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.

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.

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 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.

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."

A Brief Thought on Use and Occupancy

Though I believe in a use and occupancy condition for property, I also believe that this condition should be interpretted liberally - and by liberally here I mean conservatively. Thanks in part to agrarian nostalgia and also to philosophical convenience, original appropriation and continuing "use" and "occupancy" are often explained in terms of a particular mode of subsistence, which is family farming. Under a very strict interpretation of the use and occupancy condition, you don't own your land unless you plant and/or live on it, and the only bits of it that you do own are those parts that you either live directly on or plant on; and if your land goes fallow, then you don't own it any more.

I think there are very good "liberal" and "leftist" reasons for homesteading and continuing use and occupancy to not be interpretted so strictly. One is American Indians getting run off their land because they hadn't sufficiently appropriated it and/or weren't making "good enough" use of it. Another is protected natural areas.

My general and hopefully noncontroversial sense is that if there is no room under the property rules for an area set aside for the mere observational enjoyment of nature, then the property rules are too strict. So what if my land went fallow? I like the look of tall dry grass and wildflowers. Merely walking through and enjoying it should be good enough to count as use (and if I'm the first in a while to walk on it with a fence around it, then that should count as first use).

I shouldn't have to spend 7 nights a week 52 weeks a year on my land for my claim to it to be respected. And I shouldn't have to plant on every bit of it for my claim to be respected, either. If I can't enjoy my land in the way I want to enjoy it (assuming of course that my method of enjoyment doesn't get in the way of other people enjoying their own land), then I don't have property rights. And the way I'd like to enjoy it, once I get rich enough to buy a few acres, is to leave some of it as brushland, grassland, or woods.

None of this is to say that I think the use condition should be thrown out altogether. A house that has boards over its windows and obviously isn't being used at all is, I think, "re-homestead-able". And I believe a field that has nothing grown on it and no one living on it, and whose last owner according to all the records there are died with no heir or anyone who claims to be one, then that field too is re-homestead-able. I just think that sitting there and enjoying the land as it is should be good enough to count as use.

More on the Rich Young Man

One of the New Testaments sitting around in my house has a "Harmony of the Gospels" in the back of it, showing which parts of Jesus' life are talked about where. I should have known it before, but I just realized this afternoon that two events Unitarians use to argue against the supposed deity of Christ, which are the Baptism of Jesus and the story of the rich young man, are in all three of the Synoptic Gospels but nowhere in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John does have a whole lot of stuff that isn't in the Synoptic Gospels, like the preface about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among men, the parable about the bread of life, and all those verses that seem to fit so neatly into an Evangelical perspective. It should be no wonder that when I went door-to-door soul winning when I was younger, all the verses that I referenced that weren't in the Romans Road were in John.

In the story of the rich young man, Jesus tells the young man (in 3 different gospels!) "Why do call me good? There is none good, but God." Implying, to the simple reader, that Jesus is saying that he isn't God. When I told my dad about this story not being in John, though, my dad *corrected* me and said that Jesus nowhere here claims to not be God, that he isn't telling the man to not call him good, and that he therefore is actually claiming to be God. I personally don't see how that fits into the story. If a man asks another guy why he's calling him good and then says that only God is good, the implication that he himself is God isn't the first thing you think of. And you typically wouldn't have any need to think of it, unless of course you already believe that Jesus is God and you have to somehow try to reconcile it with these three passages of the Bible which suggest that Jesus is in fact a mere human.

John is a very different kind of book from the other three gospels. I personally think it has a completely different agenda than the other gospels. And the interpretations people give to the three Synoptic Gospels to make them adhere to the rest of the New Testament are just as aggressive as the claims within these gospels about fulfilled prophecies from the Old Testament.

The Rich Young Ruler

There is a Christian story about a rich young man who came to Jesus and asked what he can do to get eternal life, and then went away very sad because the answer he got sounded too hard for him to do - to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to the poor. This story is told three times throughout the New Testament - Matthew 19:16-30, Mark 10:17-31, and Luke 18:18-30. Many Evangelical Protestants, including the fundamental Baptists among whom I was raised, interpret this story to accord with their almost antinomian Free Grace soteriology. "What Jesus means here," they say, "is that no one is or can ever be good enough to go to heaven by their own works. Jesus is actually saying that no one can or should even try do anything to get to heaven, besides asking God for salvation and trusting Him."

Granted, there are many parts of the Bible that are flat out ambigous, and that need to be given a nuanced interprettation. Besides those ambiguous passages, other parts of the Bible need to be given a meaning that isn't the obvious one, if they are to accord with other parts of the Bible (or with the overall agenda that's attributed to them). And I think the story of the Rich Young Ruler is an example of the latter one of these.

The standard Evangelical interpretation of this story simply doesn't work. Or at least, it doesn't work nearly as well as a salvation-through-works reading. When a man approaches the Son of God and asks what he can do to get eternal life, you'd think that - if the Son of God is all he's cracked up to be - the words that then come from Jesus' mouth would shed some light on how someone can get eternal life. And the words that Jesus says next are "You know the commandments - don't commit adultery, don't murder, don't steal, don't perjure, and honor your parents." The most obvious meaning here is that the answer to this man's question about what he should do to get eternal life is that he should keep the Ten Commandments. If Jesus had meant something other than that, then maybe he would have said something other than that.

When the man says that he already does keep the commandments, Jesus tells him that there's one thing that he lacks - he has to sell everything he has and give all the proceeds to the poor, and follow him. It doesn't look like Jesus is adding these on as things you have to do as well as keeping the commandments. It looks like he's saying that these things are part and parcel of keeping the commandments. In the context of an imperialist government where being rich implies being well connected to someone who makes their living aggressing against others, it's understandable that someone would associate wealthiness with theft. This condition isn't entirely absent from our own society, since many people today make their living through government largesse.

But even if we don't read "sell all you have and give to the poor" as part of the Ten Commandments, it very clearly looks like it is part of what Jesus describes as a means to salvation. I don't think this is mere hyperbole. True, Jesus does concede that with men this is impossible - but then he says "but with God all things are possible." What thing is he talking about that is impossible with men but possible with God? Maybe the tasks he just prescribed for a rich man to get eternal life - selling everything and giving all to the poor.

If Jesus were speaking merely in hyperbole, as the Evangelicals wish he were, then why pick on the rich people? Why does the rich man go to hell and poor Lazarus go to heaven? Why does Jesus say that it's harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle? If Jesus were merely talking about all of mankind's total depravity, then maybe he would have said "any man". But he refers specifically to *rich* men, and probably because he is specifically pointing out attachment to wealth as an impediment to salvation.

All Evangelicals (and Christians, for that matter) believe that God's intervention is a necessary ingredient to salvation. Jesus' paying the penalty for all of everyone's sins so that a free ride to heaven can be given to anyone who asks for it, is one predominant way for Evangelicals to view it. Another is that God handpicked everyone who He decided to fit into the category of "Not Going to Hell." This passage about the rich young man clearly does give God a role in salvation, but it's very different from the role given to Him by the above two views.

The most straightforward reading of this passage shows that God helps people get saved, but not by dying for them and giving them a free ride. There is a means to salvation, which is very clearly given as keeping the commandments, giving everything to the poor, and following Jesus. This means is recognized as being very hard, next to impossible, or flat-out impossible for humans to do; but it is also recognized as possible with God's help.

Those Evangelicals who give the Bible a fairer reading than what the Free Gracers do, believe in something called "Lordship Salvation". They believe that good works necessarily result from getting saved, and that anyone who is truly saved will start doing good works as a result of it. But this view doesn't accord with these passages about the rich young man, where Jesus describes works as a means to salvation, not as a mere result of it.

Though I was raised a Baptist, my beliefs have changed to the point that there is no practical use to even calling myself a Christian. So I can't describe anything I wrote here as being what I actually believe. I might believe this if I still were a Christian. If I were to take this reading of these passages seriously, I would have to downplay or radically reinterpret other passages of the Bible. And that's okay. I don't think every bit of a text is necessarily compatible with every other bit of it - especially of a piece as composite as the Christian Bible.