I'm getting sick of hearing this. If your only problem with illegal immigration is that it's illegal, then you should be okay with all immigration if the government adopts an open-border policy. All immigration would then be legal, and you wouldn't have any illegal immigration to worry about.
But no, if the government were to adopt an open-border policy, the anti-"illegal" immigration activists would probably be very pissed off.
How about this: rather than immediately abolishing all borders, let's just remove all immigration quotas. Give a visa (for FREE! or at least a very very small fee) to anyone who requests it and turns out to not be a violent criminal. That way, anyone who wants to come here and work can come and work, and there wouldn't be any excuse for not coming the "right" way. And as an alternative to deporting people who overstay their visas, allow people to renew their visas after expiration by paying a goodly fine.
Again, the anti-"illegal" immigration activists would still oppose this. What they fear isn't people coming and staying here without the government's authorization. What they fear is a lot of foreigners being here.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Voting Rights and Immigration
When I was an elections officer in the November 2008 election (yes, I was already an anarchist, and yes, I recognize there's a bit of disonance there, but hey at least I declined to work in the Census), everyone on my team was instructed to not ask the voters for their I.D. Since it's a citizen's almost unqualified right to vote, possession of an I.D. should not be a requisite for voting - so we were told. When someone came up to my table and showed me their driver's license, I'd say "Put that away, I don't need your I.D."
So when we looked at our list of registered voters in our precinct, we would basically be taking their word for it that they were who they claimed to be. You could imagine a problem arising there, but thankfully that problem didn't happen at our polling place.
(Do keep in mind, this is the San Francisco Bay Area we're talking about. I don't know what it's like in other parts of California, let alone other states.)
But our open-door policy went a bit further than declining to check people's I.D. Again, voting is a right, so showing up at the wrong polling place to vote shouldn't prevent you from voting. If you show up at the polling place and your name isn't on their list, and you don't have the time, energy, or willpower to go find the place where you should vote, the election officers just hand you a ballot with a special envelope, have you fill out your information on the envelope, and you can vote. Your ballot would be counted last, but it would probably still be counted, if the election results are too close to call without counting your vote, and the counters check your information and find you to be registered.
In other words, we - the election officers - were letting people vote with absolutely no proof that they were legally permitted to vote. If they were voting illegally, that was their problem, not ours.
We used a good number of special envelopes that day. Some special voters looked like they really were registered but just couldn't go to their real polling place. But there was at least one voter who I was quite confident had no legal business voting.
She looked like she came from Iran, or north India, or one of those places in between. She was ushered in by her family, most of whom had already voted earlier in the day. Her name wasn't on our list. She explained that she just arrived "here" a couple weeks ago (whether by "here" she meant the U.S. or the Silicon Valley I don't know), and it looked like she was enthusiastic to exercise her newly acquired right to vote. I did something I wasn't supposed to - I asked her if she was registered. She said she wasn't. I looked at our supervisor. Our supervisor nodded gracefully, with a "let's accomodate her anyway" look on her face, so I gave the voter a special envelope and showed her how to fill it out.
At the time I thought it was just an excersize in civic duty. When they find she's not registered, they'll just not count the ballot. But the consequences of voting when you're not supposed to can be much more severe than not getting your ballot counted.
If the woman was not a citizen (which I'm almost sure she wasn't), then her act of voting can count as a false claim to U.S. citizenship, which is a grounds of inadmissibility. Voting in a U.S. election before becoming a U.S. citizen can get in the way of you ever becoming a citizen. It can also get you deported.
Granted, the government has to show that the person actually meant to lie about their status. But the hassle of having to show up at court and defend yourself is a hassle that no one wants.
People have to be really careful about this. I heard a story about a Civics teacher who gave out voter registration forms and had his class fill them out. Nice little civics lesson. Now his students know how to register. He then went and submitted their forms for them, and at least one of his non-USC students got in trouble for registering to vote when they weren't supposed to.
You might think you're being graceful and accomodating. You might think you're acting in line with fundamental democratic principles of openness and free participation. You might think you're doing somebody else a favor; but you might also be hurting their position before the law. And the whole burden of your misinformation is going to be born by them - not you. So you're probably not doing one bit of a favor.
I hope to all the gods that that woman was already a U.S. citizen. If she wasn't, then she's gonna get in deep trouble for just following directions from somebody who was uninformed about the law. And what'll happen to the guy whose directions may have ruined her chances of becoming a full member of our society? Well, I'm going off to law school.
So when we looked at our list of registered voters in our precinct, we would basically be taking their word for it that they were who they claimed to be. You could imagine a problem arising there, but thankfully that problem didn't happen at our polling place.
(Do keep in mind, this is the San Francisco Bay Area we're talking about. I don't know what it's like in other parts of California, let alone other states.)
But our open-door policy went a bit further than declining to check people's I.D. Again, voting is a right, so showing up at the wrong polling place to vote shouldn't prevent you from voting. If you show up at the polling place and your name isn't on their list, and you don't have the time, energy, or willpower to go find the place where you should vote, the election officers just hand you a ballot with a special envelope, have you fill out your information on the envelope, and you can vote. Your ballot would be counted last, but it would probably still be counted, if the election results are too close to call without counting your vote, and the counters check your information and find you to be registered.
In other words, we - the election officers - were letting people vote with absolutely no proof that they were legally permitted to vote. If they were voting illegally, that was their problem, not ours.
We used a good number of special envelopes that day. Some special voters looked like they really were registered but just couldn't go to their real polling place. But there was at least one voter who I was quite confident had no legal business voting.
She looked like she came from Iran, or north India, or one of those places in between. She was ushered in by her family, most of whom had already voted earlier in the day. Her name wasn't on our list. She explained that she just arrived "here" a couple weeks ago (whether by "here" she meant the U.S. or the Silicon Valley I don't know), and it looked like she was enthusiastic to exercise her newly acquired right to vote. I did something I wasn't supposed to - I asked her if she was registered. She said she wasn't. I looked at our supervisor. Our supervisor nodded gracefully, with a "let's accomodate her anyway" look on her face, so I gave the voter a special envelope and showed her how to fill it out.
At the time I thought it was just an excersize in civic duty. When they find she's not registered, they'll just not count the ballot. But the consequences of voting when you're not supposed to can be much more severe than not getting your ballot counted.
If the woman was not a citizen (which I'm almost sure she wasn't), then her act of voting can count as a false claim to U.S. citizenship, which is a grounds of inadmissibility. Voting in a U.S. election before becoming a U.S. citizen can get in the way of you ever becoming a citizen. It can also get you deported.
Granted, the government has to show that the person actually meant to lie about their status. But the hassle of having to show up at court and defend yourself is a hassle that no one wants.
People have to be really careful about this. I heard a story about a Civics teacher who gave out voter registration forms and had his class fill them out. Nice little civics lesson. Now his students know how to register. He then went and submitted their forms for them, and at least one of his non-USC students got in trouble for registering to vote when they weren't supposed to.
You might think you're being graceful and accomodating. You might think you're acting in line with fundamental democratic principles of openness and free participation. You might think you're doing somebody else a favor; but you might also be hurting their position before the law. And the whole burden of your misinformation is going to be born by them - not you. So you're probably not doing one bit of a favor.
I hope to all the gods that that woman was already a U.S. citizen. If she wasn't, then she's gonna get in deep trouble for just following directions from somebody who was uninformed about the law. And what'll happen to the guy whose directions may have ruined her chances of becoming a full member of our society? Well, I'm going off to law school.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Mother Earth can still be a God Concept
Church this past Sunday was a tiny bit dreadful. The week before it was amazing. The theme then was on humanist spirituality. This week the theme was earth-centered spirituality. To be fair, it was still refreshing in the sense that these folks openly admitted that their environmentalism is a religion. But some aspects about it showed that their version of it (or at least, the version presented by the lady who conducted the service) is a religion more on the level of traditional Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, than on the level of, say, Taoism or Jainism.
The lady conducting the service read a creation story that was written by a Unitarian Universalist. It was about the Goddess who decided to take care of her loneliness by curling up into a ball and spinning around really fast, forming mountains with the ridges of her spine and lakes with her breasts, and giving birth to all manner of plants and creeping things from her womb, and making 8 humans, 4 male and 4 female, a white male and female, a yellow male and female, a brown male and female, and a black male and female created she them, and she called them good, and they called her Mother.
I've always been perfectly comfortable accepting the common theory that white people are a genetic accident. I've known since I was a very small kid that the paintings of a white Adam and Eve were a bit fanciful. A brown Adam and Eve made much more sense to me. I know that the writer of this Mother Earth creation story wanted to be inclusive - to show that every phenotype is within the Divine plan - but it really looks like it's suggesting that racial categories are Divine constructs and not social constructs. (There's a very thin line between saying that everyone should be allowed a place and saying that everyone has their place.)
But the predestination of race isn't my main beef. My main beef against this creation story is that it has the very same problem that almost every theistic religion has. It ascribes onto humans a raison d'etre that they did not choose. According to this story, we are essentially bi-pedal pets that are supposed to keep someone else company.
I think a lot of theistic creation stories have the same problem - they point at some relationship in some purported origin and say that that relationship is the rightful one. Connected to this is the Divine Command problem. In these stories, the rightful relationship is the one that was determined by whoever the Divine entity is.
Theism can be used to prop up all sorts of hegemonic pyramids. Most of us know that associating the Divine with monarchy (calling God a King, painting Him sitting on a thrown, etc.) is a justification for all sorts of domination that occurs within monarchical political structures. I think the same thing happens when the Divine is associated with Nature. I'm speaking, of course, about religious justifications for the hegemonic system of animal predation.
The lady leading the service did some readings from a book that came out just recently. One of the scenes in this book was the author's observations of a leatherback turtle swimming along with jellyfish tentacles dangling from its mouth like noodles. She kept referring to its prey as "its lunch", as if killing another sentient being to eat it is just another one of those simple pleasures we're all entitled to.
Animals killing and eating other animals is something you have to smile on if you worship Nature. I think this is a problem for people who believe that the inherent worth and dignity of every being implies that the sentient ones are entitled to be left to enjoy their own lives.
People who worship Nature and oppose unjust domination seem to ignore that there is such a thing as Sin Nature. They seem oblivious to the fact that cruel domination is written into the very mechanisms that the ecosystem runs on.
Those who do recognize that cruelty is programmed into the natural order say that they themselves wouldn't engage in the predation of animals. But the predation of animals by other animals? Well that's the will of Our Mother.
The lady conducting the service read a creation story that was written by a Unitarian Universalist. It was about the Goddess who decided to take care of her loneliness by curling up into a ball and spinning around really fast, forming mountains with the ridges of her spine and lakes with her breasts, and giving birth to all manner of plants and creeping things from her womb, and making 8 humans, 4 male and 4 female, a white male and female, a yellow male and female, a brown male and female, and a black male and female created she them, and she called them good, and they called her Mother.
I've always been perfectly comfortable accepting the common theory that white people are a genetic accident. I've known since I was a very small kid that the paintings of a white Adam and Eve were a bit fanciful. A brown Adam and Eve made much more sense to me. I know that the writer of this Mother Earth creation story wanted to be inclusive - to show that every phenotype is within the Divine plan - but it really looks like it's suggesting that racial categories are Divine constructs and not social constructs. (There's a very thin line between saying that everyone should be allowed a place and saying that everyone has their place.)
But the predestination of race isn't my main beef. My main beef against this creation story is that it has the very same problem that almost every theistic religion has. It ascribes onto humans a raison d'etre that they did not choose. According to this story, we are essentially bi-pedal pets that are supposed to keep someone else company.
I think a lot of theistic creation stories have the same problem - they point at some relationship in some purported origin and say that that relationship is the rightful one. Connected to this is the Divine Command problem. In these stories, the rightful relationship is the one that was determined by whoever the Divine entity is.
Theism can be used to prop up all sorts of hegemonic pyramids. Most of us know that associating the Divine with monarchy (calling God a King, painting Him sitting on a thrown, etc.) is a justification for all sorts of domination that occurs within monarchical political structures. I think the same thing happens when the Divine is associated with Nature. I'm speaking, of course, about religious justifications for the hegemonic system of animal predation.
The lady leading the service did some readings from a book that came out just recently. One of the scenes in this book was the author's observations of a leatherback turtle swimming along with jellyfish tentacles dangling from its mouth like noodles. She kept referring to its prey as "its lunch", as if killing another sentient being to eat it is just another one of those simple pleasures we're all entitled to.
Animals killing and eating other animals is something you have to smile on if you worship Nature. I think this is a problem for people who believe that the inherent worth and dignity of every being implies that the sentient ones are entitled to be left to enjoy their own lives.
People who worship Nature and oppose unjust domination seem to ignore that there is such a thing as Sin Nature. They seem oblivious to the fact that cruel domination is written into the very mechanisms that the ecosystem runs on.
Those who do recognize that cruelty is programmed into the natural order say that they themselves wouldn't engage in the predation of animals. But the predation of animals by other animals? Well that's the will of Our Mother.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
A Comment I Left the Other Day
On Tuesday a friend of mine who I know from my senior year of college (he's in law school in DC now) posted this C4SS article about roads on his Facebook. In a spirit of complete agreement, I left the comment below.
He clicked "Like" on my comment.
When I hear people defend the state, I often hear them say things like "But how do you think we get roads? and water? and police? and the military?" Which is very funny (though I never laugh at it), because traffic congestion, water waste, police abuse, and imperialist foreign policy are probably the biggest reasons there *has to* be an alternative to government provision of these services. And what makes it even funnier is that the ones raising those contentions are usually leftists who spend the greater part of their day complaining about [sub]urban sprawl (which is a result of underpriced water, free roads, and federally-secured loans), factory farms (for which water subsidies is a factor), the over-abundance of corn (again, water subsidies, and other agricultural subsidies), the crowding out of subsistence farming in Latin American countries by floods of cheap American corn (ditto), the occasional cop who intimidates, beats, or kills unarmed civilians and gets away with it (would it be that typical if there were more competition in police?), and the military that always seems to get stuck in some unwinnable civilian-butchering money-draining war somewhere on the other side of the world.
He clicked "Like" on my comment.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Barbara Saldinger, a BB Gun, and Mere Property
Barbara Saldinger and her husband own some land out in the Santa Cruz Hills (I refuse to call them mountains) where they raise horses. The line between their property and their neighbors’ is marked by a bunch of evergreens, and there is no fence. Since there’s no fence, the exact line has been disputed since the Saldingers bought the land in 2004, and in 2006 this dispute got a little nasty.
The neighbor and a friend of hers were walking around in the trees and scaring the horses, according to Saldinger. Saldinger went over to the ladies with a BB gun and shooed them away from the property line. Saldinger got arrested, charged, and convicted for brandishing something that looked like a firearm.
Saldinger and her attorneys appealed this case all the way up, and now it’s headed for the California Supreme Court. The issue at hand is whether someone has the right to use a firearm, or something that looks like one, to defend what they think is their own property.
Even assuming the wooded area really is the Saldingers’, I would have to disagree with them. According to what the neighbors claimed, Ms. Saldinger’s BB gun looked like a gun, and made the women fear for their lives.
Ms. Saldinger used her BB gun in such a way that made the women feel their lives were threatened. When you use an object in a way that makes someone even think that their life is threatened, in order to incentivize them to act a certain way, then your use of that object is coercion that amounts to the same kind of coercion as pulling a loaded gun on someone. The ends and means in both are the same.
Threatening someone’s life, or making them feel that their life is threatened, is all fine and good when it is used against people who are posing a threat against the life of a non-aggressor. When the threat you’re trying to counter is only an infringement of property, then the use or threat of lethal force is disproportionate, and is thus an initiation of force. Killing someone merely for trespassing is a wrongful killing; threatening to kill a mere trespasser is aggressive in the same way; though maybe to a lesser degree.
Even if the disputed property belongs to the Saldingers, Ms. Saldinger still initiated force against her neighbor and her neighbor’s friend when she approached them with a BB gun in her hands. In other words, I don’t think the right to bear arms covers this.
If I were king (in a medieval Ireland or medieval Iceland way, of course), I would ask Ms. Saldinger to demonstrate that the tresspassing put her in such a position that she feared for her life, or her husband's life, or the lives of her horses, and that such a fear should be expected from any reasonable person put in such a position. If she does not convince me that she had such a fear and that it should have been expected, then I would have to rule that she was the aggressor.
I don’t want to see any comments from readers saying that I’m anti-gun. I firmly believe in the right to keep and carry lethal weapons. I don’t believe this right depends on your possession of a license (aka a certificate of a bribe). I believe you should be free to carry loaded weapons on your person, unconcealed, in public places. This right belongs especially to the most vulnerable in our society – which includes racial and ethnic minorities, women, sex workers, children, and convicted sex offenders. So don’t tell me that I’m anti-gun. I just believe that particular invasions merit only particular degrees of retaliation, and that retaliations that exceed the degree of invasion constitute their own invasion.
The neighbor and a friend of hers were walking around in the trees and scaring the horses, according to Saldinger. Saldinger went over to the ladies with a BB gun and shooed them away from the property line. Saldinger got arrested, charged, and convicted for brandishing something that looked like a firearm.
Saldinger and her attorneys appealed this case all the way up, and now it’s headed for the California Supreme Court. The issue at hand is whether someone has the right to use a firearm, or something that looks like one, to defend what they think is their own property.
Even assuming the wooded area really is the Saldingers’, I would have to disagree with them. According to what the neighbors claimed, Ms. Saldinger’s BB gun looked like a gun, and made the women fear for their lives.
Ms. Saldinger used her BB gun in such a way that made the women feel their lives were threatened. When you use an object in a way that makes someone even think that their life is threatened, in order to incentivize them to act a certain way, then your use of that object is coercion that amounts to the same kind of coercion as pulling a loaded gun on someone. The ends and means in both are the same.
Threatening someone’s life, or making them feel that their life is threatened, is all fine and good when it is used against people who are posing a threat against the life of a non-aggressor. When the threat you’re trying to counter is only an infringement of property, then the use or threat of lethal force is disproportionate, and is thus an initiation of force. Killing someone merely for trespassing is a wrongful killing; threatening to kill a mere trespasser is aggressive in the same way; though maybe to a lesser degree.
Even if the disputed property belongs to the Saldingers, Ms. Saldinger still initiated force against her neighbor and her neighbor’s friend when she approached them with a BB gun in her hands. In other words, I don’t think the right to bear arms covers this.
If I were king (in a medieval Ireland or medieval Iceland way, of course), I would ask Ms. Saldinger to demonstrate that the tresspassing put her in such a position that she feared for her life, or her husband's life, or the lives of her horses, and that such a fear should be expected from any reasonable person put in such a position. If she does not convince me that she had such a fear and that it should have been expected, then I would have to rule that she was the aggressor.
I don’t want to see any comments from readers saying that I’m anti-gun. I firmly believe in the right to keep and carry lethal weapons. I don’t believe this right depends on your possession of a license (aka a certificate of a bribe). I believe you should be free to carry loaded weapons on your person, unconcealed, in public places. This right belongs especially to the most vulnerable in our society – which includes racial and ethnic minorities, women, sex workers, children, and convicted sex offenders. So don’t tell me that I’m anti-gun. I just believe that particular invasions merit only particular degrees of retaliation, and that retaliations that exceed the degree of invasion constitute their own invasion.
The Right to Quiet
Last night some people gave their dogs pain killers to keep them from freaking out over the fireworks. Other people didn't give their dogs pain killers, and their dogs ran barking from corner to corner with their eyes popping out. Last night was a reminder to me that noise can be an infringement on property rights.
I should qualify this by pointing out that noise that's already there before you move in is very likely noise you consented to either through your concious acceptance or your stupidity. You can't get a house next to an outdoor shooting range and then have any reason to complain about guns going off. I live very near an airport, as anyone who watches my videos can tell. If I were the one who knowingly bought the house near the airport, and if I had a problem with the noise, my only legitimate claim would be that I was an idiot for moving in to a place that I should have known has so much noise.
Fireworks can be a similar case, in that we all pretty much know there's going to be fireworks on the night of July 4th. So I'm going to talk about another kind of noise. At the church where I grew up, it wasn't the custom to ring the bell until I reached 4th grade or so. People had already been living in the area, and were already accustomed to their quiet Sunday mornings, before the church started ringing its bell.
If there were people who already were living in that neighborhood and who enjoyed the quiet of it, and felt the quiet of their Sunday mornings disturbed by the bell ringing, then the ringing of the bell is something that impedes their subjective enjoyment of their property.
The main concern behind Switzerland's ban on the building of new minarets could have had something to it if it were about noise. For instance, a ban on amplifying calls to prayer would have made more sense than a ban on a particular kind of structure pointing into the air. Minarets themselves can't walk through your locked door or peak through a drawn curtain. Amplified noise can. However, none of the existing minarets in Switzerland had calls to prayer at the time voters approved the ban. If the ban on building minarets should make any sense, its supporters should show how the existence of a minaret can prevent someone from enjoying their property in the way they want to enjoy it, and I think that would be a hard argument to make.
Smell can be treated in a similar way that sound should be treated. If you move next to a feedlot, and then complain that the air smells like shit, then the only problem that's apparent is your own lack of foresight. If, however, someone buys property next to your own property and then puts a feedlot there, and you happen to strongly dislike the smell of shit in the air, then the feedlot is an infringement on your right to the subjective enjoyment of your property.
I should qualify this by pointing out that noise that's already there before you move in is very likely noise you consented to either through your concious acceptance or your stupidity. You can't get a house next to an outdoor shooting range and then have any reason to complain about guns going off. I live very near an airport, as anyone who watches my videos can tell. If I were the one who knowingly bought the house near the airport, and if I had a problem with the noise, my only legitimate claim would be that I was an idiot for moving in to a place that I should have known has so much noise.
Fireworks can be a similar case, in that we all pretty much know there's going to be fireworks on the night of July 4th. So I'm going to talk about another kind of noise. At the church where I grew up, it wasn't the custom to ring the bell until I reached 4th grade or so. People had already been living in the area, and were already accustomed to their quiet Sunday mornings, before the church started ringing its bell.
If there were people who already were living in that neighborhood and who enjoyed the quiet of it, and felt the quiet of their Sunday mornings disturbed by the bell ringing, then the ringing of the bell is something that impedes their subjective enjoyment of their property.
The main concern behind Switzerland's ban on the building of new minarets could have had something to it if it were about noise. For instance, a ban on amplifying calls to prayer would have made more sense than a ban on a particular kind of structure pointing into the air. Minarets themselves can't walk through your locked door or peak through a drawn curtain. Amplified noise can. However, none of the existing minarets in Switzerland had calls to prayer at the time voters approved the ban. If the ban on building minarets should make any sense, its supporters should show how the existence of a minaret can prevent someone from enjoying their property in the way they want to enjoy it, and I think that would be a hard argument to make.
Smell can be treated in a similar way that sound should be treated. If you move next to a feedlot, and then complain that the air smells like shit, then the only problem that's apparent is your own lack of foresight. If, however, someone buys property next to your own property and then puts a feedlot there, and you happen to strongly dislike the smell of shit in the air, then the feedlot is an infringement on your right to the subjective enjoyment of your property.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Reading List for July 4th
An Arrow Against All Tyrants, by Richard Overton, Newgate Prison, October 1646.
"To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. For every one, as he is himself, so he has a self-propriety, else could he not be himself; and of this no second may presume to deprive any of without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature and of the rules of equity and justice between man and man. Mine and thine cannot be, except this be. No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's. I may be but an individual, enjoy my self and my self-propriety and may right myself no more than my self, or presume any further; if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man's right — to which I have no right. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety — as it were writ in the table of every man's heart, never to be obliterated — even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free."
The Second Treatise of Civil Government, John Locke, 1690.
"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."
Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849.
"I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men and women are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders."
On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, 1859.
"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
No Treason, by Lysander Spooner, Boston, 1867.
"What was true of our ancestors, is true of revolutionists in general. The monarchs and governments, from whom they choose to separate, attempt to stigmatize them as traitors. But they are not traitors in fact; in-much they betray, and break faith with, no one. Having pledged no faith, they break none. They are simply men, who, for reasons of their own --- whether good or bad, wise or unwise, is immaterial --- choose to exercise their natural right of dissolving their connexion with the governments under which they have lived. In doing this, they no more commit the crime of treason --- which necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith --- than a man commits treason when he chooses to leave a church, or any other voluntary association, with which he has been connected."
The Humanitarian with the Guillotine, by Isabel Paterson, 1943.
"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends...[I]t is obvious that in periods when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object. When they are not the immediate executants, they are on record as giving approval, elaborating justifications, or else cloaking facts with silence, and discountenancing discussion."
For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard, 1973.
"Thus, the well-known theme of "separation of Church and State" was but one of many interrelated motifs that could be summed up as "separation of the economy from the State," "separation of speech and press from the State," "separation of land from the State," "separation of war and military affairs from the State," indeed, the separation of the State from virtually everything."
The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand, by Kevin Carson, 2001.
"The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called "market" economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."
How To Resist the Federal Income Tax Through the "Don't Owe Nothin'" Method, by David Gross.
"In March of 2003 I decided to stop paying the federal income tax because I did not want to fund the government’s activities. I decided to do this by lowering my taxable income and taking credits that reduced my tax burden to zero — what I’m calling “The DON Method.” I was surprised to discover that I could earn quite a bit of income, and live very comfortably, without paying federal income tax and without having to go up against the IRS. I could play by the IRS’s own rules and still pay nothing."
"To every individual in nature is given an individual property by nature not to be invaded or usurped by any. For every one, as he is himself, so he has a self-propriety, else could he not be himself; and of this no second may presume to deprive any of without manifest violation and affront to the very principles of nature and of the rules of equity and justice between man and man. Mine and thine cannot be, except this be. No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's. I may be but an individual, enjoy my self and my self-propriety and may right myself no more than my self, or presume any further; if I do, I am an encroacher and an invader upon another man's right — to which I have no right. For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety — as it were writ in the table of every man's heart, never to be obliterated — even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free."
The Second Treatise of Civil Government, John Locke, 1690.
"Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others."
Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau, 1849.
"I heartily accept the motto,—"That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men and women are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right."
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders."
On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill, 1859.
"The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
No Treason, by Lysander Spooner, Boston, 1867.
"What was true of our ancestors, is true of revolutionists in general. The monarchs and governments, from whom they choose to separate, attempt to stigmatize them as traitors. But they are not traitors in fact; in-much they betray, and break faith with, no one. Having pledged no faith, they break none. They are simply men, who, for reasons of their own --- whether good or bad, wise or unwise, is immaterial --- choose to exercise their natural right of dissolving their connexion with the governments under which they have lived. In doing this, they no more commit the crime of treason --- which necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith --- than a man commits treason when he chooses to leave a church, or any other voluntary association, with which he has been connected."
The Humanitarian with the Guillotine, by Isabel Paterson, 1943.
"Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends...[I]t is obvious that in periods when millions are slaughtered, when torture is practiced, starvation enforced, oppression made a policy, as at present over a large part of the world, and as it has often been in the past, it must be at the behest of very many good people, and even by their direct action, for what they consider a worthy object. When they are not the immediate executants, they are on record as giving approval, elaborating justifications, or else cloaking facts with silence, and discountenancing discussion."
For a New Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard, 1973.
"Thus, the well-known theme of "separation of Church and State" was but one of many interrelated motifs that could be summed up as "separation of the economy from the State," "separation of speech and press from the State," "separation of land from the State," "separation of war and military affairs from the State," indeed, the separation of the State from virtually everything."
The Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand, by Kevin Carson, 2001.
"The current structure of capital ownership and organization of production in our so-called "market" economy, reflects coercive state intervention prior to and extraneous to the market. From the outset of the industrial revolution, what is nostalgically called "laissez-faire" was in fact a system of continuing state intervention to subsidize accumulation, guarantee privilege, and maintain work discipline."
How To Resist the Federal Income Tax Through the "Don't Owe Nothin'" Method, by David Gross.
"In March of 2003 I decided to stop paying the federal income tax because I did not want to fund the government’s activities. I decided to do this by lowering my taxable income and taking credits that reduced my tax burden to zero — what I’m calling “The DON Method.” I was surprised to discover that I could earn quite a bit of income, and live very comfortably, without paying federal income tax and without having to go up against the IRS. I could play by the IRS’s own rules and still pay nothing."
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About Me
- Isaiah
- I am a part-time philosopher and a former immigration paralegal with a BA in philosophy and a paralegal certificate from UC San Diego.