The French Commitment to Free Expression

Well worth reading:

"France Arrests A Comedian for His Facebook Comments, Showing The Sham of The West’s 'Free Speech' Celebration," by Glenn Greenwald

"The Propaganda War: The Horror of the Paris Rally," by Arthur Silber

TGIF: American Liberty during World War I

There’s always plenty for libertarians to complain about in our troubled world, but in many respects, things could be much worse. I’m thinking particularly of how the U.S. government punished dissent before, during, and even after America’s participation in World War I. Although it will be a few years before we observe the centenary of Woodrow Wilson’s idiotic decision in 1917 to plunge the country into the Great War, this seems like as good a time as any to review his administration’s, Congress’s, and the courts’ shameful conduct.

TGIF is here.

Come and See the Danger Inherent in the System

I remain puzzled at the refusal of civil libertarians to see the dangers inherent in government control of medical care.

An Open Message to Police & Military

TGIF: National Insecurity

There’s a country that earlier generations might not recognize in which the national government’s criminal investigative agency can execute its own warrants without court approval; present them to private companies and demand information about people who are not necessarily suspected of criminal wrongdoing; and — if that were not enough — forbid those companies from telling anyone — not even the target of the investigation.

The country I have in mind is not a Latin American banana republic or a Middle Eastern dictatorship. It’s the United States of America.

Read the rest of "TGIF: National Insecurity" here.

Crimes Governments Commit

From the BBC:

A judge in Malawi has sentenced a gay couple to 14 years in prison with hard labour after they were convicted of gross indecency and unnatural acts.

The judge said he wanted to protect the public "from people like you".

Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, have been in jail since they were arrested in December after holding an engagement ceremony....

"I will give you a scaring sentence so that the public be protected from people like you, so that we are not tempted to emulate this horrendous example," said Judge Nyakwawa Usiwa-Usiwa in the commercial capital, Blantyre.

Happy Birthday, Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz, the great champion of liberty and critic of what he has dubbed the "Therapeutic State," is 90 today. For the last 50 years, no one has worked harder or more eloquently to defend the individual from the State-medicine complex than Szasz. His specialty -- so-called "mental health" issues -- puts him virtually in a class by himself among libertarians. These issues include civil commitment ("a crime against humanity"), forced drugging and other "treatments," the insanity defense and verdict, and more.

Aside from Szasz, few people have been willing to condemn psychiatry's medical pretensions or psychiatry's assaults, backed by State power of course, for what they are.

He has also been a persistent opponent of the "war on drugs," including the prescription system, and a defender of the right to commit suicide.

Emeritus professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center/Syracuse, Szasz is the author of some 25 books, most famously The Myth of Mental Illness, a 50th anniversary edition of which has just been published, hundreds of scholarly and popular articles, and a column in The Freeman. His latest book is Antipsychiatry: Quackery Squared.

Among Szasz’s other books are Psychiatry: The Science of Lies; The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays; Coercion as Cure: A Critical History of Psychiatry; The Therapeutic State; Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts and Pushers; Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market; Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences; Schizophenia: Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry; Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted; Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide; Pharmacracy: Medicine and Politics in America; Liberation by Oppression: A Comparative Study of Slavery and Psychiatry; “My Madness Saved Me”: The Madness and Marriage of Virginia Woolf; and Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices.

I first met Tom in the 1970s. Since then he has been a constant inspiration to me. I am proud to know him.

All lovers of liberty should be familiar with is heroic life.

"Prolonged Detention"

Read Obama's speech carefully. He promises a regime that will allow him to hold people without charge or trial -- indefinitely. He calls it "prolonged detention." He says it won't be one man's decision, but that is not the issue. The issue is preventive detention. Scary. Think of what that means -- holding people not for what they've done (after charge and property trial) but for what they're expected to do. So much for Obama the civil libertarian.

New-Boss Watch

[Corrected]

Barack Obama had an opportunity to break with the usurpations of the Bush regime by agreeing to have the Supreme Court hear Ali al-Marri's challenge to the U.S. government's alleged authority to hold legal U.S. residents without charge as "enemy combatants."

Obama blew it. His Justice Department asked for a dismissal, and that's what it got.

Al-Marri had been held without charge in a military brig since 2003 after the administration's initial abortive attempt to proceed in the civilian courts. (The married Illinois graduate student was suspected of being an al-Qaeda sleeper agent. Details here.) In 2007 a panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said this violated al-Marri's rights. But the full court reversed that ruling and sided with the Bush administration. The case was headed for the Supreme Court, but then the Obama administration decided to transfer al-Marri to the civilian courts. That is a good thing because he will have the usual protections accorded criminal suspects. But there's one hitch: Al-Marri's lawyers wanted the Supreme Court to hear the case anyway, claiming the administration "does not repudiate the possibility that al-Marri will be returned to military custody and detained without charge." Obama's Justice Department does not rule this out. Indeed, as things now stand, al-Marri could be acquitted but again be held as an enemy combatant.

One bright note: in dismissing the case the Supreme Court vacated the Fourth Circuit's pro-Bush ruling. It's as if it had never been issued.

This was a big test for Obama on the civil liberties front. He could have asked the Supreme Court to rule once and for all -- which would have blocked future presidents from such monstrous conduct. He didn't do it.

He can make up for it to some extent by clearly repudiating the Bush "enemy combatant" doctrine. But so far, we have no reason to expect this.

Glenn Greenwald has more detail here. Bruce Fein has an excellent analysis here, including the critical point that terrorism is crime not warfare.

Private Protection

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending a lecture by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, long-time libertarian writer/activist and a professor of economics at San Jose State University, on "national" defense in a free society. In making the case for private nonstate protection, he pointed that we already are protected to some extent from government invasion by private organizations. How so?

The U.S. government could be violating our freedom a lot more than it is now. During World War I, Eugene Debs was jailed for making a speech defending war opponents. This doesn't happen today. The main reason freedom of speech is more secure than it used to be is that the ACLU and other civil-liberties groups have for years promoted the idea to the public that free speech is a good thing. Moreover, whenever the state makes a move against it, these groups spring into action. That is, they act as private defense agencies. Interestingly, they are nonprofit and unarmed. Their weapons are ideas, which Hummel emphasizes are always the ultimate defenses against tyranny. As he says, "Force doesn't rule the world. Ideas rule the world because ideas determine in which direction people point their guns."

On the other side, Hummel pointed out, our freedom to own guns is to some extent protected by another set of private organizations, most prominently (if highly imperfectly), the National Rifle Association. Again, their weapons are ideas, not (ironically) guns.

This is not to say the protection is flawless -- far from it. But it is not insignificant. Think how much worse the U.S. government could be. If we want private protection to work better, we need to win people over to a set of ideas not as riddled by contradictions and compromises as the current set is.

But the point stands. Private organizations can defend liberty against tyranny. If they can do it with respect to the the U.S. government, they can do it with respect to any government.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block

Late last month the California Senate and Assembly sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to prohibit employers from requiring workers to have RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips implanted under their skin. North Dakota and Wisconsin already have passed similar laws. Two other states are considering bans. VeriChip (motto, appropriately: "RFID for People") already has FDA permission to sell a device suitable for human implantation. Some people find this form of ID attractive because it can't be lost or, presumably, counterfeited easily. (We'll see about that.) But others, especially organizations dedicated to protecting privacy, object to treating other people like pets. What should an advocate of liberty think of all this?

The rest of last week's TGIF, "A Chip Off Old Big Brother's Block," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Recent Writings

If you were reading with only one eye open or only two hours' sleep you might have thought Paul Krugman had finally stumbled onto the truth. In his Monday New York Times op-ed, "A Socialist Plot," he wrote: "[L]et's end this un-American system and make education what it should be -- a matter of individual responsibility and private enterprise. Oh, and we shouldn't have any government mandates that force children to get educated, either.... The truth is that there's no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care."

The rest of last week's TGIF, "Counterfeit Rights, Cold Bureaucracies," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website. By the way, some people missed the point of this column, thinking it is primarily an attack on Krugman. Let me know what you think.

President Bush, one of the two most famous pro-Vietnam War members of his generation to avoid fighting in that war, has finally accepted what he previously rejected: that there are parallels between the war he ducked out of and his violent occupation of Iraq. (The other best-known famous pro-war war avoider is Vice President Dick “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service” Cheney.) Unfortunately, Bush has learned a far different lesson from Vietnam than many others have.

The rest of my op-ed, "Iraq and Vietnam," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Such Are the People Who "Govern" Us

From today's New York Times:

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation....

The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought. [Emphasis added.]

They were rushing off to vacation, by the way. Remember this the next time someone rhapsodizes about democracy public service, and all the other "of the people, by the people, for the people" shit.

Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now

The news media seemed too preoccupied with Paris Hilton’s detention to notice, but a U.S. appeals court last week struck a major blow for liberty. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Bush administration may not declare a U.S. resident, whether a citizen or not, an “enemy combatant,” throw him in a military prison, and hold him without charge indefinitely — all without judicial review. Try him in the civilian courts or let him go, the judges said.

This double affirmation of habeas corpus and defendants’ rights is a stunning setback for President Bush’s attempt to assert autocratic powers under cover of his "war on terror."

The rest of my op-ed "Bush's Tyranny Thwarted--For Now" is at the website of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Good Sense on Immigration

Immigration wisdom from Jeff Jacoby:

For most illegal immigrants, a legal option simply doesn't exist. Under current law, a young Mexican or Salvadoran who wants to improve his life by moving to America and working hard at a useful job generally has just two options: (a) Enter illegally, or (b) stay out forever. Several hundred thousand a year choose option (a).

To Representative [Steve] King and those who think the way he does -- the Pat Buchanans, the Lou Dobbses, the conservative talk-show hosts and their riled listeners -- the illegal entry is all that matters. They don't ask whether it makes sense to bar industrious and productive go-getters who value America as a land of opportunity and who supply labor for which there is a yawning demand. As far as they're concerned, illegal aliens are "immigration criminals," and the only issue on the agenda is how to keep them out....

But something is not wrong -- intrinsically wrong, bad in and of itself -- merely because it is illegal. It is against the law to put anything without postage into someone's mailbox.

If your neighbor prints flyers advertising a yard sale and drops one into each letterbox on the street, he has broken the law, but would anyone say he has done something evil?

Someone who crosses the border without a visa in order to find work doesn't deserve to be branded a "criminal." Doing so only inflames and confuses an issue that is contentious enough as it is. And it cheapens a word that should be reserved for those who purposely harm others through genuinely wrongful behavior: embezzlers, rapists, arsonists, murderers.

The demonizing of illegal aliens keeps us from having a rational discussion about US immigration policy.

Free the New Youth 4!

A new blog has been started with the objective of freeing four young Chinese imprisoned for exercising their natural rights to free speech and assembly. "Free the New Youth 4!" can be found here.

Here's the post explaining the blog:

On May 28, 2003, Jin Haike (靳海科), Xu Wei (徐伟), Yang Zili (杨子立) and Zhang Honghai (张宏海) were sentenced to between eight and ten years for the crime of “subverting state power.” Their charges stemmed from a small, informal discussion group they’d formed and dubbed the “New Youth Study Group” in order to debate ways in which China could further progress and prosper.

The New Youth 4 Coalition seeks to end their unjust imprisonment and return freedom to these four individuals who represent the best of Chinese progressivism and forward thinking.

We hope that through the power of dialogue and communication, the Chinese authorities will correct this grave injustice.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road

"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land."

--Magna Carta, this day, 1215

May the government declare a U.S. resident an "enemy combatant," throw him in a military prison indefinitely, and never charge him with a crime -- all without judicial review?

The Bush administration says yes. But in a key ruling (pdf) the other day, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals resoundingly said no. If it withstands further appeal, the decision will be a timely affirmation of the limits of executive power and the constitutional priority of civilian over military rule. Thanks, judges, we needed that.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "Habeas Corpus's Fork in the Road," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Single-Entry Bookkeeping

The Economist magazine has joined most everyone else in at least partly blaming the Virginia Tech massacre on easy access to guns: "Had powerful guns not been available to him, the deranged Cho [Seung-hui] would have killed fewer people, and perhaps none at all." That sentiment is typical.

But it's flawed. If Cho had been unable to obtain handguns (doubtful given black-market sources), he might have bought shotguns and a hacksaw and produced far-more deadly sawed-off shotguns. Or he might have gone the Timothy McVeigh route and rigged up a bomb.

But let's assume Cho was not as determined to kill lots of people as he seems to have been. Let's say he could do no better than a knife or his fists. Let's say he was unable to kill anyone because guns were not easily available. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a trail of dead bodies nonetheless.

Why? Because each year far more than 32 people save their own or other innocent lives with handguns. (See this.) So while the VT students might still be alive, many others might be dead who today are not.

I am not weighing one life against another, or saying that X lives are not as valuable as 2X lives. I am saying that when one does accounting, one should count everything.

Op-ed: The Lesson of Virginia Tech

The idea that one’s security can be ensured by an external authority underlies ridiculous ideas such as gun-free zones, which end up being free-crime zones. When the innocent have access to guns and take responsibility for security, things turn out differently — crime is stopped cold. In 2002 a suspended Appalachian School of Law student with a poor academic record entered the Virginia campus and opened fire, killing the dean, a professor, and a student. The gunman also wounded three others. When the shots rang out, two students, independently of each other, headed to their cars to retrieve their handguns. Those students confronted the killer, at which point he dropped his gun and was restrained by other students. Three deaths — not 32 killed.

Read the rest of this week's op-ed, "The Lesson of Virginia Tech," at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Conservative Hypocrisy -- What Else Is New?

I can't stand hypocrites. I can't stand conservatives. But I repeat myself.

Last night Sean Hannity, one of the the heavyweight thinkers at Fox News, went after Barak Obama for being a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ. The Church advocates a "Black Value System," which among other things calls for a commitment to the black community. Hannity suggested that such a commitment is "separatist" and that if a white church used the same kind of language, it would be rightly condemned. Hence, he said, there is a double standard. (Tucker Carlson of MSNBC earlier did the same riff.)

A typical conservative cheap debating point. Where's the separatism? Conservatives love it when Bill Cosby (properly) berates fellow blacks for not disciplining their own community. But when Obama voices a similar position, it's seen as separatist at Fox News. Is this because Obama is a threat to Republican presidential aspirations?

More fundamentally, Hannity's suggestion that the white and black contexts in America are equivalent is absurd on its face. Given the two different histories -- one of domination, the other of subjugation -- there is no double standard involved. Ayn Rand would call this "context-dropping."

I can't t see that radical libertarians and conservatives have anything significant in common.