catch you up:

1. We no longer have a Fourth Amendment, nor the right of habeas corpus (you remember: it was kind of the foundation of our justice system). Yes, the demise of these fundamental protections has been a long time coming, but President Obama delivered the death blow when he gave himself (and all future presidents) the right to imprison indefinitely or even assassinate any human being on the planet with no due process whatsoever.

Number One should be enough. Any normal person should look at the first item on this list and say “OK, I guess that’s a little bit worse than making fun of a disabled reporter.” (And I say this as the mother of an intellectually disabled daughter.) But, because I know it won’t be enough, I’ll continue…

2. Obama has bombed more countries than George W. Bush did, and his drone strikes have killed more than six times as many people as those under Bush, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (killing unintended victims 90% of the time.)

3. He has given himself (and all future presidents) the power to wage war without Congressional approval.

4. He has greatly expanded the mass surveillance of American citizens.

5. He put in place a statist health insurance mandate that has sent insurance premiums skyrocketing.

6. He has continued the same brand of crony capitalism and debt expansion of the previous administration.

7. He has deported more than 2.5 million immigrants - more than any other American president in history. (See correction below.)

8. After running on a platform of more government transparency, he has presided over an administration more hostile than any other to whistleblowers and a free press.

9. Police brutality has not abated, nor has the mass incarceration of Americans (and especially black and Hispanic Americans. Maybe it’s only “racism” if the president is a white Republican?)

10. Did I mention he - and all future presidents - now has the legal right to kill anyone on the planet, including American citizens, with no conviction, no charges, no semblance of due process at all. Did I mention that?



Yes, there have been other things. There have even been a few marginally good things. I applauded when Obama commuted the sentences of hundreds of non-violent drug offenders (though I also wondered how that news went down with the rest of the more than a million non-violent prisoners who won’t be getting out), and I cried happy tears when he commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. These are undeniably good actions. But they are “good” in the same sense that flowers from an abusive spouse are good. They don’t even begin to make up for the bad.

So as I watch my friends and thousands of other Americans gather together to protest the inauguration, I find myself a little speechless. It cannot be that all of these people only see evil when it wears the other team’s uniform. It cannot be that they are more upset by offensive speech than by a man claiming the right to kill any human being on earth at his whim. These things simply cannot be. And yet it sure looks like they are.

I love my friends. I share many of their concerns (or rather, it seems they have recently come to share some of mine) and I don’t think less of them because of our political differences. But after eight years of deafening silence about these concerns, their newly discovered outrage has no credibility with me.

So I’ll wish them well on their road trips to D.C. or whatever other cities they’re protesting from, and hope they all stay safe. And I’ll try not to gag too hard when I see their social-media status updates gushing over the Royal - sorry, “First” - Family and lamenting the departure of the man who has given Donald Trump the power to put any one of us on a kill list. As for me, I’ll be watching from home - completely, utterly, speechless.

 

CORRECTION: A number of readers have written to say that #7 on my list is incorrect: Because of changes to how "deportations" are counted (people sent back at the border are now counted as having been "deported", while they were not in the past), Obama's numbers appear larger. But the number of people residing in the US who have been deported has in fact decreased under Obama's administration. I apologize for the error.

 

 

Christmas in the Darkness

 

 

 

It feels hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year. It did last year too. In fact I’m starting to think that unless you are a small child, getting into the Christmas spirit is not an easy thing to do, and that it only gets harder with time. This year seems especially dark. In my own circle of friends, family and acquaintances, I can’t even count the number of losses and other tragedies that people are going through in this season.

I know many people who have lost a parent or even a child during the past year. A friend on FaceBook is watching his father die; another came home on Christmas Eve to find that his wife had left him, taking their children with her; a cousin who suffers from PTSD from years of service as an EMT first responder may face jail time because he waved a gun in the air at someone trying to cut him off on the freeway; and only two days ago parents of a young woman with our daughter’s genetic condition lost her to seizures and other complications. I can’t even imagine how that family is going to get through today.

I do remember our own terrible Christmas, only two months after we had lost our baby son at 39 weeks, one week before he was due, to a cord accident. I felt smashed into a million pieces, barely even present, held together only by the people around me. The thing is though, it wasn’t a terrible Christmas. We spent it at my sister’s B&B in Minnesota, our whole family, and it was actually a fun time. It was the year my husband wrote The Rules of Christmas and to this day I am astounded that he had both the presence of mind and the good humor to write it. But he did, and I somehow had the presence of mind and good humor to find it hilarious. I still look back at that Christmas with happy memories. It was a bright spot in a very dark time.

And I kind of think that’s what Christmas is about. Whether you celebrate it as a Christian or as a pagan (I’ll leave other traditions to those more familiar with them), what we are celebrating is not the fact that we have perfect lives in a flawless world and we couldn’t ask for more. What we are celebrating is the bits of light, wherever they are and however small, in a world that we know is filled with much darkness. For Christians, that “light” is the birth of Jesus and the promise of eternal salvation. But as an outsider looking in, I also believe that it is the promise of achieving the kingdom of heaven here on earth and in that sense is not so far removed from the pagan celebration of light in the material world.

Maybe, as we become adults, and as we become more intensely aware of the suffering, the loss, and the evil in the world, it does become harder to celebrate Christmas. That doesn’t make it less important to celebrate it though. It makes it more important. One of the only ways we have to fight the darkness is to recognize the light, celebrate it, and do what we can to encourage it. The light may come in the form of a massive sunburst or it may be a tiny pinpoint. This morning, for me, it was the video of another young girl with our daughter’s condition, defying the predictions of experts from long ago and reading aloud from a book.

The relentless brutality of the world isn’t going to stop for our celebrations, yet we still celebrate. That’s the whole point.

 

 

 

 

Remembering Ralph Raico

 

I met Ralph Raico at an Institute for Humane Studies conference in 1985. He took me and another student, Annie, out to lunch on the first day of the conference, before everyone else had arrived. Annie was a nurse, working in a mental hospital, and we talked about her work over lunch, and about the writing of Dr. Thomas Szasz who Professor Raico knew well.

At one point in the conversation, Annie said something about patients being wrongly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I asked her what, exactly, schizophrenia actually meant. She gave some sort of answer that wasn’t at all satisfying and I was prepared to let it go because that’s what polite people do. But Ralph Raico wasn’t polite. He wasn’t rude or ill-mannered, certainly not to sweet young Annie. But he said, very clearly (and in fact very politely) “that’s not what she asked.”

And everything changed. When you live in a world of murky communication, of saying what seems polite, or what the other people you identify with are saying, you may not be aware of the murkiness until someone shines a light on it. That’s what Ralph did. Until that moment, I really had not been around people who cared about truth, or about clarity. That one statement, and his insistence on answering the question I had asked, opened up for me a whole new world of communication and learning, and it was beautiful.

I think he was the first person I ever heard use the term “intellectual integrity” and mean it. His worldview - and by that I mean not so much his commitment to liberty, as his commitment to truth and to clear and honest communication, his utter intolerance for bullshit - was inspiring to me. It made me believe that the world was much bigger than I knew: that it was full of people like this, people who cared about the important things, people with whom one could have challenging and enlivening discussions. He inspired me to go out and seek this world.

The restaurant where we had lunch was Chinese, and I remember being embarrassed that I couldn’t use chopsticks well. At some point, the topic of Hong Kong came up, and I was intrigued by the idea of this tiny bastion of free enterprise. A few months later, I would make the decision to spend my junior year in college there, and I ultimately ended up living there for seven years. Of course the big wide world wasn’t all I expected it to be. There was plenty of murkiness, plenty of bullshit to wade through, including a lot of my own. And the people who cared about the important things weren’t that easy to find. But I can’t imagine what my life would be like without those experiences and I am eternally grateful for the inspiration that set me off on that journey.

I met Professor Raico a few more times over the years at conferences, and in the past few years he has written to me twice to commend me for articles I have written. I will never delete those emails.

I’m sure I am not the only person to have been inspired by who he was. It was many years before I realized it, but he had a profound influence on the direction of my life and on the values I have come to embrace. I’m sure there are many others who can say the same. I know that others will remember him for his scholarship, for his unyielding defense of liberty, for his intellect and for his biting wit. I will remember him as someone who shone a light of clarity through a world swimming in bullshit. And in doing so, he showed me that clarity, intellectual honesty and the pursuit of truth were all possible. He helped to show me a world bigger than I had imagined before, and inspired me to seek out more of it.

Tonight, it feels like that world just got a little bit smaller.

Rest in peace, Professor Raico.

 

 

 

Area Man Ordered to Stop Using Word

 

 

June 20, 2007 – Jason Morandi

A federal court today ordered Buford Snatter, professor of law at Southwestern University and longtime Burbank resident, to immediately cease using the word “spontaneous” in any and all written or spoken communication.

Justice Benjamin Pettifinger of California’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld an earlier ruling against Professor Snatter, citing the general welfare clause of the Constitution. In describing the kind of word usage that got the professor into trouble, Judge Pettifinger commented “this just isn’t good for anybody.”

The trouble began when readers of Professor Snatter’s articles noticed certain words and phrases recurring at a disturbing rate. “It’s a question of when word use becomes abuse,” explained arresting officer Harris Bludger. “He definitely crossed a line. He’s gone way over the quota for the use of these words.” Asked what that quota is, Officer Bludger replied “I don’t know what the quota is, I don’t know if there is a quota, but I know he’s gone over it.”

Readers were the first to alert authorities to the problem. “I’d be reading one of his articles,” said a frequent reader of Professor Snatter’s articles who declined to give her name, “and there it would be: ‘spontaneous’, or ‘spontanaeity’, or worse, ‘spontaneous and autonomous’. When would it stop?” Another anonymous reader said she also suffered from abuse: “I’d be reading along and I always knew it was about to come up. If not in the first paragraph, then in the next. I’ll tell you, there was nothing ‘spontaneous’ about it.”

Indeed, Professor Snatter’s word use became a federal issue when it emerged that, while his prose is liberally sprinkled with the term, he is in fact not a spontaneous person.

“I was shocked when I found out,” said longtime Snatter reader Mona Eubanks.

The issue surfaced when one of Snatter’s daughters tried to introduce her father to yoga.

“He has always claimed to be interested in eastern thought, yet he refuses to even try the practices that are an integral part of those philosophies,” said daughter Brigentine Snatter. “Buddhism and the vedic philosophies aren’t just things that happen in your head. They require practice in order to integrate them into your life. When I tried to get him to go to a yoga class or an introduction to meditation, he said he’d think about getting around to putting it on a list of things to consider sometime. Is that what he means by ‘spontaneous’ behavior?”

In his appeal, Professor Snatter claimed that while he appreciated his daughter’s efforts to introduce him to the world outside of his own head, he just wasn’t interested, but that he would find his own ways of being spontaneous. However he failed to produce evidence that he was planning to engage in spontaneous behavior sometime down the line. He had promised to present the court with a list of potential spontaneous activities that he had written on a yellow senate pad, but later said he was unable to locate said pad. “It’s around here somewhere,” Snatter argued in his own defense.

Snatter’s daughter added to her charges that her father would only eat from a very small selection of food choices, citing Chinese chicken salad, spaghetti aglio oglio and BLTs as his mainstays. “Don’t even ask me about Cheez-Whiz™,” she added.

“He’ll go out to a nice restaurant, a restaurant that has its own specialties it is famous for, and he’ll ask if the chef can do a spaghetti aglio oglio,” Snatter’s daughter said. “It would be one thing if he could say it correctly, but he doesn’t even do that! This is the only thing he ever orders and he doesn’t even say it right!”

“That and Chinese chicken salad,” added Brigentine’s sister Hildegarde.

“And the BLTs,” chimed in younger sister Gvtaren.

“Yes, and the BLTs” agreed Brigentine.

“He used to eat Cheez-Whiz™, but we took it away from him,” reported Gvtaren.

Whiny civil liberties activists whined about supposed violation of free-speech, but were largely ignored.

“The first amendment was not intended to allow people to say whatever they damn well please,” commented constitutional scholar Avid Rhinegold.

In a statement issued after the verdict was read, Professor Snatter said that the ruling “is just one more indication of the collapse of Western civilization. It is an attempt,” he said, to “stifle the spontaneous free expression of peace-loving men and women spontaneously living their lives in non-hierarchical ways characterized by spontaneous order.”

The prosecution said it would not rule out going after Professor Snatter’s abuse of the phrase “peace-loving men and women”.

Highlighting the seriousness of the case, arresting officer Bludger noted “(i)t seems that, while Professor Snatter loves nothing more than to throw this word around in his prose, he doesn’t actually have a spontaneous bone in his body. This is where law enforcement needs to step in. People think they can just throw words around willy nilly. We’re here to let them know that that’s not the case.”

While Snatter’s daughters were saddened by their father’s ordeal, they expressed no regrets about turning him over to the police.

“In the end, we really had no choice but to contact the authorities,” said Brigentine Snatter.

Professor Snatter’s wife, June Snatter, admitted that her husband has never been spontaneous.

“No, he’s not,” she sighed. “But I can’t change him.”

Mrs. Snatter could face charges of aiding and abetting.

Under the court order, Professor Snatter is prohibited from using the word “spontaneous”, “spontaneously”, or any other derivative thereof. Should he violate the order he will face heavy fines and possible jail time.

Asked for further comment on the ruling, Professor Snatter said only “it’s all coming down.”

 

 

(This article originally appeared in the Burbank Bugle, June 20, 2007.)

 

 

 

 

In Case Anyone Doubted that Governments Wage War to Preserve Currency Dominion:

 

 

From the Hillary email trove over at Wikileaks:

According to sensitive information available to this these individuals, Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli.

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7  billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.

(emphasis mine)

According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:

a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,

b. Increase French influence in North Africa,

c. Improve his internal political situation in.France,

d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,

e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.)

 

See the entire email here.

 

 

 

All You Need to Know About the Elections is Right Here...

 

...in the Adventures of Urban Yogini: A Superhero Who Can't Use Violence.

 

NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Real Reason Libertarians Don't Matter

 

 

 

 

A FaceBook friend recently asked principled non-voting libertarians to explain their reasoning to her, to explain why - in this year of all years, when the Libertarian candidate actually has a shot at winning - why they are withholding their votes. It is a reasonable question, and I’m going to do my best to give her an answer, with the qualification that while I have considered myself a “principled” non-voter in the past, I now consider myself a pragmatic one.

My stance on voting changed with Ron Paul’s candidacy. I realized that I was willing to participate in a system I believed to be deeply wrong, if it meant making a change that could save thousands - possibly hundreds of thousands - of lives by curtailing war, ending the war on drugs and reining in some of the most unaccountable and harmful federal agencies. I took a lot of flak for it, from some principled libertarians for whom I have a great deal of respect. But I don’t regret my choice. I believed there was a real chance of accomplishing good - the bottom line for me was saving lives - by voting. I trusted Dr. Paul, based on a long track record of sticking to his principles, to do his best to accomplish those things, and I acted on those beliefs.

I see things a little differently now. I’ve had a closer look at how the system works and I believe I have a better understanding of why this system of electing representatives, especially at the federal level, can never be an effective way of achieving liberty.

To be clear, I am talking specifically about electing people to office. I am not dismissing the potential for local ballot initiatives to have an impact. In fact we’ve seen the fruits of such initiatives in the relaxing of medical marijuana laws across the country, which is a significant step for liberty. But ballot initiatives are a very different animal from elections for office, and an entire life form removed from those for the presidency.

Jeff Tucker wrote recently of an encounter he had had with someone high up in a Republican political campaign who attributed the absence of a libertarian angle in Republican campaigns to the fact that “libertarians don’t vote. Everyone knows that. That’s why they don’t matter.”

Jeff’s political beast was only half right. Yes, politicians running for office care about votes. But just as much as votes - indeed, as a critical means of securing votes - they care about money. They care about campaign contributions. And they care about maintaining the relationships with the people, the corporations, and the other institutions that will keep that money flowing to them. There is no law that can change this. Or, if you think there is, ask yourself who will be charged with enforcing that law, and who then controls that entity or entities.

Here’s the thing to understand: The things libertarians want - freedom, less govt. interference in markets & in personal choices, non-interventionist foreign policy… there is no money in these things for politicians. There are no big corporations and very few rich people who are willing to pay tons of money to politicians to refrain from intervening in markets, or to keep the troops home, or to let people ingest whatever substances they want to.

In fact, it is just the opposite: Corporations have long been in the business of paying politicians to intervene in markets on their behalf, to erect barriers to competition and in some cases to squash a particular competitor. Competition is wonderful for society as a whole. But it’s not so great if you’re one of the ones doing the competing. It’s hard, and sometimes you lose. Sometimes, if you’re big enough, it’s just easier to send some money in the direction of the people who can discover antitrust violations in your competitor’s business practices.

Understand that behind the empty campaign promises, politicians have essentially two things to offer to the people who support them: 1. Power, in the form of regulatory and other control, over competitors and others who may get in the way of a particular entity remaining comfortably profitable; 2. Money. Not their own money of course - your money, and my money. Taken from us in taxes, and in the continual devaluation of the government-issued money we all use. Politicians can give money to their supporters in the form of contracts for things like military equipment and public works projects, or in less direct ways, like mandating that government schools all stock epinephrine injectors that meet the same very specific product requirements that your device happens to meet.

And the list goes on. What is not on this list is liberty. Why? Because nowhere in this game is there an advantage to selling liberty. This point was driven home to me a few years ago when I asked a California senator’s policy consultant if his boss would consider relaxing business restrictions as a way to help parents of children with special needs create the services they need. He practically laughed at me. There was nothing in it for his boss or his boss’ supporters in reducing the very control that he uses to buy support.

In theory, politicians could offer liberty to their supporters. They could offer to cut back regulations, to end military aggression. But who is going to pay them for that? Again these are things that would benefit everyone, all of society. But the game of politics is not about benefitting all of society. And the widely accepted belief that it is is perhaps the most dangerous lie ever crafted.

In order for a seeker of liberty to win at this game, that person would have to compete with the campaign donations and other inducements made by military contractors, major pharmaceutical companies, oil companies - but these are all entities that have been made rich by virtue of government interventions and direct largesse. How can a liberty seeker hope to offer the same level of financial inducements to politicians as these people, when they are not also on the receiving end of the government slush?

This is the real reason that libertarians “don’t matter” in the political sphere. It’s not because they don’t vote. It’s because they don’t participate in the real game of politics - the interest-driven game that can never reward a player who wishes to dismantle the very engine of that game. People win at the game of politics by buying and selling political power over other people’s lives and resources. A player who wants to reduce that power will not find themselves rewarded within that game - they will find themselves spat out of it.

That’s why the political beasts are laughing at us. It’s not because we don’t vote - it’s because we don’t steal. And for these people - for people who never even question the morality of using state violence to get what they want - that is the biggest joke in the world.

This is why I don’t believe that it makes sense for a libertarian to vote. Voting is simply not a realm in which liberty wins. The obvious question then, from the person who wants me to vote, is: Why not do it anyway though? In case you’re wrong? What harm can it do?


Here’s the harm it does: By perpetuating the lie that voting can be an effective way of advancing liberty, it helps to direct people’s energy and focus away from efforts that actually do have the potential to advance liberty. And I don’t want to contribute to that.

I am not going to help to prop up the charade that “we” control our government, or that it represents “the people.” (What does that even mean? Which people? The ones who all disagree with each other?) Our government is owned by military contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and a host of other concerns that are all feeding from that government’s trough in one way or another. None of this is going to be changed by voting, and the longer anyone pursues voting as a solution, the longer they are not seeking real solutions.

There are people pursuing real solutions: People like Dale Brown of the Detroit Threat Management Center; Ross Ulbricht - who is now paying dearly for his contribution; Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning; the Tenth Amendment Center , for using the political process in the only ways it can be used to further the cause of liberty; Tom Woods, the Mises Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, and everyone else who works to educate the public about the nature of markets and the nature of the state; every homeschooling mom and dad in the country. And there are many many more.

It occurs to me that there is something fundamentally disempowering about pursuing a solution that requires a majority of a population to go along with you. If your solution requires getting that many people to do what you are doing, then you don’t have a lot of power there. To me, it makes more sense to pursue solutions where I do have some power.

It also occurs to me that the greatest advances for human liberty and well-being have come about for the most part not because masses of people woke up and decided to do the right thing, but because of the work of a few individuals. That is where we have power: as individuals. Not as herders of livestock, trying to get everyone else to go along with our one solution. Certainly not as voters.

I’ve spent a long time listening to libertarians tell me that “this time” voting can help our cause. I remember being told that Ronald Reagan would usher in a new era of freedom, later being urged to vote for Ron Paul (the first time he ran, as a Libertarian), and later for every Libertarian candidate and a few Republican ones. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little reluctant to believe that “this time” it will be different. I know that there are things that are different this time - there always are. But the nature of the game has not changed, and it is not going to. It is simply not the realm in which liberty is won. The game in fact is the problem, and helping people to recognize this reality is a far more productive goal than is encouraging them to continue playing it.

 

 

 

My Rambling Rant on a Debate I Didn’t Even Watch

 

 

 

I’m told there was a debate last night, between two of the candidates for President of the United States. Only I know that’s not true. It can’t be true, because there are no political debates on nationwide television in this country. Not real ones. There is no place in the national discourse for issues of real substance to be debated. The whole purpose of televised “debates”, and of mainstream political discourse more broadly, is to establish the limits of acceptable topics of discussion; to decree, by the very act of posing the questions, what may be questioned and what may not.

So no, there wasn’t a debate last night. There were two Total Statists standing on a stage (I don’t know - did they stand?) disputing the finer points of how best to wield Total State power over the lives of everyone else. Will we deport all Muslims from our country and build a wall to keep them out? Or simply continue bombing them in their own countries? Will we continue to extort money from the Citizens in order to finance our wars of aggression all over the world? Or will we extort money to build a high-speed coast-to-coast monorail that only stops at national monuments and runs on cheese fumes?

There was a debate once. To this day I’m not sure how it slipped through, but eight years ago, one of the Republican presidential candidates stepped across the line of acceptable discourse and challenged the Status Quo at its heart. He challenged the very mainstream - and very “reasonable” - view that the U.S. military had every right to violently intervene in other countries all over the world. Worse, he uttered the unthinkable: That the reason foreign terrorists had attacked our country on 9/11 was because our government had been attacking theirs for decades.

The Status Quo responded the way the Status Quo always responds when anyone so much as pokes a finger over the line that separates those things that may be questioned from those things that may not: With ridicule. And when that didn’t work, it responded by manipulating and even breaking its own rules to ensure that the man who asked the Bad Questions had no chance of ever becoming the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. And it’s a good thing for that man that it worked, and that the Status Quo was able to stop there.

That was eight years ago, and it was the last time anything of any significance came of a presidential debate in this country: A liberty movement was born - one that is still alive, and one that may actually help to change things for the better.

But not today. And certainly not last night. Last night, a whole bunch of people gathered around their TV screens and their computer monitors and they chose sides and they screamed and yelled the way people do when they watch their Sports Games. Many of them opined that the other side’s candidate wasn’t qualified to head the Total State - and they meant it as a bad thing.

Many of those who watched, I’m guessing, came away even more convinced that THIS TIME ESPECIALLY it is so very important to vote. If not to get the right person in office, then to keep the wrong one out. Many of them, I’m sure, went to bed determined to vote harder than they ever had voted in the past. Because this time it was So Damned Important.

And I just don’t even know what to say.

Because the things that need to be debated aren’t. And the people who most need to listen won’t. It is no longer hyperbole to say that we live in a police state: Every week brings us a new installment in the serial tragedy of police officers murdering people who are not violent and who pose no threat to them and who most likely the police had no legitimate business interacting with in the first place; Every week another officer is acquitted of all charges - if indeed charges have even been filed - for a nearly identical incident; Our country has the highest per-capita prison population in the world - beating out dictatorships like China and possibly even the former Soviet Union; A great many of the people wasting away in prison are not guilty of any crime in the real sense of the word - you know, the kind where there are victims; Oh and yes, there are special, very scary prisons for political prisoners.

I could go on about all the things that, without even having seen it, I can guarantee weren’t up for debate in the debate: Ending our government’s military aggressions overseas; Freeing up the healthcare industry so that people can choose the treatments they want (or DON’T want), allowing competition in that market so we can stop mortgaging our homes every time we get sick; Ending, once and for all, the idiotic, deadly and destructive War on Drugs and the Prison-Industrial Complex that accompanies it…

I could go on, and on, and on, about all the things that desperately need addressing, solutions that desperately need to be considered, but won’t be. Because in the world of politics, the only solutions that make it to the table of Things We Get to Talk About, are solutions that involve more politics, not less - more of the counterproductive meddling that nine times out of ten caused the problem in the first place: More intervention in our economic affairs and personal choices, more government funding, more favors, more back scratching, more regulation, more laws to be broken and more “lawbreakers” to fill the prisons - never less. Because less politicking isn’t what keeps the politicians and their buddies fed.

Which is why voting - appealing to politicians to fix these problems - is not going to produce solutions. It’s just not how this particular game works. The way this particular game works is that things happen when they benefit politicians and their cronies. Things don’t happen because it makes a lot of sense that they should happen, or because we can see from history that they have worked well in the past. The only things that happen are those things that feed the people who feed the politicians. To paraphrase Emma Goldman: If voting were going to change any of the things that need changing, it wouldn’t be getting pimped all over national television as the most important thing the average Citizen can do to Make a Difference.

Voting for politicians is not the way to make a difference*. It is not a way of exercising power over one’s government. Voting is a way to make people feel as if they are making a difference and a way to redirect some of the energy that might in fact have gone into making a difference. If people think they are making a difference by choosing between options selected for them by someone else, then they are less motivated to seek ways to actually make a difference. It keeps people content, satisfied that they are doing what they can, when in fact all they are doing is granting legitimacy to a system that will crush them if they get in its way.

What Edward Snowden did is how citizens exercise power over their government. What Chealsea Manning did is. What Ross Ulbricht did is. It is worth noting that the people who actually do exercise power over their government don’t end up doing so well at the hands of their government.

I didn’t watch the debate last night, but I can tell you who won: The Total State won - one shade of it or another. And I can tell you who will win the election in November: The Total State is going to win that too. And anyone who believes that voting is going to change that either doesn’t understand the nature of the problems we face, or isn’t familiar with how this particular game is played.

There are those who believe it is “cynical” not to believe in voting. But it’s no more cynical than not believing you can use nitric acid to bake a nice cake. It’s just the wrong tool. And there’s nothing cynical about recognizing that.

 

 

 

 

 

*I feel compelled to make the distinction between voting for candidates and voting on local referenda - the latter can and has been used to make some steps for increased liberty, not least of which is the decriminalization of marijuana. For more about this kind of thing, see the heroes over at the Tenth Amendment Center.

 

 

Talk Like a Pirate Day: Queen Elizabeth I Edition

 

 

So here I am talking like a pirate (From QE1's Golden Speech in 1601):

"There will never Queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety than myself. For it is my desire to live nor reign no longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. And though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving....Aaaaarghhhh!"

Yes, Queen Elizabeth I was a pirate. Or rather, she managed a bunch of pirates, foremost among them Sir Francis Drake. From the book "The Pirate Queen" by Susan Ronald:

"...it is also vital to understand how weak England was when the twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth became queen. Defense of the realm - and the queen - was the greatest worry on everyone's mind. Throughout her personal writing, the single-minded attention she gives to "security" is quite heartbreaking. And the central theme of security remains the golden thread woven through the intricate fabric of her reign - security for herself before she came to power, supplanted by security for the realm thereafter. In her mind, to create a secure realm, she needed two things: peace and money. When peace was gained at home through deft footwork by the queen and her advisors within the first year of Elizabeth's reign, the disappointed French (under the mother of Mary Queen of Scots), who had tried to invade England, found themselves ousted from Scotland. It was through Elizabeth's gentlemen adventurers that the attempt was foiled, and through her merchant adventurers that money was raised to protect the realm and pay for England's soldiers. In those days, plunder was how soldiers and mariners believed they were paid for the risks they took, and it remained common military policy until World War II, to turn a blind eye to the practice."

(Emphasis mine.)

 

So... in case you were thinking that officially sanctioned piracy was anything new, you might want to think again. You might also want to check out Susan Ronald's book, if you are into either pirates or queens. It's an awesome read.

 

 

What I Choose to Remember on 9/11

 

It didn’t take long for Remembering 9/11 to come to mean something entirely other than remembering 9/11. It didn’t take long for the remembrances and tributes to stand less for shared grief and more for a reminder of “why we fight” - or rather, why our government has invaded a bunch of countries it has long had its eye on since that date.

It has become less a time for sorrow and more a time for loudly proclaiming that we are Number One, a time for being Proud to Be American - although the source of that pride is always a little vague. Proud for being the victims of a terrorist attack? Or proud of the decades of violent foreign intervention that led up to that attack? Whatever the reason, 9/11 is now a day of pride. It is not a day for reminding anyone of the violence wrought by our own government in the Middle East for the half century preceding 9/11. Not Today of All Days. Nor is it a time for pointing to the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by American soldiers and bombs and white phosphorus since that date - people whose lives mattered just as much as those of the nearly 3,000 killed in America on 9/11. Not Today of All Days.

But I do remember 9/11. I remember so many of the details of that day, and of the days and weeks that followed. I prefer to remember those details, and to remember the way that the lives of so many individuals were shattered on that day. For myself, I prefer to think of this day as a reminder, not of why it is acceptable for my government to go on killing innocent people in foreign lands, but of how it is always ordinary people who have their lives destroyed by the power struggles of politicians and rulers.

Here’s what I remember: I remember walking around downtown Manhattan in the weeks following the attack, wearing first a handkerchief and later a surgical mask, so I didn’t have to breathe in the stench when the wind blew the wrong way. I was living in a tiny little apartment above an Irish pub that was once a church, and I sealed my one window in plastic and ran a HEPA filter. I remember bands of tourists taking pictures of themselves by the site, some climbing up on fencing to get a better shot.

What I remember most were the fliers. All over the city, and especially downtown, people had posted flyers of their lost loved ones, asking for any help in finding them in the event that they were still alive. In hindsight, it seems pathetic and pointless. They had to know those people weren’t coming back. But at the time it made perfect sense. And as we all walked through our daily lives in the city, those faces were always looking at us.

One day, I was walking somewhere near Wall Street, and I noticed one of those pictures. It wasn’t like the other ones, a recent snapshot or portrait photo that could most easily be used to identify the person. This was an older picture, with a few paragraphs below it. The photo was of a young man, maybe a teenager, maybe a little younger, and maybe he was standing with a bicycle - I don’t remember. This was before cell phones had cameras, and in any case I didn’t want to be one of “those” people. The ones who crowded around the still smoking site with glee on their faces to snap a picture of history.

I stood and read the flier. The writer started off by saying that he wasn’t seeking help looking for his friend. It had been many weeks since the attacks and he had no illusion that his friend was still alive. He just wanted to tell the world about the person he had lost. And he did. The man had been his best friend since childhood. He had taught him how to ride a bike. The writer told about times they had spent together, how their lives had changed as the years went by but how that bond had never been lost and how they were still best friends. Or how they had been, until that day.

By the time I finished reading there were tears running down my face. Others had stopped to read the flyer too but none of us looked at each other or aknowledged each others’ presence. We stopped to read, probably cried, and then continued on our way.

Today of All Days, I’m going to remember that a lot of people had their lives torn apart because of someone else’s stupid war. I’m going to remember how powerless I felt as I watched my country become an even more beligerent neighbor and a more authoritarian place to live in. I’m going to remember what it was like to live in the world before that day, and I’m going to hope that one day we can live that way again. But mostly I’m going to remember a man I didn’t even know, who taught his best friend how to ride a bicycle.

 

 

 

Urban Yogini Accurately Predicts the Democratic National Convention of 2016:

 

How did this happen? I wrote this nearly three years ago, and yet it seems to describe precisely what happened at last week's Democratic National Convention. Anyway, it's the only explanation I can come up with:

 

 

 

 

 

 

...and to find out how it all turns out, get your copy of Urban Yogini here!

 

 

 

How One County's Schools Systematically Exclude Minority Students from Quality Education

 

To be clear, I don't believe that "racism" is at the heart of most of the problems we are facing today, and I don't believe that eradicating racism (if that were even possible) will solve them. Most of them boil down to a lack of accountability, and that boils down to the monopoly state. With that said, if you don't think that there are structural and institutional barriers keeping some minority groups (and especially low-income minority groups) at a distance from opportunity and success, then you need to look a little more closely.

This is just one, very small, example: It's a documentary I made a few years ago, detailing how the Howard County School System - one of the top-rated public school systems in the country - enforced a policy denying choice (in the form of being able to change schools within the system) to parents. The doc also demonstrates how this policy of selectively denying access to the better schools was more stringently applied to minority families.

Watch and learn: Choice Denied: The Politics of Failure in Howard County Public Schools.

Oh and yes, the Howard County Public School System refused to speak to us for this project.

 

 

 

A Great Question from a Reader: Should the Military Exist?

A while ago - OK, quite a while ago. Over a month ago to precise - a thoughtful reader commented in response to my post "No, I Don't Support the Troops." David wrote:

"I'm moderately sympathetic to your perspective, although I have a caveat and a question: do you believe that the military itself should not exist? Or perhaps, that individual defense should be carried out entirely by private security? Or something along those lines? Or, perhaps, do you believe that any form of military, government-controlled or otherwise, is unnecessary?"

My short answer is that I have no problem with militaries existing, so long as they do not operate as a monopoly, or as an agency of a monopoly body. People certainly have a right to defend themselves and their loved ones, and they certainly have a right to become very proficient at doing so, just as they have the right to hire others to perform this job for them, and indeed to form groups that provide defense for others. 

But that's not exactly what the US military, or pretty much any state-sanctioned military in the world, does, is it? If we're honest about it, we have to admit that our country's military is an aggressive force on the world stage, and as such actually puts US citizens in more danger than it would if it were doing nothing at all. I believe that the reason for this is that there cannot be any real accountability where there is monopoly.

When people have no choice as to who to buy services from, when service providers face no competition, those service providers have little incentive to meet the needs and wants of their "customers." This applies in the area of defense as with any other service. Add to this that the "customers" cannot even opt out of paying for the "service", and what we have is near zero accountability. Not only will the service provider not lose business to competitors, it will continue to be funded no matter how badly it "serves" its customers, for the simple reason that that funding is taken from its customers against their will and at gunpoint. All the incentive to produce what others want and need in an efficient manner that happens in a market economy disappears when compulsion enters.

I've written more about that here, here and here.

Do I believe that "...that individual defense should be carried out entirely by private security? Or something along those lines?"

I am wary of making declarations that anything should be done a certain way. I've studied and observed markets for long enough to recognize that some of the biggest developments are ones that I (nor most people) never saw coming. Yes, I do have ideas about how defense ought to or could be provided - but I also know that there are many other solutions that I haven't personally imagined. So I'm not going to say precisely how I think defense should be handled, but I will say, categorically, how it should not: It should not be handled through compulsion, through any kind of monopoly state, any kind of unaccountable agency or any kind of involuntary arrangements. To do so is both morally wrong and - as I think is obvious by now, but apparently not to everyone - counterproductive and ends up serving only the ends of those who are in charge of the involuntary apparatus.

So the question is not whether a military - government-controlled or otherwise - is unnecessary. Maybe a military is necessary in order to protect people, maybe it is not. The real question facing Americans is: Is a state-run and funded military capable of performing the tasks that we have been taught since Kindergarten are its purpose? To protect and defend the people who live in this country? And if it's not capable of doing that - as I believe it is not - then what do we need to do about that?

 

 

 

My Dad - Being Right About the Police State Before it Was Cool:

 

These past few weeks I've been going all Kon Mari on my life: "Tidying" as if my life depended on it. More on that later, but part of the process is going through all of my old papers, including letters, journals, etc. I'm getting rid of bins full of the stuff - but am scanning a lot of it before I do. So here's one that I found - a letter my dad sent back in 1991 to a radio station regarding the Rodney King beating and police response. Reading it, I just find it depressing that it's taken a quarter of a century (longer, really) for so many others to catch on that something is fundamentally wrong here:

 

 

 

 

 

No, I Don't Support the Troops

 

I usually stay pretty quiet on Memorial Day. I know that it’s one of the times people are least likely to be open to hearing my views on war and the military. They’re all pumped up and righteous about honoring their fallen heroes, about “remembering those who died to protect our freedom”, so why would they want to listen to someone trash their holiday and tell them their beliefs are a lie? I’ve also grown tired of losing friends over issues that have nothing to do with our friendship, and I know that an argument with me isn’t going to change most people’s minds. There just doesn’t seem to be much point in speaking out about it in my personal circles - especially on days like Memorial Day.

But something happened recently that has changed my mind. Our daughter has a developmental disability for which she receives a lot of therapy each week. One of her favorites is equine therapy - therapeutic horseback riding - and one of her favorite therapists is a 16-year-old girl who I’ll call Kate. Kate is one of the most beautiful, intelligent, kind and caring young women I have ever met. She is also very strong, generous and - for lack of a better word - good. She has all the spirit and energy and exuberance about the world that everyone should have at sixteen. Kate has been riding since she was a small child and has a real gift for the work she does with our daughter. She has an uncanny ability to connect with the horses and with nonverbal little girls like my own. It is as if she was born to do this work.

I was sitting with Kate’s mom one day a few months ago, watching my daughter have her session with another therapist while Kate rode her own horse at the other end of the arena. She told me that Kate had one more year of (homeschooling) high school and I asked what her plans were after that. She said that she was hoping to join the Air Force.

My heart fell into my stomach and I was sure Kate’s mom saw the look on my face. We talked some more. She told me that it seemed like the best option available, that the Air Force would pay for Kate’s college, and that it appealed to her adventurous spirit. When my daughter’s session was over I left, feeling shattered and powerless. I knew there was nothing I could say to Kate to get her to change her mind, just as there was nothing her mother could say. She was sixteen years old - she wasn’t going to let a couple of grown ups tell her what to do with her life. We could try gently offering her other alternatives, but that was about it. Her imagination had already been sparked by something over which we had no power.

Over the next few weeks I couldn’t get my mind off of my conversation with Kate’s mom. I was worried about Kate, I was afraid for her, I was baffled by her choice. And the more I thought about it, the more I found myself getting angry. This wasn’t just some choice that had appeared out of thin air. This was something Kate had been primed for since she was a small child. Billions of dollars had gone into a global PR campaign, and the military had exerted a great deal of influence over the media she saw, from the movies and television shows she watched, to an advertising campaign that puts Leni Riefenstahl to shame, all aimed at creating an image of the U.S. military as a benevolent organization and soldiers as heroes. What I realized was that the military PR machine had been preparing her for a very long time. And now it had her.

Just as powerful as that machine though, were the values held and expressed by the culture she has grown up in: The ubiquitous yellow flags reminding her to “support the troops”; the “Thank a soldier” bake sales and care-packages; the military discounts offered by everyone but the local meth dealer; and most of all the two constant refrains that must never, ever, be questioned: “The soldiers are fighting for our freedom”, and “you can disagree with the war, but you must support the soldier.”

Well no, they aren’t, and no, I don’t.

I’ll be blunt: If you believe that the U.S. military is in the business of protecting the freedoms of U.S. citizens, you have been sold a bill of goods. With the possible exception of the War for Independence, this country’s military has never fought a defensive war - much less a defensive war against an aggressor that intended to take our freedoms from us. And for anyone who hasn’t noticed, our freedom has only diminished with each military engagement.

I suppose that reasonable people can disagree about the merits of specific wars or military actions - although if you really understand what war is about, it becomes harder to defend any of them. It is certainly a difficult task to defend any of the U.S. military’s actions in the last fifty years. Most of the rest of the world recognizes it for the violent aggressor that it is.

Must I support the soldiers who go to war, even if I am against that war? No, I mustn’t. If anything, I believe that we have a moral obligation not to support soldiers who agree to fight in immoral wars. At some point, we have to hold people responsible for their own actions. (There was a time when I thought the Nuremberg trials had settled this issue, but I now see that I was naive to think that.)

In my experience, those who “support the troops” - whatever their position on the war of the day - do not tend to do so out of a reasoned position about what war is, or what the U.S. military really stands for. They do it more out of base tribalism and a lifetime of consuming propaganda and growing up in a culture that glorifies militarism.

This glorification of the military, and of soldiers, is a weapon. It is a weapon that was used to recruit a beautiful young girl into a life of killing - and possibly dying - to serve the interests of the state and its corporate cronies. It is a weapon that is now being aimed at my own children, my son in particular, and that is why I am no longer willing to maintain a polite silence around my “non-political” friends about this. If you actively support the glorification of the military, then I have a problem with you. If you own a business that offers discounts to members of the military, then I have a problem with you. If you put a “support the troops” bumper sticker on your car, I have a problem with you. Because all of these things contribute to the mindless glorification of killing and dying for the state. All of these things help to support a cultural machinery that exists for the purpose of turning my son - and maybe yours - into cannon fodder. And yes, I have a problem with that.

Can we still be friends? I hope we can. But know that I have a real problem with your support for an organization that I believe to be fundamentally immoral and a direct threat to my family.

Do I expect to change anyone’s mind by expressing my views? I don’t, really. Except in this one sense: By refusing to be one more silent bystander, I can ensure that those who cheer on the war machine will know that not everyone shares their view. And that the children and teenagers who are watching will also see that opinion on this is not monolithic, that not everyone “supports the troops” and that maybe they should think very carefully about what they support and what they don’t.

There is a massive PR war going on right now and it is a war for the hearts and minds of young people - including the heart and mind of my son. I’m no longer going to stand by and pretend that I don’t object to it.

 

 

 

Shielding Assange - The Voluntaryists Vs. the NSA Part 2

Urban Yogini fans should check this out - the creators of "The Voluntaryists" superheroes are at it again, creating pt.2 of their series "The Voluntaryists Versus the NSA." This one featuring Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. You can support their Indiegogo campaign here.

You can download Part 1, along with other Voluntaryists adventures, here.

 

 

 

 

 

I Am Interviewed Re: Urban Yogini, Lynch Mobs & the Police State, & More!

 

The Seeds of Liberty guys had me on their show last week to talk about Urban Yogini, lynch mobs and the monopoly police state, and why private security is so much better. Apparently it starts to get good around 22:40, but don't take my word for it - just listen to the whole thing.

 

 

 

 

 

Must We Choose Between Mob Justice and the Police State?

 

 

 

On May 25, 1911, Laura Nelson, her baby daughter and her teenaged son were kidnapped from a jail in Oklahoma by an angry mob. The two had been jailed for what, by all accounts, seemed to be the accidental death of a deputy sheriff during a scuffle at the Nelsons’ home where police were investigating the theft of a cow. Laura’s husband, her children’s father, pled guilty to the theft and been taken to prison.

Laura and her son were awaiting trial in the jail when a group of between 12-40 men broke into the jail and took them out. Laura was reportedly raped by members of the mob, and some reports say that her son Lawrence was castrated, before both were hung from a bridge. A photograph shows 58 spectators on the bridge as the two bodies hang below, including 35 men, six women and 17 children. It is not known what became of Laura’s baby daughter, although at least one account says that she was taken in and cared for.

To think of this as “mob justice” defies reason. Laura and her son were awaiting justice - or what there was of it in early-20th-century Oklahoma - in jail. What was done to them was not the product of any kind of justice, but of blind hatred and a desire to “teach a lesson” to lesser (black) beings who dared commit any kind of crime against their white superiors. Like all such grotesque crimes, its purpose was to keep African Americans “in their place.”

According to the Tuskeegee Institute, 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites were lynched in the years between 1882 and 1968. Anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells found that the most common accusation against black lynching victims was murder or attempted murder, while about 30% were accused of rape or attempted rape, with the remainder accused of everything from “... verbal and physical aggression, spirited business competition, (to) independence of mind.”

Given this horrifying legacy, it is understandable that black Americans today would be wary of any solutions to current problems with policing that might smack of vigilante justice. It is understandable that those of us who call, not for reform, but for an end to policing as we know it, run up against a wall of resistance from those whose only other point of reference is uncontrolled vigilante mobs.

And yet it is also clear that the current state of law enforcement in this country - especially for African Americans - has reached an unacceptable level of violence and abuse. More than one commentator has drawn the comparison between the lynchings from the past and what have now become routine murders by police officers of - often unarmed - black Americans.

Some explain away the discrepancy between black and white murders by police by pointing out that African Americans commit more crime than do other groups - as if there is some natural rate, correlated with crime rates, at which any group of people ought to be killed by those sworn to protect them. If such a natural rate does exist, then someone needs to tell police in other countries about it. Police in the UK for example are woefully below quota, having only killed around six of their citizens in the past five years, as compared to at least 1,000 per year in the US.

The fact remains that, in addition to boasting the largest prison population in the world, the US also lays claim to one of the most violent and militarized forms of law enforcement - complete with chilling echoes of a past in which “uppity” behavior or “independence of mind” was cause for immediate execution.

Particularly in low-income communities, police have become more predators than protectors, seeing citizens not as their employers, but as a source of income, a means to fulfill arrest quotas, and increasingly, an enemy to be subdued.

While the US may be an extreme example of these ills, none of this should come as a surprise. In a monopoly system, devoid of competition and meaningful accountability, police and the prison system have perverse incentives: Not to prevent crime, but to arrest and imprison as many people as possible. Not to make neighborhoods safe, but to extort as much money from citizens as possible.

So what is the solution? Are we required to choose between the lesser of two evils: An abusive and unaccountable police state, where officers of the law are free to murder, steal, rape and assault with impunity - or a world of brutal and equally unaccountable lynch mobs? Are these the only options available to us?



Fortunately not.

It is worth remembering that policing as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon - in fact, police departments did not even exist in the US or England prior to the mid nineteenth century. And when they were created, it was not in response to any increase in crime, but as an attempt to more effectively control protesting crowds, striking workers and rioting slaves. So the prospect of not reforming, but eliminating, police departments is not as radical as it may sound.

In the absence of government police departments, would public safety be left in the hands of vigilantes? Would justice be dealt out by uncontrolled lynch mobs? There is no good reason to think so. In fact, historically lynch mobs have been enabled, not hindered, by local police departments.

Remember that the only reason those mobs were able to get away with their crimes was that the law was either explicitly or implicitly on their side. According to the book “Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880 - 1930”, “63% of all lynching victims were seized by mobs while in the custody of law officers.” And as Isabel Wilkerson writes in The Guardian:

“During formal Jim Crow, lynchers killed with impunity. Rarely was there so much as an inquiry. Sheriffs were often actively involved, in attendance or chose not to intercede.”

 

Imagine how different things might have been, had black Americans been able to have their own police forces, competing with and challenging white police forces. The idea is not new. Economists such as Murray Rothbard, David Friedman and others have outlined in painstaking detail how non-monopoly systems of protection and defense might work, and indeed how they have worked in the past.

As it happens, we don’t need to imagine it. There are already real-life examples of private companies and groups doing protection work that puts their statist counterparts to shame. One of the most notable is the Detroit Threat Management Center, a private company that has been making some of Detroit’s roughest neighborhoods safer for more than 20 years.

In an interview with Tom Woods, DTMC’s founder, Dale Brown tells how he cleaned up one of Detroit's worst neighborhoods when the police wouldn’t.

Dubbed "Crack Alley", the area consisted of about ten apartment buildings and, according to Brown, about 100 aggressors, making up about 25% of the population. "There were hundreds of people who needed help," he says. "I couldn't get the police to help them."



So Brown went to the building owners and made them an offer: In exchange for one free apartment in a building, he would train and install one person to protect that building. Prior to his staff’s arrival, Brown says that there had been a home invasion every day, and murders every month. “From the day I started,” he says, “there was only one more home invasion - I caught them - and there were no more murders from the day I started."

Brown calls his methods "a completely new paradigm in public safety:

“…building owners suddenly went into the black for the first time in 20 years, because no-one moved from the buildings and everyone paid their rent. All of a sudden, as a result of people paying their rent... these corner stores, liquor stores, laundromats, all the places started to flourish because they had more customers."

"Wealthy people get wealthier when there is less death, carnage, lawsuits, injuries and incarcerations on their property... they like my peaceful approach because it means more prosperity for them. But my focal point was community and family safety."

"It's sustainable because it's profitable," says Brown. “Look at crimemapping.com - you will see an extremely low amount of crime anywhere that we work." 

 

Over the years, Brown’s methods have evolved to become more peaceful, less confrontational. It is an approach born of necessity. Unlike government police officers, Brown and his team have to behave in accordance with the law. As civilians, they know they will be held accountable for their actions - and that accountability has paid off, both for Brown and the DTMC, and for the neighborhoods they serve:

"(I've learned better ways of crime prevention) because I have to," says Brown. "I'm accountable. I have no qualified immunity. That means, if I put my hands on someone it has to be legal. There has to be a way for me to explain it as a civilian. As a result, we've had no court date in 20 years. No lawsuits... in 20 years."

 
The methods he uses are diametrically opposed to those used by the police:

"Think about everything you think about in terms of law enforcement and we do the exact opposite. So a police officer thinks you're a threat, so what they do is pull you over. If we think you're a threat, what we do is we pull up to you and talk to you. If a police officer thinks you're a threat, what they do is stay back away from you and pull out their gun. What we do is get so close you can't get pull out your gun. A police officer believes you're a threat so they begin to talk to you in an autocratic, aggressive fashion. What we do is build a psychological bridge to explain to you that there is no need, there's no option for violence, there's no opportunity, and there's nothing to gain. So you must leave now, and I'm letting you leave. My staff is letting you leave. You can simply go."

"Now this works in any situation where the human being is attempting to achieve something. Now when it's psychological, meaning the person is not thinking well, they're on drugs or they're in pain... we're able to read their body language ahead of time, and know that they're about to draw their weapon... ...we're able to take them into custody and take them down without injuring them and without letting them pull out their gun."

"Again, we're in Detroit. This is not theory. This is what we do. This is why none of my staff members are dead."

 

The biggest differences between DTMC and government police? Accountability - by virtue of the fact that DTMC staff are not above the law - and the fact that they do not prosecute victimless “crimes”. "We don't get involved in drugs and other issues that are non-violent,” says Brown. “We focus on just violence."

Any attempt to reform our current system of policing will fail if it does not address the fundamental lack of accountability that is inherent in a monopoly system. It is time to start talking, not about “reforming” a fundamentally flawed system, but about abandoning it altogether.

Incentives matter. When people know that they will be held accountable for the violence they do to another person, they have an incentive to minimize that violence - as the Detroit Threat Management Center’s example illustrates so well. When people know that they will not be held accountable for their violence - as most police in America are not - that incentive to minimize violence is gone.

The people who participated in lynch mobs a hundred years ago knew that they would not be held accountable for their actions. They knew that they had the implicit support of law enforcement. That is why they were willing to stand at the scenes of their crimes and have their photographs taken with the bodies of their victims.

Lynch mobs are not what happen in the absence of a monopoly state - they are a symptom of the monopoly state. They are what happen when law enforcement is not held accountable by any competing agencies, and can choose which crimes to ignore. They are what happen when individuals are prohibited from forming their own organizations to defend themselves against those sanctioned by the state.

Indeed, presenting the choice between lynch mobs and the police state is more than just a false dichotomy: The one is the product of the other. The lynch mob could only ever arise in any meaningful way in a world where law enforcement is protected by its monopoly privilege - and can extend that privilege to the thugs of its preference. So no - we do not need to choose between vigilante mob justice and an abusive monopoly police state. We need to reject both.

 

 

 

How One Mom's Dream Became "Runway of Dreams"

Another special-needs mom making a difference:

 

 

 

 

 

Private Protection Co. Puts Govt. Police to Shame

 

For those who care about the problem of police violence and abuse, this may be the most important story of the decade. Maybe longer. Last week, Tom Woods interviewed Dale Brown, founder of the Detroit Threat Management Center. In case you don't have time to listen to the entire 39-minute interview, here are some highlights.

Essentially, the DTMC has done what libertarians like Murray Rothbard and David Friedman have long been saying could be done: They have turned the provision of public safety into a profitable business model, and they have done it in some of the worst neighborhoods in the country. The results have been incredible: According to Brown, crime has dropped dramatically in the areas where they work, and all without the loss of life to their staff or anyone else.

Brown moved to Detroit from Ann Arbor in the early 1990s. He was surprised to find that police in detroit behaved more as predators than protectors, that they were only interested in incarcerating as many people as possible, not in preventing crime. 

"Law enforcement at that time was very fixated on one thing," he says, "imprisoning every single African American that they could."

 

Brown, who had been training volunteers, went into one of Detroit's worst neighborhoods. Dubbed "Crack Alley", it consisted of about ten apartment buildings and, according to Brown, about 100 aggressors, or 25% of the population. "There were hundreds of people who needed help," he says. "I couldn't get the police to help them."

So Brown went to the building owners and made them an offer: In exchange for one free apartment in a building, he would train and install one person to protect that building.

"Every day there was a home invasion," says Brown. "Every month there were murders. This is in one square block. From the day I started, there was only one more home invasion - I caught them - and there were no more murders from the day I started."

"So building owners suddenly went into the black for the first time in 20 years, because no-one moved from the buildings and everyone paid their rent. All of a sudden, as a result of people paying their rent... these corner stores, liquor stores, laundromats, all the places started to flourish because they had more customers."

 

Brown stresses that his methods minimize violence. 

"When we first started, we were very gun intensive. This, I thought was the best approach. I was a soldier... I'm going to use superior violence of action to change human behavior... What I found out would work better was cameras."

"...my ultra-violent viewpoint was wrong... a gun was not the answer in those situations."

"Believe it or not, violent criminals hate video cameras because it takes away anonymity, and proves that they're the ones doing something... I slowly changed out, over many years, from guns to cameras. A broke camera was more effective at getting rid of drug-dealing gangs than actual guns." 

 

The methods he uses are diametrically opposed to those used by the police:

"Think about everything you think about in terms of law enforcement and we do the exact opposite. So a police officer thinks you're a threat, so what they do is pull you over. If we think you're a threat, what we do is we pull up to you and talk to you. If a police officer thinks you're a threat, what they do is stay back away from you and pull out their gun. What we do is get so close you can't get pull out your gun. A police officer believes you're a threat so they begin to talk to you in an autocratic, aggressive fashion. What we do is build a psychological bridge to explain to you that there is no need, there's no option for violence, there's no opportunity, and there's nothing to gain. So you must leave now, and I'm letting you leave. My staff is letting you leave. You can simply go."

"Now this works in any situation where the human being is attempting to achieve something. Now when it's psychological, meaning the person is not thinking well, they're on drugs or they're in pain... we're able to read their body language ahead of time, and know that they're about to draw their weapon... ...we're able to take them into custody and take them down without injuring them and without letting them pull out their gun."

"Again, we're in Detroit. This is not theory. This is what we do. This is why none of my staff members are dead."

 

 Brown dispels some common misconceptions about effective policing:

"There are about 2,000 law enforcement officers in Detroit now," he says. "They call it 'woefully understaffed.' There were (about) 7,000 officers in the 60s and 70s, where there was also riots and a lot more violence perpetrated against civilians... More cops did not add more of a profitable outcome, more of a prosperous community, more of a safe community..."

"Arrest powers have nothing to do with safety," says Brown. "Any citizen can take someone into custody if they commit a violent act. That has nothing to do with arresting."

 

The difference, of course, is that unlike police officers, an ordinary citizen will be held accountable for their actions:

"(I've learned better ways of crime prevention) because I have to," says Brown. "I'm accountable. I have no qualified immunity. That means, if I put my hands on someone it has to be legal. There has to be a way for me to explain it as a civilian. As a result, we've had no court date in 20 years. No lawsuits... in 20 years."

 

 Brown says his methods are "a completely new paradigm in public safety - and it works, and I can prove it."

"Look at crimemapping.com," he says, "you will see an extremely low amount of crime anywhere that we work."

 "Wealthy people get wealthier when there is less death, carnage, lawsuits, injuries and incarcerations on their property... they like my peaceful approach because it means more prosperity for them. But my focal point was community and family safety."

"We are not a non-profit. We are a for-profit corporation that is altruistic," he says. "We help people who do not have money for free, and that's a volunteer effort, by myself and my bodyguards. And that's why I make sure I don't have mercenaries."

"Prosperity driven by the prevention of violence in non-violent ways..."

"What does that mean? When a nurse came home with her child, when an elderly person got off the bus, that meant they didn't feel terror."

"...it's sustainable because it's profitable." 

 

Another reason for the DTMC's success:

"We don't get involved in drugs and other issues that are non-violent. We focus on just violence."

 

Says Brown:

"I create prosperous outcomes over and over again, without lawsuits, without injuries, without death, no killing unarmed people," says Brown. "These deaths are avoidable. These deaths that you're hearing about... they ARE avoidable."

 

 You can listen to the entire interview here.