Well, Zemir Begic is already down the memory hole, it seems (who?), along with executive action on amnesty, etc. Now it’s Eric Garner, all the time, and race-hatred is ablaze in the streets again — the flames whipped up, as always, by those who delight and luxuriate in cultural arson.
Mr. Garner’s story is a sad one. It’s terrible that he died the way he did: crushed by a smothering State for violating a confiscatory cigarette-tax, while the regnant panjandrums of that same vast State openly flout the rule of law, and defiantly reward foreign invaders by the millions for doing the same.
The catalyst here is a grand-jury’s failure to indict the police officer who threw his arm around the mountainous Mr. Garner’s neck and wrestled him to the ground. The assumption appears to be that the constable should have been charged with something; after all, nobody can deny that the ‘efficient cause’ of Mr. Garner’s death was his manhandling by the cops.
A grand jury, however, is charged with determining if a crime has been committed.
Some have focused on the type of headlock used by the policeman in question, on whether it was a ‘chokehold’ of the sort that the police have officially declared impermissible. But this ban is only police policy; it is not a matter of law. If the officer did use such a chokehold, he may well deserve, and get, severe discipline at the hands of the department — but it is not by itself grounds for a criminal indictment. Moreover, I know a thing or two about chokeholds, and it is not likely that Mr. Garner would have been complaining vocally about his difficulty breathing if he was in the grip of any of the sort of chokeholds I’m familiar with.
Mr. Garner was grossly obese, and I understand that he suffered from a bouquet of morbid afflictions: cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and severe asthma, to name a few. I’ve heard he could walk no more than a block without resting. He was in no condition for a wrestling match with a half-dozen determined opponents.
As disgusting as it is that Mr. Garner had to be arrested at all — he certainly doesn’t seem to have been bothering anybody, as far as I can tell, other than the merchant outside of whose premises he was selling ‘loosies’ — he was going to be arrested. He refused, and he resisted.
At this point, what are the police to do? Tase him to the ground? If so, the outcome would likely have been the same. Use their batons instead? Ditto. Do you think it is easy to subdue an unwilling man who weighs, at a conservative estimate, over three hundred and fifty pounds? It is not.
Have we reached the point where we want to forbid the police to use force, when necessary, to make arrests? Approach this idea with caution, for to grant a monopoly of physical force to the State, except in cases of immediate self-defense, is the very bedrock of the social contract that makes civilization possible. All of our laws, no matter how trivial, ultimately rest upon this foundation. Did you get a parking ticket? You will pay it, or be expected to appear in court to explain why. You don’t show up? A warrant will be issued for your arrest. Men with guns will come to your home to take you into custody. You won’t go? Then you will be physically compelled to go, with escalating force. At the end of that stepwise continuum of force is lethal force, and it will be used if necessary.
Would you like to repeal this arrangement? To declare it null and void? Then you will have plucked out the keystone that holds up the enormous, loadbearing arch of civilization, and you have chosen chaos and revolution. Perhaps something better will come of it in time, if you can make it so; the historical odds are not strongly in your favor. But there will certainly be an interval of sanguinary barbarism, and much that you hold dear will be destroyed.
Might the grand jury have found reason to indict the officer involved? Perhaps. But they considered the evidence, and the law, and they did not. I can say with perfect certainty that they spent a great deal more time and effort considering the evidence in this case, and the relevant aspects of the law, than any of you reading this have, and more than any of that mob now clogging the streets did, either.
Now Mr. Al Sharpton denounces the grand-jury system itself — which has a certain depressing irony, because the grand-jury system exists precisely to give a bulwark to the people against the excesses and abuses of arbitrary and despotic prosecutors. Predictably, and with the undeviating centripetal obsession of the Left, he calls for ‘centralization’: the subordination of all local justice to the Federal sovereign (in relation to which august presence Mr. Sharpton currently stands in the role of Grima Wormtongue).
It really is a shame about Mr. Garner. He shouldn’t have resisted arrest, though; it’s never a good idea, and you can’t win. If he hadn’t done so, he would still be alive today, for whatever fleeting season his moribund phsyiognomy would have granted.
It’s also a shame — a terrible, depressing shame — that we must send the police out to enforce, with the awesome power of the State, this malignant, suffocating neoplasm of stupid and unnecessary laws.
But none of what I’ve said here matters, really. Events will unfold as they will. And they will.
41 Comments
Perhaps you are right, Malcolm. To the extent that the willfully obtuse will not give a damn about any of your thoughtful considerations, you are undoubtedly correct.
But in a larger sense, we must not go gentle into that nightmare. We must continue to rage against that insane freight train, though it likely has already left the station.
F*ck those self-loathing cynics if they can’t take a joke.
Have we reached the point where we want to forbid the police to use force, when necessary, to make arrests? Approach this idea with caution, for to grant a monopoly of physical force to the State, except in cases of immediate self-defense, is the very bedrock of the social contract that makes civilization possible.
I’ve been pointing out to libertarians that in a society where force is democratized, Brown wouldn’t have survived his encounter with the Pakistani(?) shopkeeper long enough to get shot by Ofc. Wilson.
“in relation to which august presence Mr. Sharpton currently stands in the role of Grima Wormtongue”
… an insult that I doubt Mr. Sharpton would understand. For what it’s worth, I chuckled. Would that we might find us a Gandalf to cure the King of poisonous counsel…
And of course, it’s liberals that favor these stupid high tobacco taxes that created this mess in the first place. Gotta get those evil tobacco users…
Note the link added toward the end: it was a black Chief of Department who ordered the crackdown.
Also, supervising the Garner arrest was a black female sergeant. Somehow, that doesn’t seem to have received much emphasis in the news reports.
Here’s a thoughtful piece from Andrew McCarthy, who thinks the grand jury may have made the wrong call.
It seems to me that the NYC police procedures should be modified to include a so-called “time-out” in the event that some person appears to be breaking some law the police are obliged to uphold. Such a time-out would allow the officers to review the guidelines for arresting and/or subduing the alleged lawbreaker in the event that he/she decides to resist, but, of course, not in too threatening a manner. Such a time-out could be made optional, so long as it appears, in the reasonable judgement of the officers involved, not to be overly risky to their own health. Nevertheless, if the officers are white, and the alleged perpetrator is not, the optionality of the time-out would, most likely, be judged to be null and void in any subsequent indictment procedure.
Capisce?
Moreover, in the event that an altercation between police officers and alleged lawbreakers resulted in an injury to the lawbreakers (whether or not any subsequent trial exonerated them), the governor of the state would be forced to declare a statutory week of legal rape and pillage throughout the state, including the outlying, scarcely populated counties of upstate NY. Furthermore, visitors from neighboring states would be eligible to participate in the raping, looting, and pillaging, so long as they didn’t violate any statutes unrelated to those that precipitated the current free-for-all.
Alexander Hamilton instituted the first tax on tobacco in 1794. It has been taxed ever since. It is hard to see how this exemplifies a “smothering State” or a “malignant, suffocating neoplasm of stupid and unnecessary laws.” Your suggestion is that tobacco should be sold free of taxes?
As for government leaders “openly flouting the rule of law:” it’s been many years since Reagan flouted the Boland Amendment to sell arms to Iran so he could fund the Contras, and a few years since Bush refused to enforce the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the FISA laws requiring warrants for wiretaps, while barely enforcing the Civil Rights Act and anti-trust law. I have no idea what you could possibly be referring to, except possibly that Iran Contra and warrantless wiretaps were conducted covertly, and not openly, as both Reagan and Bush thought they would never get caught for flouting the law.
The “something” which the grand jury should have approved is, at minimum, a manslaughter charge. Grand juries have a low threshold — probable cause — and it’s hard to see how choking an unarmed man to death, after he repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe, does not constitute probable cause for a manslaughter charge.
While it is true that “they considered the evidence, and the law,” I would remind you that the O. J. Simpson jury also considered the evidence and the law, and then acquitted him. Do you feel that the jury did its job, or that justice was served to the families of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman?
“What are the police to do?” Just a wild guess: six police officers can stop a man who “could walk no more than a block without resting” without choking him to death.
And even if they couldn’t stop him — let’s suppose he ran away — would they be justified in shooting him in the back? For the act of selling cigarettes?
The main flaw in your argument is that it takes no account of proportionality. Sure, police can and should use lethal force when it is reasonable to think that a suspect has a gun and will use it. It is not reasonable to use lethal force when the offense is trivial, the perp is unarmed, and he is outnumbered six to one. This one is a no-brainer. Either the prosecutor or the grand jury (or both) was negligent in absolving the police officer for choking an unarmed man to death.
Thank you so much OEM, for articulating my point of view, so much better than I ever could. Malcolm makes such a great case for the opposite view, with such eloquence that it is difficult to rebut his argument. You do it, very well indeed.
Sorry Malcolm. I think you’re a lovely man, but in this instance, maybe you’re wrong.
@ Musey
Hear, hear, my dear!
Don’t you just wonder sometimes if maybe the OEM, like Atticus Finch, isn’t the same good man at home as he is in the public square?
Let us hear it for the OEM, the Atticus Finch of Man Chat!
(Blushing)
Aside from an uncanny resemblance to Gregory Peck, I’m not sure that I have much in common with Atticus Finch.
My role models in life have ranged from Alexander Portnoy to Putney Swope to Homer Simpson. I’m not sure that Atticus Finch fits in that well with those I admire and seek to emulate.
“Books are useless! I only ever read one book, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the color of his skin… but what good does that do me?”
Homer Simpson
Eugenia, are you entirely serious? Maybe you’re gently mocking, it’s difficult to tell. I reckon that OEM is an intellect and a thinker, as is our pal Malcolm. Both have clearly missed their vocation in life, which is surely, to be courtroom lawyers where either one of them could argue that black is white and take ninety percent of the jury with them.
I’m sure that OEM is equally delightful at home as he is in the public square. If he’s good looking as well, then that’s just not fair.
I am entirely sincere, Musey, if not entirely serious. You just might say I am a gently mocking bird.
I’m sorry to rain on your love-parade, ladies, but I do feel the need to respond at some length to Peter’s comment — which tugs nicely at the heart-strings, but leaves the cerebrum wholly unmolested.
First, taxes. Yes, we’ve had taxes on tobacco for a long time, beginning with Hamilton’s short-lived attempt to introduce them in 1794, and then resuming during the Civil War.
James Madison raised the winning argument against Hamilton’s proposal, back when sounder minds briefly held sway in this Republic:
This was, of course, a federal tax, which had, at least, the advantage of uniformity. State and municipal taxes, on the other hand, by creating geographical tax gradients, bring about an even more pernicious consequence: a black market.
It is simple and universal principle that potential differences have kinetic effects. Atmospheric pressure gradients make the wind blow; voltage gradients power our appliances and make the lightning strike; differences in gravitational potential power our hydroelectric plants.
In New York City, the price of a pack of Marlboros hovers around $13. In Missouri, the same pack of Marlboros sells for about $5. The difference is the exorbitant excise taxes imposed by New York State, and by New York City. This creates an economic gradient of tremendous potential power.
Meanwhile, it is the poorest among us who smoke the most. So not only do these taxes fall, just as they did in Hamilton’s day, upon those who can least afford them, but such taxes also guarantee, with a certainty rarely found outside the realm of mathematical physics, the creation and vigorous maintenance of a robust black market. To suppress this black market, and to ensure that the poor will pay these grotesquely inflated taxes, requires in turn the enforcement of the law by the police.
So, you ask:
Well! I’m sure that to the liberal’s mind, this constitutes an obvious reductio ad absurdum — but my answer is: yes, of course, that would be just fine with me. Just as it seemed perfectly reasonable to James Madison.
Having said that, let me do you the favor of raising, as your proxy, a predictable objection: namely that the State has an interest in taxing cigarettes because smoking increases health-care costs. I have two responses to that: first that the argument is far from clear, because dying young from smoking likely decreases one’s lifetime healthcare expenses, which tend to increase enormously in extreme old age; and second, that the more we shunt the cost of all our needs onto the State, the more power we must give the State, now acting in loco parentis, to regulate every aspect of our lives. It is axiomatic to me that this is something to be avoided, whatever the ostensible benefits. As Franklin warned us:
Jefferson saw this too:
You, Peter, have never been troubled (to put it mildly) by these concerns. Many of us, however, are. I hope some day you will thank us — though of course if we are successful, you’ll never feel the need. Failing that, I hope at least that someday, standing in the rubble, you’ll realize how wrong you were.
Moving on to flouting the rule of law: you have, Peter, a regrettable penchant for the argumentative fallacy known as tu quoque; whenever anyone on the Right points out some malfeasance by a Democratic bigwig, you immediately go digging — perhaps it would be more apt to say “beating the Bushes” — for a corresponding peccadillo to ascribe to some prominent Republican of the past. But two wrongs don’t make a right, and the fact that you can exhume something Ronald Reagan did decades ago (and which, by the way, I have never endorsed), in no way excuses the egregious sins of the present administration. Moreover, ‘flouting’ carries, as you note in passing, a connotation of displaying, in public, the attitude that one is simply above the law. In the case of Mr. Obama’s immigration action, he was recorded on more than twenty occasions explaining why he couldn’t take such action because of its transparently obvious unconstitutionality. For him then to turn around and do it anyway — and to rub Congress’s nose in it the way he did — is entirely without precedent in its audacity, as even his most faithful supporters largely admit. That’s some serious flouting.
Regarding the grand-jury’s decision itself: having seen the video of Mr. Garner’s arrest, I agree that they might have found otherwise. Andy McCarthy, whose essay I linked to above, felt the same way. Meanwhile, civil-rights lawyer and blogger Norm Pattis thought they got it right. I, on the other hand, didn’t express an opinion one way or the other about the decision itself. I only said that the jury did indeed spend weeks examining the evidence and the law — more than any of us have been able to do, at least until all the evidence that was presented to the jury is made public, which I hope it will be — and they rendered their decision. This is the way these things work.
You brought up the O.J. case, which seemed to most of us to be the wrong decision. (It certainly seemed that way to me.) You didn’t, however, provide links to the weeks of civil disruption, and extensive property damage, caused by rioting white people after that decision was reached — because, of course, that never happened.
You suggest that the police should have been able to arrest Mr. Garner without using force. You don’t make clear exactly how, though; he was obviously unwilling, and he was large. By E-Vite, perhaps?
You go on to say:
Well, now we’re getting to the nub of the issue. I have already described the unbreakable logical chain by which every law is backed, as a last resort, by the State’s monopoly on the use of overwhelming force. (This must be so, if law and the social contract are to mean anything at all.) As I described in my post, we are not dealing with Bartleby the Scrivener here: if you do not comply with the law, however trivial, your non-compliance is in itself another violation of the law. In the end, your non-compliance will result in the use of force by the State. If not, then the law, ultimately, is shown to have no real power, and once that cat’s out of the bag the entire edifice of law, and of civilization, collapses.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said this (my emphasis):
What this means, then, is that if we really take seriously the rule of law, and are willing to approach the matter, and its logical consequences, with the honesty and rigor it deserves, then we should enact no law we are not willing to kill to enforce.
And this, then is why I refer to a ‘suffocating, malignant neoplasm of stupid and unnecessary laws’. If we were actually to take law-making as the grave and solemn responsibility it ought to be, this would be our criterion. We would have far fewer and far simpler laws, and Eric Garner would be alive today.
Malcolm, you are making this far too complicated for my simple mind. The issue here is a man, who is obviously not fit, and not scary, being wrestled to the ground and throttled to death. I’m not au fait with choke holds, neither am I interested in technicalities. This man died because the police overreacted. And when this video gets onto the news bulletin, people will make their own judgement, based on what they have seen with their own eyes.
When you say that “we should enact no law that we are not willing to kill to enforce” it makes me pause. Are you for real? So, we have parking laws, and nuisance laws, and debtors laws, and all sorts of laws which are not worth killing for, not ever. Many of our laws concern the minutiae of our lives and aim to make life easier for everybody, but if we get to the point where enforcing the law, any law, to the death as a matter of principle, then we have clearly become insane.
I am indeed for real, Musey, and if you have not understood that for the law to mean anything it must ultimately rest upon the full power of the State to enforce it, you have not examined what the law, the State, the social contract, and the structure of civilization really are.
I gave an illustrative series of events, beginning with a parking ticket and ending with the full puissance of the State, in my post. Is there a place in that chain where the links, in your mind, are not joined?
In 1886, Sir Henry Sumner Maine published a collection of essays under the title Popular Government. Beginning on page 63, he wrote something that speaks directly to your concern. I have bolded some particularly relevant passages:
In other words, it is easy enough for those of us for who are “naturally law-abiding” to assume that, as Maine says, and as you seem to think, “laws enforce themselves”. And so they do, for the most part, when the laws are simple and fair, and the people are raised from birth to respect and obey them.
These conditions, however, are not universal, and there is much that bad government can do to erode and dissolve them. Moreover, not all people are “naturally law-abiding.” When the law is not obeyed, the State has no choice but to use its power, or give way to chaos.
Once again: this is why we should take the making of laws as a far more serious responsibility than we do. A law, however “minute”, is not a small thing; it is unbreakably and integrally linked to the power and body of the State, and the State stands or falls on its resolve to make the law keep its promises.
Malcolm, I noticed your links in the first instance. Cleverly done. Not really acceptable though. The day that a rich, privileged, white man gets dragged out of his house and killed for ignoring a parking ticket, is a long time away. Because we do have proportionality, and common sense, and people like you have lawyers. All hell would be let loose if the sequence of events that you describe were to take place. It is not realistic, just legalese, stretched to the limit. Semantics, intellectual argument far removed from the life of a poor black man who is selling cigarettes on the street corner.
Think about what you are saying. The reason that a rich, privileged man would not be dragged out of his house and killed for not paying a parking ticket is that he would obey the law before that became necessary. He would pay the ticket. If he did not pay the ticket, he would show up in court. If he did not show up in court, when the police at last came to his house to haul him in, he would go.
Whether or not the police used excessive force in arresting him, had Eric Garner not resisted arrest, he would be alive today. And had the law he was breaking not been on the books in the first place, he wouldn’t have been arrested at all.
I will say this, also: the real inequity you should be pointing at here is that those who can afford to do so pay fines, while those who cannot go to jail.
A fine is nothing more or less than a bribe to the State paid in lieu of harsher punishment.
One more thing: to the extent that the powerful and privileged are actually exempt from the law, such corruption is a grave social ill. But the appropriate remedy there is for the law to be applied to these magnificoes with the same adamant exertion that it is applied to others less powerful.
None of that is relevant in any way to the particular question that was put before the Garner grand jury. Nor does it obviate in any way the fact that enforcement of the law, ultimately, must be able to draw upon the full power of the State.
Malcolm, the American diplomatic staff drove through London and’ totally ignored the tariffs while ‘in the zone’, to the extent, that they owed millions in fines. Never to be paid. Seriously, do we have enough police to go round and arrest people for minor infringements? No,I don’t think so.
I totally agree with you, when you say that some people can afford to pay fines while others end up in prison because they have no money. What is the point of putting non-violent people in prison for non payment of fines when the rich can part with a few dollars and not be inconvenienced?
And the same thing happens here, at an even larger scale. The swaggering U.N. diplomatic corps owes truly vast sums to the City of New York for parking and traffic violations.
If we are not prepared to enforce our laws, then why have them? Just to keep the sheep in line, while those who choose to ignore the law do so with impunity? The problem is that eventually even the sheep get wise: when good people burdened and restrained by pettifogging laws see others disregarding them without consequence, sooner or later all respect for the law, and for the State, must vanish. Worse, for the State to enforce laws, not fairly and impartially, but arbitrarily and capriciously, is the hallmark of despotism.
Your comment illustrates how far along the road to such ‘anarcho-tyranny‘ we already are.
Yes, we have these laws to keep the sheeple in line and to raise revenue. Your average Joe does not disregard the law with impunity. They get harassed and made to pay. The big end of town, the rich people, know that they can’t be touched.
The most important point is the revenue raising. Doesn’t it always come down to that? The little man gets hounded to death to pay up, the rich person makes a phone call, and gets let off.
So, what I’m saying is that disregarding the law is the preserve of the influential rich. The man in the street is pursued relentlessly. It’s, do you have enough money, where do you live, how much do you earn, and what did you say your name was?
Musey, you’re half right. If anything, it’s really the top and bottom against the middle.
Read Victor Hanson’s articles about the decay of central California. Here’s one.
I hope I have, at least, persuaded you that: the rule of law is of fundamental importance for any civilized society; that it must be backed by the full power of the State or it loses all its meaning (this is the essence of the modern social contract between the citizen and the State); that for the law not to be enforced fairly and consistently is fatally corrosive — and, therefore, that the making of enforceable laws is among the gravest responsibilities of government; and that in order to make the enforcement of law as light a burden as possible on both the State and the people, laws should be as fair, as few, and as simple as possible.
I do believe in the law, so I didn’t need to be persuaded. I take your last sentence to mean that we have too many petty laws, which are unenforceable really, and where they impact mostly on people who have no power.
You may think that I’m a crazy left winger, but you would be wrong. I’m just a moderate person who can see that the law isn’t always fair, in that some are held to account, and others are not.
No, Musey, I have never thought of you as a left-winger, and certainly have never thought you crazy.
I think of you as a good-hearted person, not especially political, who is naturally fair and decent and law-abiding and would like it if others were, too.
I’m glad to have you as a reader and commenter.
We spent a night in Fresno. Thirty years ago on our honeymoon, whilst making our way up country. I can’t remember exactly what happened, but we ended up sharing a room (with two beds) with an African American man, and a prostitute, and listening to some very noisy love making for a long while. I swear this is true, and it wasn’t a situation that we set up, at all. Fresno is a rough old place. When we sought the guy out the next day to pay our share of the bill he couldn’t believe that we had bothered. We went all over America, but never landed in another Fresno.
The commentary has gone out of sync, but thanks for your kind remarks. I will always continue to read.
Good Night, folks. Sleep well.
@ Musey: thank you for the kind words. While I am not a lawyer, I did win three court cases: I successfully defended myself for being caught by a red light traffic camera making a right turn without coming to a full stop, I successfully defended my daughter for using her cell phone while driving, and I won a case in small claims court which I brought against a landlord (where I went mano a mano with an actual lawyer representing his interests).
And yes, I am extraordinarily handsome. I can’t wait until tomorrow, as I get better looking every day. However, I was just joking about resembling Gregory Peck. The person I most closely resemblance is actually the young Brando. It must be the smoldering sensuality. Even so, it’s getting tiresome to have strangers on the street ask me to do something from A Streetcar Named Desire. Enough already.
@ Malcolm: you make a number of assertions, all of them sadly mistaken.
1) It is true, but irrelevant, that a “tobacco excise was a burden the most unequal” and falls disproportionately on the poor. However, tobacco is no different from toothpaste, toilet paper, and tampons: the sales taxes on these necessities hit the guy who lives on Flatbush Avenue much harder than the guy who lives on Fifth Avenue. Sales taxes are inherently regressive. Unless you want to rely exclusively on income and ad valorem taxes, sales taxes will always impose a greater burden on those who are least able to pay them.
2) It is true, but irrelevant, that a high local tax “creates an economic gradient of tremendous potential power.” People who choose not to pay $13 for a pack of coffin nails can go to New Jersey and buy a few cartons.
3) New York City has a variety of taxes to fund its operations, and reducing one tax will necessarily raise another. Given a choice between keeping the cigarette tax at $5.85, or raising the income tax rate to make up for lost revenue because of a lower tax rate on cigarettes, I am sure that most Gothamites — perhaps including you — would prefer to keep things as they are.
4) The fact that the cigarette tax invites a black market is not an argument to lower it. In order to keep the homicide rate at its current rock bottom levels, the NYC government wisely implements strict gun controls. This creates a black market in guns which are purchased in Virginia and travel up I-95. Your suggestion is that we should return to the halcyon days of Bernie Goetz and Son of Sam because it is impossible to create am impermeable barrier to weapons at the Hudson River?
5) Your contention that smoking lowers health care costs because smokers die earlier is speculative at best, and probably nonsense. One would think that many smokers who die early simply move their health care costs forward, while other smokers live to a ripe old age, yet with higher medical costs which are aggravated by tobacco. In any event, society has the right to tax tobacco commensurately with the costs it absorbs for health care. Unlike anything else (except guns), tobacco is a lethal product. It should be taxed accordingly.
The greater reason for a high cigarette tax, of course, is that it reduces the number of kids who start smoking in the first place. As a conservative, I’m guessing that you support Americans’ sacrosanct right to grow up obese, slovenly, and addicted to tobacco, while the government stands idly by. Cost of freedom, you know. As a progressive, I support the right of the state to use disincentives, such as a $5.85 tax on smokes, which promote health and well-being. (Within reason: I’m not saying that Milk Duds should be taxed at a higher rate than kale. The lethality of tobacco places it in a different category.)
6) Tu quoque? Not at all. My point is this: those who yawned over Bush’s insouciance towards enforcing clean air and clean water statutes, yet who are livid with outrage over Obama’s prioritizing of deportations, show the hollowness of their thinking. For all I know, Bush acted within his constitutional authority. It depends how the laws were written and what regulatory powers they ascribe to the executive. Ditto for civil rights and anti-trust laws. (There is no such exemption for Iran Contra or FISA, which are absolute in prohibiting funding the Contras and using wiretaps without warrants).
7) President Obama will go down in history as a great President for his many achievements: arresting an imminent economic meltdown and quickly turning it into nearly five years of steady economic growth; cutting the deficit by nearly two thirds; killing bin Laden; providing ten million people with access to health care; eliminating the ability of health insurers to refuse or cancel coverage to sick people; and presiding over the fastest growing economy in the developed world. However, he is not adept in using the levers of power, and he lacks the ruthlessness of FDR or LBJ. He was wrong to minimize his inherent authority of prosecutorial and regulatory discretion in his earlier public statements about immigration. I fault Obama for being far too reticent to use the powers of his office, and far too willing to offer concessions to an opposition party which is yet to offer a single concession of its own after six years of his Presidency. It is gratifying to see that he is belatedly using the full authority which is granted to him by precedent and the Constitution.
8) Far from “transparently obvious unconstitutionality,” prioritizing deportations to focus on those who pose actual risks over the parents of kids who are American citizens is wise, prudent, and necessary. We have twelve million illegal immigrants residing here, and the government is funded to deport about 400,000 a year. Since deportations must necessarily be prioritized, it makes sense to do so in the manner which is most humane and reflective of our security interests. While those who lecture us on family values eagerly try to tear families apart, limiting deportations to others is a simple matter of compassion (or, in your terms, tugging at heartstrings). Obama has deported more illegals than any other President in US history (or second to Bush, depending on how you weigh returns versus removals). It is long past time for the Deporter-in-Chief to change course.
9) It is comical to see those who extolled the virtue of an imperial presidency back when Dick Cheney was President now advocating an enfeebled Presidency with Obama in the White House. The legitimacy of Obama’s actions – which echo similar actions by Reagan and the elder Bush, neither of which irked conservatives – lie firmly within his inherent power of prosecutorial discretion and the laws themselves, which provide ample flexibility to the executive in enforcement. Don’t believe me? The conservative jurists at the Federalist Society would be happy to explain:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/federalist-society-obama-immigration_n_6182350.html
10) The fact that rioting has occurred after the grand jury verdicts, but did not occur after the OJ Simpson verdict, is irrelevant to the whether those verdicts delivered or denied justice.
11) How can six police officers subdue one troublesome suspect? I dunno, you tell me: two officers grab his left arm, two officers grab his right arm, one officer handcuffs him, and the other officer takes a selfie? Eric Garner was a fat guy who can’t walk a block without resting. You think that six cops can’t detain him? Seriously?
12) The notion that the police have the right to use lethal force every time a suspect resists arrest is preposterous. Your suggestion that summary capital punishment is the appropriate response for selling cigarettes, and then resisting arrest, is too bizarre to even consider. You don’t escalate your response far past what is appropriate to the situation. If by some magical circumstance, Garner hopped in the Bat-plane and escaped, then the cops could track him down and arrest him in even greater force for the heinous crime of selling untaxed cigarettes. But choking him to death? Shirley, you jest.
13) A sales tax is not a “stupid and unnecessary law.” Sales taxes have been around for centuries, and they exist pretty much everywhere. If you think they are unnecessary, then you are welcome to suggest other ways for governments to fund their operations. A bake sale, maybe? A car wash? As for your call for “simpler laws:” you can’t get much simpler than a sales tax. You buy a pack of cigarettes, and the tax is subsumed into the price of the pack. What could be simpler than that?
* * *
That is my last word on the subject. I’ve written much more than enough. The New York Times is here, so it’s time to go to the gym (it’s a great place to read the paper.) I just got an iMac – it’s so cool! why did I use Windows all these years? – and I want to play around with it. So you may have the last words. I agree with you that it is terrible that Eric Garner died. Life is fragile, precious, and fleeting. We are but a moment’s sunlight, fading in the grass. A grave injustice was done, which can never be undone.
I do believe that “Peter” is the most snidely disingenuous commenter not employed as a NYT economics hack. David Ruenzel will enjoy many equally flummoxed companions by the time western civilization’s fate is decided.
To rolling eye man: name calling is what you do when you are incapable of creating an effective argument. I have presented an argument based on unassailable facts and impregnable logic. If you could refute it, you would have. But you can’t, so you fling poo instead. (And regarding a certain “NYT economics hack:” when you get a Nobel Prize in economics, let me know).
I inadvertently left out a line from #9 above. The President has the absolute right of pardon, which can be issued either individually or for an entire class of people (as Jimmy Carter did when he issued a blanket amnesty to draft dodgers). His ability to pardon illegal immigrants, should he choose to do so, adds further weight to the constitutionality of his actions.
You have presented an argument based on unassailable Narrative, and quite nothing else. In process you continually dismiss (or equally likely don’t understand) Malcolm’s points with rank hand-waving or bald assertion.
Tu quoque? Not at all.
See, it’s that easy. Malcolm observes a tactic you deploy with unerring consistency, and your response: a blithe “nope.” To which you promptly contradict yourself, apparently unconscious to the fact, three points later in point #9. You’re comically un-selfaware.
Though to forge the point further, you leap to Krugman’s aid with the “Nobel Prize defense.” A gambit that even the Towson State debate team could anticipate. So how would a man with one eye respond to that appeal to authority?
Oh yes, here it is: I doubt you were much in defense of the sanctity of Nobel Prizes when they were being issued to Yasser Arafat and Rigoberta Menchu. And even one awarded to James Watson, who certainly couldn’t know a thing of DNA as a racist.
Yet doubtless you stand, or rather kneel, impressed by Obama’s accomplishments prior to his receipt of the award. And in comparison to Krugman, he is a Titan indeed. Though not so much as to use the medal as a defense of his peaceful inclinations, made obvious by various bombing campaigns.
Tu quoque you say? Not at all.
Hi Peter, lucky for you (me, too) I’m limited with “elf-keyboard” at present.
12) “Choking to death?”
Hardly, get a good friend to throttle you and you try a mere one single time to croak, “I can’t breathe.” Instruct your friend that oh, five or so minutes after it was apparent you were making an effort to croak, release his throttle.
Ever watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?
There was an episode an elephant got darted and, rather than fall on its side, the pachyderm’s knees buckled leaving poor Dumbo’s pulmonary capability squeezed between its above mass and the earth. Were it not for Jim (natch) for Marlin Perkins to order to effect rolling the animal onto its side, the elephant would have surely perished.
Throttled by its own bulk.
Had Jim been unsuccessful who would have been at fault? Marlin Perkins? The guy fired the dart? Mutual Of Omaha for sponsering the expedition?
Perhaps the audience?
Over the past several years I have had the mixed pleasure of reading the commentary between Malcolm and the OEM. There is no doubt that the latter, whose primary role here is the designated gadfly, has the ability to muster a litany of assertions, mostly unsupported. If he is to be believed, this ability enabled him to persuade a judge to rule in his favor. I submit that this favorable finding, however, might have been due to the judge’s understanding that it takes an order of magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than it takes to create it.
The one thing the OEM is unable to accomplish (or, which is more likely, unwilling to do) is to mask the cynicism, arrogance, and conceit (OK, it’s 3 things) that permeates his comments. If those things are what floats your boat, then, fine, OE is your man.
If, however, you prefer a sincerely thought out thesis, based on an obvious store of deep readings in a variety of disciplines, presented cogently and eruditely, then it is clear to me that Malcolm is your man.
Thank you, Henry.
Peter, we’ve reached, as so often happens, the point where debate becomes fruitless and frustrating. We have such fundamental, axiomatic differences about what government is for, about human dignity, about the importance of liberty, about the meaning of the Constitution, and so on, that we obviously will not persuade each other by argument. To me, your vision of the role of government — as a vast, parental power that gradually seeps into every aspect of life, makes whatever prior claim on wealth and property that it wishes, buffers its wards against all of life’s vicissitudes, and ultimately becomes the source of all blessings — was foreseen by de Tocqueville as far back as the 1830s. I’ve quoted this before, but I will do it again (I’ve bolded two particularly poignant passages):
This is the future you have chosen; this is what America is becoming, and in very many ways has already become. For me, it is a humiliating end to a great and virile Republic: it is enervating, stupefying, and above all infantilizing. That you, and so many others, are not struck to the marrow with horror at such a fate having befallen a formerly great nation of free men and women is to me utterly incomprehensible, and profoundly depressing.
As for your latest comment: most of it consisted simply of waving off what I’d said as ‘irrelevant’, but having invested so much time already in this thread I will make some reply here before it comes to an end.
1) Yes, sales taxes are inherently regressive. It always surprises me that this isn’t more of an issue for the Left, but of course in the case of the tobacco tax the goal of the ‘immense and tutelary power’ is to discipline its children, so I suppose there is some coherence to it. But in your enumeration of available prey for taxation you left out property taxes, which have a ‘progressiveness’ to them that sales taxes do not.
2) and 4) Here you simply wave off as ‘irrelevant’ the creation of black markets. I would ask you to consider Prohibition, which was also the product of a parental State’s desire to shield its children from their own unhealthy choices. This created a vast criminal industry, the evolved descendants of which are with us still, and cost the nation dearly in blood, treasure, and respect for the rule of law. At the same time it destroyed venerable, legitimate industries, and deprived multitudes of American families of their livelihood. It was such a colossal mistake, and was so detested by the populace for whose benefit it supposedly was enacted, that it was at long last repealed, to universal rejoicing. Would you bring it back? The motivation was no different than what you endorse regarding cigarettes.
Prohibition, moreover, need not be absolute; exorbitant taxation of cigarettes is simply a milder form. And so it has created a black market, and a criminal class — and members of that criminal class will often be arrested. Some arrests don’t go so well, as we have seen.
3) Tellingly, you present an equation in which all the variable terms are on one side of the equals sign. But of course a decline in revenue can also be made up by a reduction in spending, a startling fact that the Left is curiously blind to. The New York City budget has gone, in constant 2014 dollars, from $18 billion in 1960 to $75 billion today. Mightn’t it be possible to spare the life of some future Eric Garner by flensing a little blubber off that whale?
5) In this item our axiomatic differences are in plain view. You wrote:
Well, not exactly; the government need not “stand idly by”. What a waste of our tax dollars! There are lots of useful things the government could be doing — securing and patrolling our borders, building roads, arresting and deporting invaders, hanging traitors, restoring the military from its current incarnation as a self-actualization program for the transgendered to an entity whose purpose is national defense, and so on — while we free Americans are living our private lives as we see fit, without parental supervision.
(I must also point out that lots of things are very bad for you, and that things like Milk Duds, when consumed exclusively and immoderately, are hardly less so than tobacco.)
6) Pffft.
7) Nothing I could say here would have the least effect: on this topic you are, I think, just barking mad. (The entirety of the Democratic Party seems to think so too, given how, in the recent election campaign, they put as much distance between themselves and this catastrophic Presidency as they could.)
8) Besides being completely unprecedented in scale, this latest Executive blitzkrieg is far more than ‘selective enforcement’. The President isn’t merely not deporting the objects of his largesse — he is also, without any authority whatsoever, granting them Social Security cards, access to Medicare, and work permits. Far from being a mere negation of the application of clearly established law — which would be bad enough, at such an appalling scale — it is a positive action, granting on imaginary authority that which Congress has explicitly refused to do.
You spoke also of Presidential pardons. This is clearly much more than a pardon, for the reasons granted above. But leaving that aside, can it really be that you see no problem with a Presidential pardon at such a titanic scale? Were some future President (let’s assume he is a man of the Left, so as to secure the canine loyalty you exhibit so shamelessly in item 7 above) simply to pardon, at a stroke, all of the criminals in all of the prisons in all of the land, would you consider that to be a defensible use of his Constitutional power?
The problem here, you see (and of course you don’t see, so I might as well be hollering up a drainpipe, but I’ll carry on anyway), is the extent to which all the major operations of the government seem now to be conducted at the whim and caprice of the Executive. This is simply not how things are supposed to be done. (Much of the blame for this, of course, lies with a supine and docile Congress, which has delegated vast swathes of its authority to the Executive and to the colossal, unaccountable “Fourth Branch” that the Federal bureaucracy has become. I’ll say also that the incoming Republican Congress gives us little cause for hope.)
9) Pah. For everyone on the Right who goes soft on this, I can give you fine legal minds on the Left who think it’s a brazen assault on the Constitution. It’s a pissing contest I don’t feel like having.
10) Then why bring up the OJ trial at all? Obviously juries can make mistakes.
11) It surprises me to see someone who has never, to my knowledge, had any experience whatsoever with physical combat or police work presume to explain just how to go about subduing an angry, four-hundred-pound man who is resisting arrest and may or may not be armed with a gun or a knife. Anyway, it’s silly to ask why six men couldn’t detain the recalcitrant Mr. Garner: they did detain him. They planted him on the ground like a beached whale — whereupon, tragically, he succumbed to the same sort of asphyxia that littorally unsubmerged cetaceans do. All this occurred under the close supervision of at least one sergeant (a black female, by the way). Was a crime of excessive force committed? The grand jury didn’t think so — but as I said above, though, juries can make mistakes. One thing, however, is almost certain: if Mr. Garner had allowed himself to be arrested peacefully, and had saved his protestations for a court of law, he would be alive today.
12) Peter, you are living in a sheltered little dream world here. If the police come to arrest you, no matter what the reason, they will arrest you. Do you expect that if you say you won’t go, they will just slink away, crestfallen? The extent to which they must apply force to reel you in is up to you — if you resist with your hands, they will generally reply in kind, while if you shoot at them they will shoot back — but I can assure you that they will arrest you. They’re stubborn that way, and they’re supposed to be.
13) Obviously sales taxes are relatively simple laws; I did not say that they weren’t. I could think of several recently implemented and highly controversial laws that are anything but simple, but I’ve gone on so long already that I must leave this as an exercise for the reader.
I have nothing to add to this robust discussion except to say that I’ve learned quite a bit from it, and that the arguments presented by the blog-owner are very powerful and written in lucid English prose.