Liberty, which is freedom tempered with responsibility, could solve all these problems to the extent they can be solved. Exercise your freedom to do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t violate the equal and identical rights of any other person. There’s no better way to live among others.
Tag: protest
Immigration vs. Social Desirability Bias
No matter how awful their country is, people love to proclaim their undying devotion to folk and land. Why then have hundreds of millions of people left their countries of birth? Because the migrants don’t literally believe this flowery talk. Though almost everyone voices these sentiments, actions speak louder than words.
COVID-19: Freedom Means That We Can Do Stupid Things, Not That We Have To
Yes, as freedom returns, some people will throw caution entirely to the winds. They should be free to act like idiots, right up to the point they actually — not prospectively, not hypothetically, ACTUALLY — cause harm to non-consenting others. They should also be free to refrain from acting like idiots.
Rioting is Wrong Way to Protest
There’s a correct way to protest injustice and there’s a wrong way. You may have recently noticed people in several big cities doing it the wrong way. Although, perhaps people pretending to side with the protesters were intentionally making the protesters look bad — it’s hard to know which.
On Qualified Immunity
Of all the things I’m pessimistic on, the abolition of the doctrine of qualified immunity is probably at the top. I do not expect to see any significant progress made on abolishing this horrible statist practice in my lifetime, or the lifetimes of my children.
Got Your Divide, Got Your Conquer
There’s a popular behavior that consists of dividing everything in two parts. All people are of two kinds — those who like this behavior, and those who don’t. First those of ill-will tell us we must choose (why must we, btw?). There are two occasion: being judicious, sometimes it is wise to make a binary choice, and sometimes not.
Police Violence: “Reform” Is Not Enough
Every few years, some particular instance of a pervasive phenomenon — police violence in the form of unjustified or at least highly questionable killings — “goes viral” with the result that America’s cities explode in protest. Every time that happens, some American politicians complain about a non-existent “war on police,” while others promise “reforms” such as closer supervision (like the increase in body camera use following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri), civilian review boards to investigate complaints, better training, and of course more money. After each round of “reforms,” the problem continues.
On Police Brutality III
It’s difficult to emphathize with a protest against racism if empathy, at it’s core, is projection. To my knowledge, I have never been the victim of racism, nor have I ever victimized another on the basis racism.
It’s Not about Race, It’s about Police
A cop casually murdered a guy while his associates looked on and enabled the murder. Protests erupted, then turned into riots and looting, losing any moral high ground they may have started with. And people are claiming this is about “racial injustice”. As if cops of all “races” don’t murder people of all “races”. It’s about cops, not “race“.
Time to Stop Messing Around and Strike at the Root of Police Violence
It’s tempting to believe that protest marches, violent confrontations, looting, burning, and riots can change police behavior, or perhaps that they COULD change that behavior if applied frequently and vigorously enough. That kind of widespread delusion is, as Thoreau put it, “a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root,” with predictable results.