Op-Ed By Dave Ridley

Indie journalist and member of the Free State Project Dave Ridley of the Ridley Report recently spent days in jail for trying to film in a court lobby. And you thought the press was free!

While he was in the can, Ridley wrote an op-ed that was published in the local paper today. Here's a reproduction:

Camcording: a check on government abuse
By Dave Ridley
Published: Thursday, July 16, 2009

Outlaw journalist defies order to stop recording (July 9, 2009). Letter from a New Hampshire Jail.

WESTMORELAND — It is said that silence is often louder than speech, that a voice quashed is more powerful than one left free. So, as I undertake the third night of a six-day civil disobedience imprisonment, there is no urgent crush to communicate. But it is fitting to outline the events that led here and the cause that fires so many others to suffer a similar path.

In this formerly free land, a grand parade of exploding government is under way. No truce or parley checks its dark course. Beside the New England forts, which stood or fell in the first revolution, all ’round the siege lines that still mark the British surrender, lights are going out — the lights of homes stolen by state forfeiture or eminent domain, of businesses ruined by growing tax and mandate.

There are, however, several lines of defense that sometimes hold against the encroaching cancer. Perhaps the most valuable of these is the newly decentralized expression of press freedom. The practice of camcording official activity and placing it upon the waves of the electronic Web for all to support or decry, that practice has fallen into the desperate hands of the “little people.” As a check against government abuse, it is indispensable. It is, in this land of so many hills, a good one upon which to die.

Across New Hampshire, the freedom to record exists, but only in a tenuous, ambiguous form. An elderly “wiretapping” law is often cited by officials wishing to frighten from their presence the troubling light of independent recording. In courtrooms, judges are encouraged by law to permit independent taping but granted a hazardous leeway to limit the same. Some choose to expand their mandate and exert censorship over the lobbies outside their force-funded chambers. Others permit relatively unfettered access, ban cameras altogether or moodily swing from one extreme to the next.

In the twilight of 2008, videographer Tom Caruso gently presses Keene District Court for leave to film the controversial trial of a victimless defendant. The defendant approves, but Caruso’s lens captures the judge in a fit of anger. The New York documentarian has driven four hours to record this proceeding, but four minutes into it, the flustered jurist’s enforcers compel him to stop. Meanwhile the defendant is hustled away and tried in relative secrecy. In protest, I report to the court with a promised course of action. I pledge that come the next such proceeding, weeks hence, I will follow Caruso’s path and endeavor to film. I will peaceably disobey any unjust order to turn my camera off.

In the event, upon arrival, press recording is forbidden completely — both in the court itself and in the lobby outside. Lawful or not, the unsigned order has the weight of a small-town army behind it. I am seized in the lobby, camera in hand, perhaps the first journalist to video-broadcast his own arrest live. Much of what ensues is well-known to our liberty community: the five arrests surrounding my arraignment, the more heroic and robust stand of videographer Sam Dodson, the eventual readmission of our cameras to Keene District Court.

But it is our purpose that gives meaning to these deeds:

The purpose of accountability, holding “our” officials before the cleansing glare of a camcorder’s sunlight and saying to all who would interfere: “On the job means on the record.”

The purpose of liberty — the right of each soul to do all she pleases that harms or threatens none against their will. And, as unprecedented government growth brushes a nation toward the cliff of collapse, the purpose of ensuring it may never be said we did nothing.

Decades after the largely peaceable struggles that brought partial liberation to the bonded peoples of India and the American South, children still asked, “What did you do in the struggle, grandpa?”

From this concrete box, it is appropriate only to ask: Please do what you are able, while there is still time, to ensure that when you stand before this question, you may proudly provide a convincing answer.

Libertarians Who Are Ignorant Of Their Own History

Recently, I took part in an interesting discussion about the perpetual ownership of property vs. The occupancy-and-use standard in the comment section of a Free Keene blog entry. The discussion was stirred up the following comment by one Tristan:

Moving into abandoned private property - well, if its abandoned then it is no longer owned so what’s the problem?
There are strains of libertarianism which hold that absentee landlordism is not just.
I personally prefer to see vacant land being used rather than going to waste until the owner under the state’s law can be bothered to extract rent from it.

Although I would like to talk about the occupancy-and-use standard in a bit more detail, I'd like to dedicate this particular entry to discuss a pet-peeve of mine that this discussion perfectly demonstrates. Comments by Erik Vorhees and Zeus reveal a profound ignorance of the history of libertarian though that I see in many modern day libertarians.

Commenter Erik Vorhees wrote the following:

I was unaware that some people calling themselves libertarians consider property to be only legitimate when it’s being used? Is there a name for this abhorrent mutation?

I find this statement absolutely baffling. As I pointed out to Vorhees, the occupancy-and-use standard for land ownership was the position of some of the most famous libertarian intellectuals: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Josiah Warren, and more. The name of the "abhorrent mutation" (which pre-dates anarcho-capitalism by quite some time) is simply "libertarianism."

At one point in the discussion, commenter Zeus wrote:

Now, based on the arguments you’ve cited and posed I have to sincerely ask for clarification: Are you an anarcho-communist? I ask this because, based on the discussion thus far and how far and away the concepts you advocate are from my anarcho-capitalist views, it seems only logical to me that this is the general direction of your political or philosophical leanings.

I tried to explain to him that the occupancy-and-use standard predates that version of libertarianism he believes in and that, in fact, people who advocates occupancy-and-use were highly influential on important anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard, although mistakenly took this as an argument from authority in favor of occupancy-and-use.

The point of this entry is really just that libertarians (just like all people) should try to be a bit more open-minded. There's a lot more to libertarianism than simple concepts like "self-ownership" and the "non-aggression principle"; libertarianism is a pluralistic movement with internal disagreements on virtually every issue and it's important that we libertarians acknowledge this and try to learn a little bit more about our heritage.

Sidebar Update

Just in case you didn't notice, I've finally gotten around to updating my blog's sidebar. I've added a blogroll and a whole bunch of new links. Check them all out when you find the time.

Entitlement

I hear vulgar right-wing libertarians complaining about how entitled laborers are, but I've always found that the most entitled people are capitalists and managers.

Example: my girlfriend and I have been working in an office for a telephone book delivery company for a little over a month now. After the first delivery we worked at finished, we relocated for a second delivery. Our manager told us that our last checks from the first delivery would be overnighted to the office of the second delivery. Yesterday at work, our manager mentioned something about FedEx leaving a package outside the office. My girlfriend, annoyed that FedEx might have left our paychecks outside, asked our manager if the package contained our checks.

He responded with a laugh and some sarcastic comment as if she was violating a social norm by showing concern over her compensation.

I have news: I don't spend the majority of my waking hours doing mind-numbing paperwork in an office for some asshole because I'm a generous person. My job pays poorly enough as is. I don't need a manager with a tree up his ass who constantly yells at me for problems he creates and tries to keep me for overtime every day adding insult to injury by treating me like the entitled one.

/rant

Karl Hess On Direct Action

I moved back into my apartment a few days ago to find the living room area littered with all kinds of libertarian pamphlets that my roommate accumulated at PorcFest. I've been reading them on an off since I arrived. Today, during some downtime at work I managed to read Karl Hess's article "The Death of Politics." Overall I thought it was a pretty solid (though somewhat outdated) introduction to libertarian ideas.

One thing that struck me was the similarity of Hess's concept of the revolutionary to Sam Konkin's. This passage demonstrates that Hess was more interested in direct action than party politics (emphasis added):

Student dissenters today seem to feel that somehow they have crashed through to new truths and new politics in their demands that universities and communities be made responsive to their students or inhabitants. But most of them are only playing with old politics. When the dissenters recognize this, and when their assault becomes one against political power and authority rather than a fight to gain such power, then this movement may release the bright potential latent in the intelligence of so many of its participants. Incidentally, to the extent that student activists the world over are actually fighting the existence of political power, rather than trying to grab some of it for themselves, they should not be criticized for failing to offer alternative programs; i.e., for not spelling out just what sort of political system will follow their revolution. What ought to follow their revolution is just what they've implicitly proposed: no political system at all.

The style of [Students for a Democratic Society] so far seems most promising in this respect. It is itself loosely knit and internally anti-authoritarian as well as externally revolutionary. Liberty also looks for students who rather than caterwauling the establishment will abandon it, establish their own schools, make them effective and wage a concerned and concerted revolt against the political regulations and power that, today, give a franchise to schools — public and private — that badly need competition from new schools with new ideas.

Looking back, this same sort of thinking was true during the period of the sit-ins in the South. Since the enemy also was state laws requiring separate facilities, why wasn't it also a proper tactic to defy such laws by building a desegregated eating place and holding it against hell and high water? This is a cause to which any libertarian could respond.

Similarly with the school situation. Find someone who will rebel against public-education laws and you will have a worthy rebel indeed. Find someone who just rants in favor of getting more liberals, or more conservatives, onto the school board, and you will have found a politically oriented, passé man — a plastic rebel. Or, in the blackest neighborhood, find the plumber who will thumb his nose at city hall's restrictive licenses and certificates and you will have found a freedom fighter of far greater consequence than the window breaker.

Unfortunately, Hess doesn't really offer a full-fledged solution to the problem of the state in the article, but he anticipated his book Community Technology written 10 years later. In Community Technology, Hess lays out his decentralist philosophy and argues that people can get together with neighbors and cooperatively develop human scale technology in order to become less reliant on Big Government and Big Business. He gives a few examples taken from his experiences with a group in his Washington, D.C. neighborhood including growing vegetables on rooftops, raising fish in basements, and building solar planels.

Libertarians should be learning from this stuff.

"Some People Just Can't Handle X"

Today at work, the subject of marijuana legalization somehow came up as part of the office chatter amongst my coworkers. My manager, although he did not seem to have any problems with marijuana per se, gave a resounding "no" to legalization, claiming that "some people just can't handle marijuana." According to him, if marijuana was legalized, too many people would become do-nothing potheads and would create a burden that society just couldn't handle.

I hope it's obvious that his argument is completely idiotic. Let's ignore all the studies which show that countries with more liberal drug policies have fewer drug users and the fact that potheads are much more of a drain on society when they're in jail than on welfare and approach his claim from a different perspective.

Consider unhealthy foods. Some people "just can't handle" them. There are plenty of people who do poor jobs of eating balanced diets. They become obese, develop all kinds of health problems, and die young. They even create a burden on society when their healthcare cost are socialized via the welfare state.

Does this justify making unhealthy food illegal?

Next, consider matches and lighters. Someone people "just can't handle" matches or lighters. They carelessly burn down their homes. When they do so, they also create a burden for the taxpayers because most fire departments are government-run.

Does this justify making matches and lighters illegal?

If we took the "some people just can't handle X" argument to its logical conclusion, the government would end up running every aspect of our lives (although, I suppose this is what technocratic liberals want). As for the "creating a burden on society" part of the argument, this is really more of an argument against the welfare state (although my manager never specifically mentioned anything about the welfare state, so I'm not really even sure what he was talking about) than anything else.

Sam Dodson Mentioned In The Local Paper Again

The political activist and journalist Sam Dodson was mentioned in the local paper again. Considering how old the news covered in this story is, I'm very surprised it took them so long to get it out.

Here's a reproduction of the article:

Jailed Free Stater a free man
Judge orders his release pending trial on misdemeanors
By Anika Clark
Sentinel Staff
Published: Friday, June 26, 2009

Each year, thousands of people are forced into jail and prison cells throughout the country.

Few of them must be pushed out.

But after a nearly two-month standoff, local authorities recently kicked Keene resident Sam A. Miller out of the Cheshire County jail in Westmoreland.

“He was just refusing to leave jail,” said jail Superintendent Richard N. Van Wickler. “We eventually talked him into walking with us to the lobby where he was greeted by some of his friends.”

On June 9 — still wearing his tangerine-orange jumpsuit — Miller left the building a free man.

That is, depending on whom you ask.

A participant in the Free State Project — an attempt to draw 20,000 “liberty-loving people” to New Hampshire — Miller, 33, goes by the name “Sam Dodson” because he says his birth name has been usurped by a tyrannical government.

On April 13, he opposed that system by using a video camera in the Keene District Court lobby — defying an unsigned order, which he disputes, against photography in the area.

After allegedly refusing to turn off the camera, Miller fell limp in a sign of noncompliance. People in the lobby could hear him screaming behind a closed conference room door before police carried him out of the building.

Authorities also arrested or issued summonses to several fellow activists for allegedly failing to follow orders to leave the room.

Miller’s arrest touched off a fierce battle of wills, which led to his nearly two-month detention.

Despite the fact that court and jail officials had Miller’s Texas driver’s license and knew his real name, Judge Edward J. Burke ordered that Miller’s trial not be scheduled until he gave identifying information about himself.

That changed on June 9 when Burke ordered his release.

On June 4, Miller’s legal counsel, Ivy Walker — also known as Sharon Ankrom — was arrested, accused of having a suspended registration and two false inspection stickers and being a fugitive from justice for embezzlement charges in Rhode Island, according to a Laconia District Court employee.

A “significant consequence of those actions is that the Defendant is now deprived of counsel,” Burke wrote.

Burke then called Miller’s detainment up to that point the result of his refusal to provide a physical address, and said the “Court stands by this requirement.”

But, he wrote, “Under the unique circumstances now before the Court, the appropriate course of action is to allow the Defendant to be released (from) custody to allow him the opportunity to prepare his defense outside of his jail setting.”

Burke said he couldn’t comment about open cases.

Miller’s pending release sparked yet another showdown, when he refused to sign the bail bond because he said he couldn’t agree to the bail terms — among them that he provide his physical and mailing addresses — and wanted to wait for the arrival of his attorney.

Still, Van Wickler said, “As soon as the judge gave that order I no longer had any authority to hold Sam.”

Miller said he told authorities he wouldn’t change his clothes until he saw the terms and later wasn’t given the opportunity to change.

He now awaits a July trial on reduced, Class B misdemeanor charges of resisting arrest and common law criminal contempt.

In addition, Miller is also set to be tried for violating a city ordinance for allegedly refusing to be processed by police, according to Keene police Prosecutor D. Chris McLaughlin.

In the meantime, Miller’s new attorney, William L. O’Brien of Mont Vernon, has filed a motion to suppress on the grounds that authorities allegedly failed to read Miller his Miranda rights.

And because Miller’s arrest occurred at Keene District Court, O’Brien also filed a motion for a change of venue and a motion for Burke to recuse to himself from the trials.

Instead of the possibility for incarceration, each misdemeanor charge carries a maximum $1,200 fine, according to McLaughlin. The ordinance violation carries a maximum fine of $1,000.

But even if Miller is slapped with the highest penalties possible, this will still be less than what taxpayers probably paid to keep him in jail.

At what Van Wickler called a conservative cost estimate of $64 per day, Miller’s confinement would have cost more than $3,600.

This is a price tag that’s rankled some people who have commented on The Sentinel’s Web site.

In response to an earlier article about Miller, one reader wrote, “Perhaps showing you dont (sic) like our tax dollars being spent foolishly and giving your name just to SAVE the taxpayers which you seem to always be so concerned with would make more sense.”

So why did he do it?

“My decision to stay in (jail) was based on a number of things,” Miller said. “I was asserting my rights ... and I was being held indefinitely without trial for that.”

The showdown also brought attention to the ideas of Libertarians and people affiliated with the Free State Project, according to Miller.

As for the allegation that he was sticking it to the taxpayer, he said, “I agree that it’s a total waste of money – of tax dollars and government resources — to jail peaceful, nonviolent people who haven’t hurt anybody. ...

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s the system these people have asked for. And I agree. I think it’s terribly wasteful and inefficient, and that’s why I’m doing things to change it.”

War And Collectivism

Several days ago, Cork posted an old video on Skeptical Eye of the biggest Randroid of all, Leonard Peikoff, being interviewed on Bill O'Reilly's show. The two discuss a few issues related to war and Peikoff comes off as the wide-eyed, raving lunatic that he is so much that O'Reilly is the voice of reason by comparison. You can watch the video here:


The video is old news, but it's a good aid in discussing a particular philosophical error often used by hawks when they try to justify criminal actions committed during war. The philosophical error is collectivism—attributing the characteristics of individuals to groups of people. There's nothing new about my arguments, but I see people resorting to collectivism all the time, so they're worth repeating.

Here's Peikoff's first statement in the interview:

I’m absolutely not concerned with innocents—people in the enemy territory. If they get killed, that is the responsibility of their government for initiating aggression against us. In any war, when you fight the enemy, you have to take anyone in that territory and regard him as part of the enemy. Otherwise, you can’t defend yourself. If you’re concerned with the innocents in those countries, you are pulling your punches and thereby jeopardizing the innocents in our countries.

What you should notice about this statement is that Peikoff resorts to collectivism multiple times in order to justify himself.

In his claim that if innocent residents of Afghanistan are killed, it “is the responsibility of their government for initiating aggression against us,” Peikoff relies on collectivism twice. First, he claims that because the government of Afghanistan committed a crime, (it's worth pointing out that the government of the Afghanistan never actually attacked anyone is the US, but let's ignore this for now) the government of the United States has the right murder citizens of Afghanistan who Peikoff admits are innocent of wrongdoing. What he is doing is holding people responsible for the actions of others which doesn’t make sense. Even in supposedly democratic countries like the United States where some politicians are put in office by elections, we acknowledge that are responsible for their own actions. We understand that if a Senator is found guilty of bribery, it makes no sense to charge all the people who voted for him or her with bribery as well. It makes even less sense to hold citizens responsible for the actions of the autocratic governments that typically rule countries that the United States goes to war with. If we were to take Peikoff’s belief to its logical conclusion, we would end up charging every American citizen with murder every time one American citizen committed murder!

Secondly, Peikoff claims that aggression has been initiated against an “us,” but who is “us?” By saying that it's possible to commit a crime against an abstract group, Peikoff is basically claiming that it is possible to commit a crime against someone without actually committing a crime against them. While the terrorist attacks of September 11th were certainly horrible atrocities, I don't think Peikoff was directly harmed by them, so why should they entitle him to any kind of justice?

Now, let's examine the claim that "[i]f you’re concerned with the innocents in those countries, you are pulling your punches and thereby jeopardizing the innocents in our countries." What Peikoff says here is that you can justify committing crimes against certain people because committing them will result in crimes not being committed against others. He justifies this claim by arguing that we are dealing with two different groups of people that group has some sort of moral claim that allows to it commit violence against the other, but this argument also makes the mistake of trying to hold people accountable for crimes committed by others.

It's pretty sad to see one of the leading figures of a supposedly individualistic movement making these sorts of statements, but Objectivists still cling to the collectivist fantasy of the “social contract” in order to justify the state, so I guess Peikoff's ludicrous claims shouldn't be that surprising. Shame on you, Peikoff, shame on you.

Government Without The State

A little while back, a friend of mine mentioned to me that he did not believe our local government would disappear if the state was abolished. He believes that it will simply be run voluntarily. This probably sounds counter-intuitive, so let me explain further.

The hypothetical government I’m discussing would not really be a government per se. It would basically be a non-profit organization that would help organize community services. It would not have the power to coerce people and, as such, it would have to be funded voluntarily (probably by donations) instead of by taxation. It would also lack a territorial monopoly which means that if enough people become fed up with it, a competitor could arise.

My guess is that most of these types of organizations would be run in a similar manner to existing local governments. In other words, they would employ a mix of elected and appointed workers and solve some issues with a referendum. I would also expect them to use a large amount of volunteers. Of course, I can see virtually any system potentially working (even a hereditary monarchy). I’m sure all kinds of different types of governments would be experimented with in the absence of the state.

These hypothetical organizations could host town meetings in much the same way that local governments already do, except instead of discussing new laws to pass, they could simply provide an open forum for a community dialogue. People could get together and try to work out any problems the community might be facing through discussion and consensus.

One idea suggested by my friend is that these local governments might create lists of organizations that they believe are beneficial to the communities they oversee and include suggested dollar amounts for donations and distribute the lists to members of their respective communities on some regular basis (e.g. annually). For instance, one might suggest that members of the community donate about $100 to a public access TV station, $150 to a library, $200 to a community kitchen, $200 to a private welfare service, etc. These numbers are all made up, of course, but they should give you a general idea.

I can even see governments enacting something similar to regulation without using coercion. For instance, a government might listen to advice from safety experts and create a building safety code then suggest that members of the community abide by it. In order to get builders to comply, the government could give a seal of approval to those who follow the code and organize boycotts against those who don’t.

I think the creation of "stateless governments" actually has the potential to be a driving force in moving society toward a stateless model. They could start out as simple neighborhood organizations based on participatory democracy like the one described in Karl Hess's book Community Technology and gradually grow into something larger as they network with more and more alternative community services and counter-economic organizations. They could also serve as wonderful tools for education; nothing proves that it is possible to organize society without institutionalized violence than real-life examples.