…Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive…it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. – from The Declaration of Independence
Two hundred and thirty-seven years ago the majority of Americans decided they had had enough of tyranny, and declared their independence from the government which had by its own actions destroyed any sense of loyalty the people had to it. To be sure, there were many who disagreed; either they were too frightened, or too mindlessly loyal, or too skeptical of the possibility of victory, or too unable to see that the injustices which had been inflicted upon their neighbors would eventually reach them. But a large enough fraction of the populace were ready for revolution, and so it came; a few years of struggle, travail and bloodshed, and a new nation was born. Its primary founding principle, spelled out in the Declaration of Independence, was that some rights are unalienable, that is inherent in all humans, and any government which uses violence to abrogate them without just cause immediately loses its legitimacy; at that time it is not only the right but the duty of free people to resist its dictates, “to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”.
Unfortunately, the Founding Fathers were only men, not demigods; they left too many gaps and loopholes in the Constitution they devised thirteen years after the Declaration, and the new nation came into the world with an ugly birth defect which almost doomed it eighty-five years later. Furthermore, the violent and imperfect resolution of that flaw created a new and equally-vile one which destroyed many of the safeguards laid down by the Founders and engendered the unchecked growth of government which has now led us right back to where we started. As I pointed out in my column for this occasion two years ago, our government now regularly commits the exact same offenses for which Americans rebelled against King George III, as enumerated in the Declaration:
The federal government has in recent decades erected a multitude of new offices, and sent out swarms of officers to harass the people and eat out ever-increasing portions of the GDP.
The police army has been rendered independent of and superior to local, state and federal laws.
They are heavily armed and quartered among us in every neighborhood.
They are protected by mock trial from punishment for any murders or other crimes which they should commit…
Every year, new taxes, fees and unfunded mandates are imposed on us without our consent.
Many federal offenses are tried before a judge…or…hand-picked [juries]…kept ignorant of salient facts of the cases; or citizens are falsely accused of such heinous crimes, with such disproportionate penalties and necessitating such outrageously expensive defenses, that those accused of them simply plead guilty in return for a lesser sentence. Also, property stolen by the state under ever-expanding “asset forfeiture” laws is not returned even if its rightful owner is never charged with a crime. Each of these procedures essentially deprives its victim of the benefit of trial by jury.
Alas, 2013 is not 1776, and Americans have collectively become some of the most submissive, spineless peasants upon the face of the Earth. Most of them are too frightened, or too mindlessly loyal, or too skeptical of the possibility of victory, or too unable to see that the injustices which have been inflicted upon their neighbors will eventually reach them. “Freedom” has become nothing but a “worship word” devoid of real meaning, and politicians and their toadies distort its very essence by pretending that the American promise is about freedom from adult responsibility and self-determination rather than freedom to pursue self-actualization; by that asinine definition, my pets and livestock are freer than any American. Most of my countrymen meekly and silently allow their bodies and homes to be routinely violated by their overlords, and even when the full extent of the undermining of our unalienable rights is made glaringly obvious by those who still have the “Spirit of ‘76”, you can be sure the bootlickers will line up to demonize them, declare that Big Brother only wants what’s best for us, and suspiciously ask “What do you have to hide, anyway?” Though the country which was once the freest in the world has now descended into fascism, there is as yet no sign of revolution. And even when it does come (as it inevitably must), I can’t imagine the current crop of dependent, conformist weeds producing a form of government even half as effective at preserving individual rights as the one which died of neglect and disinterest barely two centuries after it was brought forth with such high hopes.
“Worship word”.
You rock.
Is there a better trove of superlative references, I wonder?
And the rest, I say
Maggie for president
I think governments are not necessarily bad. You can have good governments and bad governments. An example of a bad government is the regime of Joseph Stalin.
I think only a government can solve the problem of poverty. But this must be done in the right way. I think the United States is spending much money on the wrong things, for instance misguided military expeditions, useless infrastructure projects and on saving companies which will never become profitable again.
They could better spend it on free healthcare, free education and on welfare. They could spend all the wasted money on eradicating poverty.
Eradicating poverty is within reach.
I cannot see how a libertarian society can solve poverty. People don’t know how much they have to give away to the poor. A government can easily calculate it and then impose the right amount of taxes.
An example: the healthcare systems in European countries are much cheaper compared to the USA due to government price controls in European countries. They don’t do this in the USA, so medicines typically are 4-7 times more expensive in the USA!!!
The free market doesn’t work.
This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to begin.
You think healthcare in Europe is “free”–it is not. It is paid for with taxes. And that is one reason why so much of Europe is bankrupt right now.
Governments are never satisfied with the “right amount of taxes”. There is always more to be done and more money to be squeezed.
Kris you seem to believe that old canard that giving people money and free stuff is the cure for poverty. It isn’t and never has been.
Incidentally, why do you think Stalin’s government was bad? By your standards it was great. Everyone was equal and there was no poverty. Right?? 😉
That’s because Europeans (and Australians) have the sense to know that health is not just an individual issue, its a communal one.
It doesn’t matter how much I earn and spend on my own healthcare, staying healthy is gonna be an uphill battle if the streets are full of the diseased and insane (as they seem to be in the US, from my distant and ill-informed perspective).
Even US citizens with full health insurance have a lower life expectancy than your average Australian (albeit a higher one than Aboriginal Australians like myself).
The disparity in access to healthcare in the US is a big reason why Americans spend more per capita on health than any other nationality in the world but still have such poor outcomes by OECD standards.
Perhaps from a communicable disease point of view. But those have not been a serious public health issue in the US for decades (except for the anti-science/anti-vaccination crowd, whose children are now loci for measles and whooping cough outbreaks). Being surrounded by people with cancer and heart disease and bipolar disorder doesn’t have an impact on my health at all.
You think?
I’m afraid I have some bad news.
If I had a child with terminal cancer and couldn’t afford to pay for treatment then I’m coming through your window one night and your valuables are gone.
How many times could you bear that before your own health (and contents) insurance premiums become too onerous for you?
And that’s before we get into all of the transmissible diseases that *do* still affect life expectancy in Aus, such as hepatitis (you don’t have to be a junkie or hemophiliac to catch A and B), influenza, many STDs, oncoviruses, …
What has that person who just handed you your burger got in his bloodstream, on his hands or in his sneezes?
The epidemiological fact is that countries with widely accessible health services have better outcomes for everyone. That’s how come impoverished countries like Costa Rica have better life expectancies than the US and why even filthy rich Indians can’t count on reaching seventy.
Well you’re spot-on track with “Dependence Day”.
Your solution is take money away from defending the empire and spend it on poverty – when studies show that no amount of money ever thrown at poverty has eliminated it. Google the Appalachians.
Free healthcare? Nothing is free and anyone who says it can be – is naive. Someone always pays the bills dear.
Price controls? Nixon, a Republican, implemented wage and price controls in the early 70’s. It was such a disaster and was discredited so badly – that even Leftists no longer advocate for them.
Because the Soviets demonstrated the superiority of central control. /eyeroll
You know, I’m sorry – but it’s attitudes like this … like there is some “free ride” out there – that really gets to me. Between my wife and I – we make over $230,000 a year. My wife is a rocket scientist – but I’m not. I earn my money by risking my life in harsh locations all over the world. I earn my money by working two – or three jobs. Bouncer, Bodyguard – I notice my next door neighbor just moved out and I’ll probably ask the owner of the place if he needs any work done in there.
For all my “bust-ass” – I get taxed at the same goddam rate as anyone who earns that amount of money working behind a desk with a suit and tie. But – I WORK HARDER for my money and risk a lot more.
All to support your socialist state.
And YOU want me to work harder and PAY MORE for the healthcare of fat, lazy people?
Give. Me. A. Break.
I will QUIT before that happens. I will quit every job I have and move out into a hut on the Honey Island Swamp and hunt feral pigs to survive.
Bank that.
That’s a bit of a non-sequitur isn’t it Krulac?
If Kris2 had said “The US government sucks” would you have responded “Because the Soviet government was so great. /eyeroll”?
The fact is the free market doesn’t work, because it allows the opportunistic and unethical to externalise costs and offload them onto the rest of us (e.g. via environmental degradation or the exclusive exploitation of resources that should be held in common).
Even Adam Smith conceded that.
And of course unfettered free markets inevitably self destruct by collapsing into the system of cartels and monopolies that are their antithesis.
Smith pointed that out too.
Citing a system that’s even worse doesn’t make yours any better. Especially an obviously failed one that’s been dead and buried for decades.
US corporate libertarians seem to have a huge, willful blind spot regarding the faults of the free market. That’s always been a mystery to me because by and large they are not stupid.
“I think governments are not necessarily bad.”
I think that you have a strong case for a malpractice suit against any and all of your history teachers.
Historically, governments have been for the convenience of the governors at the expense of the governed. The exceptions have been rare and short-lived. Even the U.S. federal government, founded by one of the most radical political documents ever adopted by any legislative body, quickly devolved into a handy tool for whoever held power, limited by the radical document that was its foundation and which even its founders weaseled around almost from the first.
I am not an anarchist. I have no illusions about how I would fare in true anarchy. But I distrust government in principle, and would love to see its functions reduced to a very minimum. And ‘solving the problem of poverty’ should not be one of those functions. That is a matter of Charity, and should be the business of Churches and similar voluntary social associations. In the hands of the Government it devolves from Charity to robbery, simply because the government uses force to collect its taxes.
I admit, until I was a teenager, and came to the USA, 4th July was never a holiday I celebrated. And I still see the contradictions it contains.
The original Founding Fathers understood, and tried to set up a government where the power resided with the people, where the government got consent to govern and it’s power from the people, with whom it ultimately resided. The FF believed that the people could withdraw that consent at any time.
That’s power to, and that works, when people exercise their power in union to tackle a problem bigger than any of them could take on alone. That’s good power, and a good government.
But there’s also power over. That’s a bad power, and that’s what the government has come to exercise. It got it because people gave up power for illusionary benefits, not seeing that only by acting together they could achieve them. That’s the power the US, and most governments exercise.
“Power to” is used willingly, by the people, in their own interest. “Power over” is used against the people, usually for the benefit of a third party. That’s the journey we’ve taken. Fail to understand that, and you fail to see a way out.
And Krulac, you are not working for the “fat and lazy”‘s healthcare. In any kind of reasonable system, you would be working for you own. But it makes sense, and for more efficient healthcare to spread the risk, and system over a larger group. That’s why national schemes include all, and why they tend to operate more efficiently.
Cspschofield, you seem to misunderstand anarchy. Anarchy is not a law of laws, or order. It’s the lack of a hierarchy imposing them from above. The Founding Fathers did institute a type of anarchy in the nation, which we have lost.
If we are to change where we are headed, it has to begin with changing minds. Complacent, uncritical, uneducated, unthinking frightened people do not make a revolution.
I’m quickly becoming an anarchist.
Admittedly we have a dysfunctional government, and we are divided on how to move forward. But, anarchy, really? There are plenty of examples of the fruits of that path! Do we really want to leave our lives in the hands of the violent, the ignorant, and the bigoted (e.g. those that work from a desk are less deserving than you??)? That is what we have fought to cast off these last three hundred years. If you are dissatisfied with our government, remember it is an imperfect reflection of us, its citizens and directors. You don’t like the extent of our government, fine, but remember that yours is not the only opinion, and the mere fact that others disagree in no way makes them less than you.
Something a little more positive is in order. A re-post from one of my daughters friends:
“Today, in the state of New York, I am not allowed to set off fireworks, but I’m going to anyway and, assuming I don’t light any buildings on fire, nobody is going to stop me. I’m going to sip some bourbon, eat some cheeseburgers, and celebrate the Declaration of Independence by setting fire to the skies, adding a flash of light to those steady burning stars.
Today, more than most holidays, is one of the most genuine celebrations I have. I’m not religious, so Christmas and Easter don’t mean much to me beyond good food and presents. What, then, does today mean? It means I get to be gay and tattooed and educated and an atheist and white, and you get to be whomever you’d like to be, and we can both set off fireworks. It means we can have a straight, black, Christian president who a lot of us disagree with, but all of us can rally behind if the time comes. It means that, in a few months, I can move from one of the most liberal states to a conservative state and still expect a genuine American experience. It means that a Lengio, an Ashkenazi-Irish-German-Italian can learn how to make southern BBQ.
Today, more than anything else, I celebrate American Pluralism. More than any other idea, pluralism is the most radical and sacred of the American People. So today I will be gay and I will be a college student and a philosophy major and I will be defy the norm. But above all else, I will be an American, celebrating pluralism by sending rockets to the skies, carving the constitution into constellations with fireworks.”
>”Do we really want to leave our lives in the hands of the violent, the ignorant, and the bigoted (e.g. those that work from a desk are less deserving than you??)? ”
That’s basically what we have now.
You make a common mistake, which is to confuse anarchy with lawlessness, or complete lack of order. That’s a view of anarchy that has been promoted by governments.
Anarchy does not mean no law. Look up the roots of the word/ In an anarchistic system, there can be as much, or little law as the people choose to have. And that’s the key point. The people choose. In a hierarchical system, a king, dictator, or someone makes that decision and imposes it on the people.
The system established by Jefferson and comrades was way more anarchic than being under a king.
Hey don’t take what I said about me being taxed at the same rate as a white collared desk worker to be disparaging toward desk workers.
My point was this …
I DO NOT have a college degree. I graduated – I can tell you – somewhere in the top 50% of my high school class – probably right at the 50% mark – so I’m not that sharp academically.
I earn, a six figure income if you include all my sources of income – and EXCLUDE anything I make off the stock market. Since I don’t have the education – I have to do earn this income creatively.
To get that six figure income … I have a retirement from the Navy I earned by honestly performing A LOT of hazardous duty on submarines and later on surface and shore installations in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So that’s mine.
That retirement is not enough money for me and my family to live the life we would like to lead. So I have day job with the DoD and I travel all over the world doing hazardous duty. I have even been injured (many times actually) while deployed. Add to that … that I do security for a local bar as a bouncer. Add into that – that I occasionally do work for a private investigator as a bodyguard. Add to that I am always doing “extra” work for the motion picture industry. Google “The Escape Plan Trailer” – I’m one of the “Tomb Guards” dressed in black uniform and mask. I just recently did some work on the HBO show “True Detective” (Girls – Matt McCongughay – or however you spell it – is a small framed man – nothing to see there!).
So my point is this – to get the income of a desk worker – I have to hump hard and keep a lot of plates spinning in the air. I have to have all kinds of shit going on. And a lot of the stuff I do is hazardous.
A lot of the “lazy people” and Americans HAVE become lard-assed loafers – want to tax me so they can sit on their couch and watch the Kardashians and still get healthcare. And they want to treat me as if I’m some white collared worker who works in a luxurious setting with no stress (we know this isn’t even true for actual white collared workers – but that’s the stereotypes that the losers of society paint).
I’m not the only one – there are MILLIONS of us out here with only a high school degree and some of us even have less who get up every morning and to hustle a dollar the old fashioned way.
Why the fuck doesn’t everyone? Why should a fool who’s lazy be rewarded by forcing me to pay his fucking healthcare? It angers me to no end. What I have – I have earned by working for it.
GO WORK.
I’ve noticed that the exact people who say “GO WORK” are usually the ones who will say that unemployment is high and it’s Obama’s fault.* It’s fine to say GO WORK when there are plenty of jobs to be had.
And of course there are the aged an disabled to think about. If we will.
* I think some of it is his fault, but it’s a big problem and bigger than any one man, even a president.
I admit that my view of Anarchy is strongly tinged with skepticism and pessimism. I believe that if the People do not chose something to minimally occupy the social place of government, that they may be government by some representation of their will, they will shortly have a government imposed on them by some outside force. Usually a band of thugs and psychopaths.
But, as I believe that I have mentioned before, I’m a Crank.
Here’s an example. I live near a river. Now say I decide that there needs to be a bridge across that river. I can’t afford to build it by myself. I van’t the skill required, the strength. Nor do any of my neighbors.
But if we all decide to pool our money, and have the skill and strength or hire it, the bridge gets built.
That’s power to, and in a sense, anarchy. No power has come from a structure above us.
But let’s look at it a different way, the way it happens in the USA today.
Let’s suppose a big business on the other side of the river wants a bridge built, but doesn’t want to pay to build it. They go to the government, which has ceased serving the people’s interests, and demand a bridge, They pay off lawmakers. The lawmakers do a deal with the bridge contractor who has given them the most money. They place the bridge to accommodate the richest property owners along the river. People who happen to live where the bridge is to be are forced to move. My money is taken to build the bridge, at a much greater cost than should be. Them I’m made to pay toll to cross it.
That’s power over. That’s hierarchy.
I think he’s talking about the security aspect. In a pure anarchy – there is no governmental power to protect the people from outside invasion. Therefore, eventually – because the security aspect is REAL – a means to address it will eventually develop – and that means will likely be a “strongman”. And since that strongman has the power to let the outside invaders in – he can demand and get whatever he wants from the people he protects.
It’s a pickle for me to … but I just might jump based on two reasons …
1. AT LEAST success in this kind of system will be based on MERIT. And frankly – I’ll take that over milking the producers of society – as we do now.
2. I would have an equal shot at being the “strongman” as anyone else. That might not be a bad job. 😀
Again, in a system of anarchy, there’s nothing to prevent the people from having as much security as they want. Chances are they will need less if they are not meddling where they don’t belong.
The “strongman/King” is always a danger, especially among weak people. But there’s a solution to that, too. No matter how strong, the strongman has to sleep, and eat…
I’m curious about how you define efficiency in the context of a national healthcare “scheme”. I have lived under one for more than forty years (and my birth province is the model for it in most of the western world), and I grew up thinking it was the greatest thing ever (and it’s how we were taught in school to view it)…until I had to deal with it in a serious fashion, so I have a hard time thinking of it as efficient in any way.
People die on wait lists for surgery that are routinely six months or more long. Pregnant mothers die on gurneys in hospital hallways, ignored by staff despite calls for help. Beds are routinely closed in hospitals for various shortages. Specialists are in short supply and backed up. GPs are frequently so overworked that they go years without adding a new patient to their practices, except through births. Squalling children with colds take up space in emergency wards from people with broken or lacerated limbs, or worse. And my cousin’s fiancé–a cancer patient–was ignored for an urgent care issue in Emergency (he didn’t look ill, I guess), until he literally passed out on the floor in front of the triage nurse from severe dehydration.
And I have personally, on separate occasions, waited 8 hours with a bleeding, deeply-cut hand, and a separate time for three hours (both times needing stitches–I can be a bit of a klutz), four hours with a lacerated knee and sprained (though I didn’t know it was only sprained) wrist and finger on the same hand (same incident), and four hours with a head and neck impact injury with a lacerated face after a car accident strapped to a backboard with a C-collar, because there was no x-ray technician on duty in frickin’ Emergency at a frickin’ hospital, where I had one person look in on me in that whole time, and I was left in an untrafficked area out of the way, hidden like a bad memory, immobile and helpless and scared to move or speak…and they wouldn’t treat me for anything until they had the x-ray to determine if I had a serious spinal injury. Fortunately, it was minor…just lingering whiplash effects that still bother me periodically. I also had elective surgery once that only took me six weeks to get on the schedule for. I hadn’t realised at the time how short a turn-around that really was.
True trauma cases aside, the only time I’ve seen efficiencies are where the procedures are not covered by the government (dental, chiropractic, optometric, veterinary, non-critical cosmetic surgery for a good job on an outpatient cyst removal). There is, I think, a lesson to be learned from that. And even the government knows it’s not sustainable, even if it can’t admit it: over the decades, service after service, procedure after procedure, gets dropped from coverage, and still the costs soar. And still people with the money to do so go out of country to buy their medical service elsewhere, often those who protest the most loudly against changes to the system.
It’s a pipe dream from which people slowly and resistfully awaken, in my considered opinion.
By the way, happy 4th everyone 🙂
Well this is another depressing 4th of July message, Maggie.
However, it’s hard truth.
The only way I can “get into” the 4th these days – is to view it as a holiday like Christmas. The 4th represents a single day back in 1776 that a bunch of humans did something right. But it has NO relevance at all to the disaster that their dream has become. If you can separate the 4th of July from the current government of the U.S. – then you can enjoy the holiday – like Christmas. If you can’t – you’re fucked.
Happy 4th?
Amen. Long live Maggie’s Fireworks. She makes every day Independence Day!
I think Maggie’s last sentence is a clue as to why any ‘revolution’ has not taken place yet. It’s the same logic that informed Churchill’s words about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. Not a day goes by where I don’t read someone somewhere asking why the metaphorical torches and pitchforks haven’t come out by now. I think the answer is that people don’t know what will come after if we destroy what we already have and don’t want to find out. Is anyone here keen to potentially let their neighborhoods become battlefields?
I don’t profess to know any answers, and that’s another part of the issue. In 1776 we had people like Adams, Franklin and Jefferson. Where are their equivalents today?
Well, I agree with Kris2 to an extent, because government is needed to create equality of opportunity, break up monopolies, stop collusion, and protect weaker parties from exploitation. While some Libertarians will say that none of these will be a problem in a Libertarian world, I doubt it, because most markets are imperfectly competitive, with or without government intrusion.
However, we shouldn’t be giving hand outs to idle people. I’m not in favor of letting them die, but they aren’t getting free tvs, computers, or iphones.
I can’t wait to live in your perfect world.
Anyone drawing a welfare check or drawing unemployment should be getting up every day and going to work for the government. Building roads, making uniforms for troops, cleaning government buildings.
Is that too much to ask?
If this were implemented you’d see a serious reduction in the number of people drawing benefits.
“Let ’em die” … I’m almost at that point because people have told me how coldhearted I am for not caring about them – yet, no one gives a fuck about those of us who pay the bills. Why should we care about them?
If you have the right to forcibly take huge portions of my paycheck then why can’t I DEMAND you work for it? Why can’t I demand you regularly test for drugs so you can stop being a loser and hold a job?
It’s a one way bad deal for the producers and its killing Western Civilization.
You know, I like that idea. Expecting recipients of government assistants to work would solve a lot of problems. Having said that, I think society’s parasites are less of a problem than some people within the “ruling elite,” who have “earned” their riches from rent seeking and regularly benefiting from the state turning a blind eye to their unfairly competitive practices.
If government should be able to make welfare recipients work for their benefits then it should be able to make corporations dance to whatever tune it likes when you consider the massive amount of often hidden subsidies they receive.
Farm subsidies, infrastructure building, trade negotiations … heck, America’s military is nothing more than an armed policy wing of its multinational corporations (especially the oil companies).
If they are going to build bridges and shit, then pay them an honest wage, not welfare. Unless you like slave labor.
THANK you, Susan!
BTW, the arful liberal lefty blah blah blah are always wanting to put people to work fixing bridges and such.
Well, Krulac, you can always work for cash, or go live in another country. You’ve admitted that between you and your wife, you make a six-figure income. I have no sympathy for people who make that kind of money and then turn around and complain about people who eat potatoes for dinner because that’s their only choice.
You’re doing well, so you have no reason to complain. If you don’t like the taxes your paying, then donate to charity and get a tax break. That’s how it works.
You know, you’re right. He works like a dog, hustling for every penny and working as smart as he can – which is pretty smart. I guess you’re right. He SHOULD surrender most of his income to organized theft so this money can be handed out to people he doesn’t know – corrupt politicians, police who brutalize us to make sure we hand over our valuables, and layabouts who want to live on the public dime.
Awesome strategy to build a progressive society you have.
Or he could acknowledge that he can only work ‘smart’ because of tax money spent educating him – he owes for that.
He can only get to work because of tax money spent on roads and bridges – he owes for that.
He can only hang onto his accumulated wealth because of tax money spent on public order – he owes for that.
And of course the bulk of his career was funded by tax money spent on the military – he owes for that too. (I’m not denying he worked for it, just noting it costs a lot more than earned wages to keep a soldier in the field).
As I said before, I think most US libertarians are pretty smart.
The Randians who think they did it all by themselves aren’t.
“Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence.” – Adam Smith
There are no words to describe the degree of awesome in this post.
“Full of WIN” 😀
http://static.prisonplanet.com/p/images/july2013/040713sign.jpg
You can’t really appreciate just how depressing this thing really is until you understand how inept and spineless people who claim to oppose it.
At least cops in the US sometimes go to prison for murdering people (e.g. the ones in New Orleans who blew away Katrina survivors).
No cop in Australia has ever been convicted of anything in connection with killing someone on duty in the entire history of Federation. No murders, no manslaughters, no negligent homicides. Not even an assault.
And there are any number of absolutely blatant murders committed by police every year, usually of mentally ill or Aboriginal Australians (disclosure: I’m an Aborigine with a bipolar I diagnosis, so I’m not entirely dispassionate about this).
My understanding is that the situation in the UK is the same.
Cabro, your statement intrigued me so much that I consulted my father-in-law, a retired deputy police chief of the Northern Territory. I asked him if to his knowledge, any police officer had ever gone to jail for murder or manslaughter.
He said it happened once, “in the 80’s”, in the NT. And he had to think about it for a while.
I am beyond shocked.
I should clarify that I’m talking about cops (and prison officers) who are on duty. Some cops have gone to prison for killing their spouses etc while at home.
If your father-in-law is referring to an on-duty killing and can provide details I would greatly appreciate them. I’ve been a deaths in custody activist for over fifteen years and the universally accepted wisdom is that Reuben Sakey was the first Australian cop ever charged for a killing on duty – that of Edison Berrio in 2001 – and his charges were dismissed by a magistrate without going to trial.
If you have been in Aus for more than a few years you would be familiar with the case of the second cop to be so charged – Chris Hurley for the killing of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island – and what an insult to the concept of justice his trial was (the prosecutor playing a dead hand to an all white jury in Townsville – the only Australian city with a Ku Klux Klan chapter).
The only reason Hurley faced any charges at all was because the regular coroner was on leave and the inquest was carried out by a novice who didn’t understand how the cover up was supposed to work. By the time the inquest findings made the media it was too late to just sweep it all under the carpet as usual.
I am going to ask a very basic, and very ugly, question here: what responsibility do we have ass citizens for what is going wrong with our country? Too many Americans, especially over the last forty years have fallen into a carefully laid trap of the 0.01%: let the government do everything, don’t bother yourself with caucuses, elections, demonstrations, letters to the editor, etc., Watergate and Vietnam have shown that government is a smoothly running, self-correcting engine. When, after Reagan and Bush I, the average American discovered they weren’t protected like they thought they were (savings-and-loan scandal, mergers and acquisitions terrorism by the rich, etc.), rather than take to the streets and demand the rights they had–including the rich and the largest corporations bearing a fair share of the tax burden–they gave up. Some gave up period, some developed apocalyptic fantasies of a new and violent American Revolution that would leave a Libertarian state in its place. (It is no wonder that the American Conservative magazine published an article in March, 2005 calling Libertarianism “The Marxism of the Right.”)
The Constitution starts with three simple words: “We the People…” Until we remember our power, and our ability to change things without violence, on our part, nothing is going to get better.
Six years ago, I wrote an article on the second paragraph of Jefferson’s immortal Declaration for OpEdNews titled, “Rights, Powers, Privileges, and Responsibilities.” I am very proud of it: at least one college class on logic and ethics has used it as part of their course materials.
Only if we are all free are any of us free. This was the essential axiom of the philosophy of Mikhail Bakhunin, and I have never heard anyone who is a champion of liberty refute this basic assertion.
“Necessitous men are not, truly speaking, free men: but to answer a present emergency, will submit to any terms the crafty may impose upon them.” Lord Chancellor of England writing for the House of Lords (then as now the Supreme Court of England) in Vernon v. Bethell, Eden 2, 113, (1762). We are increasingly required to obey the bitch goddess of necessity, rather than being free to do our own wills. Until we en masse say “NO!” to the oligarchs, our freedoms will continue to disappear until, like the frog put in a pot of cold water than placed on the stove, we find ourselves dead in every way but the physical sense, and wishing we were dead that way.
Great comment.
As a syndicalist I particularly approve of your citation.
A pedantic correction though.
The appeal role of the House of Lords was abolished in 2009.
The Supreme Court of the UK is now a separate institution.
I missed that! Thank you. But damnit, there is something to be said for tradition.
I am very fond of Jefferson’s Declaration.
No other writer has equalled it as an expression of the core principles of Liberalism.
One form my fondness for those words has taken is my adapting them to serve as the lyrics of a song of which I am also fond:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OPvWFDzDlA
All people are created equal
With rights to life and liberty
The state must be the people’s servant
That they might be safe and free
And if the state should shirk its duty
The people then must stand
Their right’s to alter or abolish it And remake it by their hand!
So brothers come, and sisters
Now’s the time, and here’s the place
Our universal struggle
Shall free the human race
Lest we think this is all academic, here is a link to a news story about a family suing a local police department for violating, among other things, their Third Amendment rights.
There is already widespread resistance from health workers, police and government officials to support the human rights and health of sex workers—so the U.S. government’s anti-prostitution pledge further exacerbated the problem.
Although tribes and individual Indians have certain exclusive rights under federal law, some have been widely ignored. Indians, for example, are entitled to revenue from resources that exist on their land, such as timber, coal, oil and gas. Income from sale or lease of these resources is held in trust by the federal government.
Yeah, it’s pretty bad. But I roll my eyes at the suggestion that it used to be better. Even if you were white, male, and Christian, was it really better Way Back When? Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
And if you weren’t all three, well.