Radley Balko on Freedom Watch
Those of you who know me know that I am not a big fan of Fox News. However, if there is anything good that can be said of Fox News, it’s that it features Judge Andrew Napolitano. A former New Jersey Superior Court Judge and now a legal analyst for Fox News, Napolitano is probably the only libertarian (with the possible exception of John Stossel) to have his own show on a major news network. It is the only show on a major news network to regularly feature libertarian guests (i.e. Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, Jacob Hornerberger).
Yesterday’s show featured a nine-minute discussion between Napolitano and guest Radley Balko regarding one of the most egregious results of the War on Drugs: the militarization of our local police forces. An innocent woman gets gunned down by the police during a drug bust gone bad. Just another victim of our government’s insane War on Drugs.
7 Responses to “Radley Balko on Freedom Watch”
Lew Rockwell seems more like a paleo-con than anything else.
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Militarization of police is nothing new. David Kopel, for example, expressed his concern about this years ago. It's not limited to the Drug War, either. (Nor is it limited to conservatives; a worse feature of the Drug War than the militarization of police — which is a response to heavily armed gangs as much as to illicit drugs — is civil asset forfeiture and other seizures, and the temptation for government to engage in plunder, as well as coerce through threats present and future, such as using civil asset forfeiture someday to seize “wetlands” from their owners to prevent or to punish development, which was a concern generated by the Clinton administration when Carol Browner began to get noisy as well as to be a nuisance.) In the 1990s there was the specter of increasing militarization of police (domestic “security” enhanced) while at the same time, the military was being downgraded not only to the role of police, but of social workers (the UN peacekeeper or worse model, foreign security neglected or diminished).
Lew Rockwell is a self-proclaimed paleolibertarian. Reading his writings and listening to him on radio/television interviews, there can be no doubt that he is a libertarian. However, there are a couple a distinguishing features of his political viewpoint that differentiate him from mainstream libertarians: 1) he tends to be more socially conservative (i.e. pro-life), however, like all libertarians, he does not wish for the government to legislate his views on others, 2) he supports < a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism”>anarcho-capitalism, and 3) while not outright sympathetic toward the Confederacy, he holds an extremely negative view of Abraham Lincoln and the Union.
In my humble opinion, paleolibertarians give too much credit to paleoconservatives like Patrick Buchanan (whose political opinions cannot be considered libertarian in any way). However, at least Buchanan has been a consistent critic of wars in the Middle East, which (I suppose) has endeared him to many paleolibertarians, who tend to be the most ardently anti-war members of the libertarian movement.
Radley Balko and Andrew Napolitano, however, are not paleolibertarians or anarchocapitalists. They are miniarchist libertarians–that is, they see a role for government, albeit, one far smaller than the one the government has now. They have both been fairly consistent critics both the Bush and Obama administrations.
“while not outright sympathetic toward the Confederacy, he holds an extremely negative view of Abraham Lincoln and the Union”
Though the slavery theme is grossly over-pushed by lefties, I have to add: Rockwell has an extremely negative, possibly even more, negative view of Martin Luther King if I recall. Rockwell seems to me to be a paleo-con (more conservative than libertarian, I'm confident, like infamous George A. Roche III years ago in Hillsdale, or even like the Fleming Chronicles crowd). The tough-on-Lincoln stance will routinely be savaged by lefties, but it has a long history — the Civil War was our first big introduction not only to modern warfare in the world but to “war is the health of the state” here in the USA and the rise of Washington (with a coda in Reconstruction and occupation of the South). “Comrade Lincoln” (a common Far Right nickname I've encountered) really did misstep (there's even a book, “Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln,” that discusses these, which isn't limited to habeus corpus but includes, for example, the partition of Virginia), and DiLorenzo, I believe, is another author or commentator (as well as professor) who has been critical of Lincoln, and removed him from his pedestal (cronyism with the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad project, for example). As for the topic of bigger and probably better interest to you as a libertarian, “war is the health of the state” and the Civil War era was indeed the first hint at modern society here as well as modern warfare, with, as another book is entitled, the rise of “Yankee Levithan” (the modern Washington). Aside from Lincoln and the Civil War, many people in this country are ignorant also of Wilson and World War I, including running the railroads, for example. It's as if the Bush era and the Iraq War was the only time people have “discovered” excessive federal authority — real or imagined.
Here's an extra morsel for you to chew on. (It affects you in a different way than liberals to whom I'm tempted to dangle it for other reasons.) Here in this country, despite the overgrowth of the federal government (separately from but often associated with the modern welfare state and role of government as a service agency), it's not a fully unitary nation yet. There still are other centers of activity outside the nation's capital. (In large part, this was because the capital was sited somewhat arbitrarily, for special political reasons.) Washington is our political capital (increasingly so each decade), but New York is the financial or economic capital, and for decades Los Angeles has been our cultural capital. A major impediment (for psychological or “psychic” reasons, if for no others) to our being like Europe (not the only one, but of note) is that we don't have everything in the nation — political, economic, cultural — found in the same location. Other than if we didn't expand to the Pacific, it is impossible to say that Los Angeles would not fail eventually to become our cultural capital. However, consider the possibility of consolidation of everything in an earlier year, political, economic, and cultural, and what it would have done for this country. Imagine (I dangle this before Europe-loving liberals, and now before you, for other kinds of considerations) if after the Civil War, the federal capital had been relocated to New York City — specifically to continue the rise of Yankee Levithan, to consolidate everything (possibly preventing Los Angeles from eventually becoming the cultural capital, given less decentralization after that time), not only political but economic and cultural, in New York City, to consolidate it all (as well as to move it northward to slight the South and arguably improve its defenses against southern attacks in the future).
Imagine relocating the federal capital after the Civil War, during Reconstruction, to New York City in time to celebrate the nation's centennial in 1876, and consolidating the nation politically, economically there.
My favorite legal conflict was with congress and the succession. If the Confederacy was a separate country, then congress should have recognized it as such and declared war against it. If it was part of the union, then congress would not have been able to gather a quorum in order to meet, and should have waited out the insurrection that the president was putting down. Of course, congress never declare the south to be independent, yet still passed new laws. It even made southern states meet conditions before re-joining the union that they had never been allowed to leave.
Ah, the legal joys of war!
All's fair in war, and I guess nobody cares if it is or isn't legal — or they change what “legal” is…
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One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to ongoing persecution of hippies, communists, and non-whites under prosecution of the war on drugs. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.
The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and an evil prohibition. Canadian Marc Emery is being extradited to prison for selling seeds that American farmers use to reduce U. S. demand for Mexican pot.
The CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) reincarnates Al Capone, endangers homeland security, and throws good money after bad. Fiscal policy burns tax dollars to root out the number-one cash crop in the land, instead of taxing sales. Society rejected the plague of prohibition, but it mutated. Apparently, SWAT teams don’t need no stinking amendment.
Nixon passed the CSA on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies, but he underestimated Schafer’s integrity. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use. Former U.K. chief drugs advisor Prof. Nutt was sacked for revealing that non-smoked cannabis intake is scientifically healthy.
The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote, which functions like LSD. Americans shouldn’t need a specific church membership or an act of Congress to obtain their birthright freedom of religion. God’s children’s free exercise of religious liberty may include entheogen sacraments to mediate communion with their maker.
Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction.
Common-law holds that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the right to the pursuit of happiness is inalienable. Socrates said to know your self. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration. Liberty is prerequisite for tracking drug-use intentions and outcomes.