Gangsters in Blue

by Wendy McElroy and found on Mises.org

Last month, an international rights tribunal slapped America across the face through a showcase ruling that has no legal force. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that Jessica Lenahan could sue the Castle Rock, Colorado, police department for its refusal in 1999 to enforce a restraining order against her estranged husband. The American courts had dismissed her case.

The tribunal’s finding has reignited the discussion of a decades-old tragedy. But the issue is being cast as an expose of America’s domestic-violence policies. It is more accurately an example of the extreme disconnect between the public and the police when it comes to preventing violence. The public cries, “That’s your job!” The police reply, “Tell it to the judge.” And American judges have consistently ruled that the police have no obligation to protect you.

The tribunal’s ruling reveals a common confusion about the purpose of law enforcement in America. Lenahan claims that the police have a legal obligation to protect her from violence and so, they were delinquent in their duty. In reality, protecting people is not the mission of law enforcement. Their purpose is to enforce the law, to administer the will of the state.

Where did this near-schizophrenic view of law enforcement come from? The Lenahan case offers some insight.

Back Story on the Case

On June 22, 1999, estranged husband and father Simon Gonzales kidnapped his three young daughters despite an active restraining order against him. Frantic, his wife Jessica (then-Gonzales) phoned the police seven times and visited the police station, pleading with them for help. Even though a restraining order was in place and had been violated, the police refused to pay more than token attention to her, believing Simon to be nonviolent. Within 24 hours, the corpses of the three girls were found in the back of his pick-up truck and Simon was killed in a shootout with police.

Jessica filed a $30 million lawsuit against the city of Castle Rock, accusing the police of violating her 14th Amendment right to due process. The Due Process clause of the Amendment reads, in part,

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In essence, Jessica argued that the police department’s refusal to enforce a restraining order violated a Constitutional entitlement to protection.

The case wended its way up to the US Supreme Court. On June 27, 2005, the Supreme Court dismissed Castle Rock v. Gonzales on the grounds that there was no constitutional right to police protection.

By Colorado law, the police are required to “use every reasonable means to enforce a protection order.” Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled against state law. The majority held that

Colorado law has not created a personal entitlement to enforcement of restraining orders. It does not appear that state law truly made such enforcement mandatory. A well-established tradition of police discretion has long coexisted with apparently mandatory arrest statutes.

Thus, the heart of Castle Rock v. Gonzales is a police v. the people dispute. Do the police exist to protect you? The clear answer is no. From the 1856 US Supreme Court ruling on South v. Maryland through to Castle Rock, the courts have ruled that “there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen” (Bowers v. DeVito, 1982).

What, Then, Is the Purpose of the Police?

The American legal system is rooted in English common law, and the modern American policeman harkens back to English sheriffs, who were paid by and accountable to the government, not to the community. The main purpose of the sheriff was to enforcement what were called “government decisions.” Maintaining public order was also a concern, but “order” was defined by the government.

Late 18th-century England is the specific period of history in which the modern American police force is rooted. England was then developing into a modern nation-state and many of the institutions we recognize today were being launched. One of the first “police bills” was suggested in 1785 by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger. It would have established a tax-funded police force with jurisdiction over London; the bill was defeated. But in 1786, the English instituted a centralized municipally funded police force in Dublin, Ireland, with the explicit purpose of quashing “disorder.” In the wake of the 1799 rebellion in Ireland, the police force was further centralized and strengthened.

In this as in other social measures, Ireland acted as a testing ground for what would later become policy in England. For example, the English imposed state-supported hospitals in Ireland long before they existed in Britain. The establishment of the modern police force in Ireland was completed in 1814 under Robert Peel, chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who established the Peace Preservation Police. Peel explained that the police were a “paramilitary force” — that is, it was military in both organization and training. True to their name, the purpose of the police was to preserve the peace against disruptive elements — that is, against rebellious native Irishmen.

In his essay “‘Call the COPS’ — But Not the Police: Voluntaryism and Protective Agencies in Historical Perspective,” libertarian Carl Watner described England as becoming “more receptive” to the idea of modern police force

so that by 1829, Peel — now Home Secretary for England — was able to persuade Parliament to accept his proposal for a single government-controlled police for London; the new Metropolitan Police [was] … a tamer, anglicized version of the police he had established earlier in Ireland.

What had changed since 1785? At least two factors weighed heavily. In his book Police and Protest in England and Ireland 1780–1850 (1988), Stanley H. Palmer described one of them:

[T]he experience of organizing and recruiting the Irish police undoubtedly informed a central English political elite of the feasibility of police, their usefulness in times of disorder, the advantages of disciplined professionalism. (p. 376)

In their book Criminal justice: an introduction to philosophies, theories and practice (2004), Ian Marsh, John Cochrane, and Gaynor Melville described a second factor:

 Why did the modern police force emerge at this time — at the beginning of the 19th century? Until then the threat to individual liberty had been used as an argument against organized policing. However, the coming of industrial capitalism led to large numbers of impoverished workers — unemployed or poorly employed — moving to the expanding urban centers. This, along with the general population growth, led to a fear … of the “dangerous classes.” (p.135)

In short, the roots of the modern police force in England, as in Ireland, came from a perceived need for social control.

As in England, so too in America. Peel’s model was largely adopted by American cities during the 19th century. As Carl Watner pointed out,

One of the dominant themes in the history of police in the United States has been the struggle over which political faction would control the police. Under the U.S. Constitution, police power was not a federal responsibility, but rather an obligation of either the state, county, or local governments. Since control over the police was a local responsibility, it had to vacillate “between city or state elective authorities. Thus, nowhere was the embrace of police and politics tighter than in the United States.”

Thus, the United States Supreme Court decision in Castle Rock should have surprised no one. If the court had found that restraining orders were constitutional entitlements to protection, then the fundamental purpose of American law enforcement would have shifted away from service to law toward service to individuals. Moreover, such a court precedent would have released a paralyzing flood of lawsuits against police departments. This, too, might have changed the “job description” of law enforcement in America.

A Competing View That Is Uniquely American

Why do Americans persist in believing that policemen are there to protect them?

One reason: Unlike most nations, America has historical precedent for the belief. It is called the Old West. As Terry L. Anderson and P.J. Hill explained in their essay “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West,” the image of the Western town sheriff that is epitomized by Marshal Dillon is one of a private police force that did protect people and property. They wrote,

The West during this time is often perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life. Our research indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected, and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved.

These agencies often did not qualify as governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on “keeping order.” They soon discovered that “warfare” was a costly way of resolving disputes and lower-cost methods of settlement (arbitration, courts, etc.) resulted. In summary, this paper argues that a characterization of the American West as chaotic would appear to be incorrect.

Anderson and Hill provide a compelling revisionist view of “the Wild West” that accords with how it is portrayed in Zane Grey novels. They write,

Recently, however, more careful examinations of the conditions that existed cause one to doubt the accuracy of this perception. In his book, Frontier Violence: Another Look, W. Eugene Hollon stated that he believed “that the Western frontier was a far more civilized, more peaceful, and safer place than American society is today.”[12] The legend of the “wild, wild West” lives on despite Robert Dykstra’s finding that in five of the major cattle towns (Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell) for the years from 1870 to 1885, only 45 homicides were reported — an average of 1.5 per cattle-trading season.[13]

In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, “nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings.”[14]

At one time, a significant portion of what is now America was protected by private policemen who were paid by — and, so, responsible to — the community where they served. The Western sheriffs did protect people and property; they did rescue schoolmarms and punish cattle rustlers. Their mission was to keep the peace by preventing violence.

Modern policemen still bask in the glow of that legacy even as they betray it by taking state salaries and institutionalizing an indifference for the person and property of those they purport to serve. The modern policeman is, in fact, the antithesis of Marshal Dillon and an expression of the stereotypical British sheriff — a civil servant responsible only to government and governmental policy.

Conclusion

And so, the real message of the Gonzales tragedy is this: Protect yourself, because the police are not paid to care.

To Serve and Protect — the State by Wendy McElroy is a post from Cop Block - Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights

While it’s both easy and useful to point to police abuse and condemn it, often people give little thought to WHY it happens. It’s easy enough–and often accurate–to simply say, “That cop is a power-happy thug,” and leave it at that. But in reality, there is a lot more to it. To better understand how to stop it, we must better understand why it happens. And to better understand that, we must try to get into the mind of the jackboot, to see the world as he sees it. Let us observe the creature in action, and see if we can get inside its head.

There are many thousands of examples of police abuse I could use, but in this, my first article for CopBlock.org, I will start with something relatively benign. Every so often the local police set up a “sobriety checkpoint” on the main road in front of my house. They set up giant floodlights, and have police cars and traffic cones all over the place, and stop everyone coming through (sometimes in both directions, sometimes just in one direction). They ask the driver if he’s been drinking, maybe ask a few other things, shine a flashlight around the inside of the car a bit, and then usually let the guy go. And they do this for hours on end, late into the night.

Larken Rose author, "Most Dangerous Superstition"

Let’s consider just that as our example for now. My first question is, Would YOU do that? Would YOU have the gall to stop everyone driving down a street, to ask them if they’re behaving properly? I highly doubt it. So what makes the cops imagine that that’s a legitimate and noble thing to do, instead of recognizing it as being extremely obnoxious (not to mention unconstitutional)? In short, modern “law enforcers” view the world in a fundamentally different way than everyone else, and even different than most “law enforcers” viewed the world a few decades ago. (Once upon a time they were called “officers of the peace,” instead of “law enforcers.”)

While I don’t want this article to turn into an in-depth treatise on Constitutional law (Fourth Amendment, Fifth Amendment, etc.), it is worth pointing out the general mindset expressed in the Bill of Rights. In short, the idea was that, unless the agents of “government” already had “probable cause” to think you had done something nasty, they were supposed to leave you alone. They weren’t supposed to question someone, or search through their stuff, unless they already had reason to suspect someone of a crime. (And back then, a “crime” almost always meant injuring someone else, not just disobeying any one of the myriad of stupid, arbitrary rules the politicians keep spewing out.)

As it happens, the attitude expressed in the Bill of Rights more or less coincides with the rules for being a decent human being. For example, if you, as a mere civilian, saw someone trying to pry open a window of your neighbor’s house, I bet you’d feel justified confronting him, and asking him what he was doing. On the other hand, you wouldn’t stop everyone on the street to interrogate them, to see if they had done, or were planning on doing, anything you don’t approve of.

What would have to happen for you to think that it was okay for you to randomly stop, interrogate and search people at random (as is now commonly done at airports, “sobriety checkpoints,” “border checkpoints,” and so on)? In short, you would have to stop viewing others as your fellow human beings, and start viewing them as your rightful subjects, and viewing yourself as their rightful master. After all, a slave owner doesn’t hesitate to interrogate, search, or otherwise accost his slaves–which he views as his personal property.

That is why modern “law enforcers” act as they do. They do not view themselves as mere humans whose job it is to protect and serve other humans. They view themselves as the agents of the master (“government”), and they view you, and everyone else, as the property of the master. That is why they imagine themselves to have the right to stop you, detain you, interrogate you, search you, and pretty much do whatever they want to you, and if you ever resist, or even show “attitude,” they believe they have the right to taser you, assault you, and cage you, maybe even kill you. After all, they work for the masters, and you are the slaves. And as long as they view the world that way, you can expect them to keep behaving that way.

In upcoming articles, we will be looking at various examples of tyranny, not just so we can get righteously indignant about them (though we can do that, too), but so we can better understand how it is that the perpetrators of injustice can imagine such actions to be noble and legitimate. Remember, cops all start out as mere human beings. Maybe we can help a few of them to revert back to being human.

Getting into the Mind of the Jackboot is a post from Cop Block - "Something must be done about vengeance, a badge, and a gun"

With the passing of the smoking ban, Virginia demonstrates that, when it comes to individual liberty, its ongoing urbanization renders it just another Mid-Atlantic nanny state like New Jersey, Maryland, and New York. I don’t need to rehash the libertarian arguments against smoking bans in private establishments. I will, however, note the following:

• Despite an email sent out by a minority of Republicans in the legislature, this ban passed with bipartisan support.
• Republicans are the worst advocates of libertarian policy imaginable. They’re all too eager to go along to get along. And if they do have some moderate libertarian positions, they usually shoot their consistency in the foot by being moral policemen to the max (see my thoughts on the Blackburn vs. Stoch race).
• We erroneously and self-righteously frame this issue in simplistic terms of “rights” and “freedom” and “liberty”, a language that nanny staters learned long ago to turn around on us. Nobody is against “freedom” or “liberty” or “rights”, so this approach does not capture the essence of the controversy. If this were about abstractions like “rights”, there are far more egregious government intrusions that would have been rejected long ago. No, we are against bans on peaceful behavior because they are enforced by men trained to hurt and kill us – period.

It’s time to stop pretending our self-important, philosophical civics lessons wrapped in political activism work. Our outrage at the state, heartfelt as it may be, is not nearly enough to constitute the necessary resistance, nor is the rhetoric it produces adequate to the task of appealing to our fellow man. We have to start showing people that this is not a game: passing superfluous and intrusive laws pits men trained in violence and suppression against peaceful people. Confront the nanny staters directly with the means they’ve chosen to promote their agendas and ask them why they want to threaten, hurt, and even kill us and our fellow human beings. The stakes are too high to treat this as a friendly debate about ideas.

I think that Obama’s recent statements about poor people clinging to guns and God are being blown out of proportion. Certainly there’s a sense in which oppressed people of any sort tend to fall back on tradition; firearms and religion are our traditions. But it’s not that I think Obama is, on the whole, correct; it’s just that he isn’t out of line with the elite opinion of his class: the politicians. It’s unfair to criticize him for speaking an opinion all his adversaries hold.

But it’s not unfair to criticize him for having a contemptible, elite opinion that looks down on popular sovereignty, and John Médaille does an excellent job. Though I’m not Catholic or a member of any organized religion, I think those paths to God are certainly valid - they’re not themselves good or bad (they are, however, human institutions which must be approached with the same discretion and self-knowledge that any important activity requires). And even if they weren’t, I’d still defend the freedom of people to follow them.

But he absolutely nails the gun issue:

As for guns, we cling to them for another reason, a reason that his little to do with the arguments about the second amendment, arguments which few of us really understand, least of all myself. No, we cling to them precisely because the know-it-alls tell us not to. We live in an age when “experts” give us no end of good advice on subjects that are none of their business, and when each new day brings new headlines about what we should or should not be doing. Be it cholesterol or sex, God or guns, children or politics, there are endless experts to tell us what we are doing wrong. These professional naggers really have our best interests at heart, and the more so the more removed they are from us.

…

The real reason we cling to guns is that they are ours. And even more, they were our fathers. Ownership of guns is something that distinguished the New World from the Old. In the decadent aristocracies of Europe, guns were largely for the landowners, and “poaching” was punishable by flogging or worse. In the New World, every frontiersman had a gun, and it was an essential part of feeding his family and declaring his liberty. We no longer need to feed our families by hunting, but we still need to assert our liberty, and especially our liberty from the army of experts who claim to know what is best for us.

I hope he’ll forgive the selective quote; the whole post is enlightened, but this was just such a great statement on an issue I hold dear. As for whether or not we’re “bitter”, come on: it’s not just the white rural poor.

You just disrespected yourself, your badge, and the Baltimore Police Department way more than any punk kid. Dude.

Did you catch the veiled death threat from the dude officer? And the way it ends is the best. “Is that camera on? If I find myself on - *click*”.

Hat tip to Mr. Balko.

UPDATE 1: Apparently, the cop has been suspended, but I’m sure he’ll be back on the force in no time once the review board finds that “official procedures were followed.” And listen to the police union guy:

Paul Blair, head of the police union, had not seen the video but cautioned that videos show only a slice of a story. He noted that it is impossible to know what happened before or after the camera was turned on.

I’d like to know, Mr. Blair: what could possibly have happened before the camera came on that would have excused such behavior on the part of the officer? No, really, your wildest fantasy - give me a scenario where it would have served the BPD to have that dude act like that. And this is great:

Clifford said the boy never made an official complaint to the Police Department and that Rivieri has no other citizen complaints in his file.

That’s the excuse I love from police departments. If you don’t make a complaint, it didn’t happen. You have to jump through their hoops after they physically and verbally assault you, just so they can have a chance to get their story straight before they dismiss you utterly. No, no - I think YouTube is far superior.

UPDATE 2: In the comments below, John alerts readers to another video of Rivieri out of control. Thanks, John!

I’ve had an interest in police culture and practices for a long time. I haven’t run into a huge amount of officers in my life, but I have seen some really good ones and some really bad ones. I’m just interested in what motivates them, I guess - it seems like most cops are bored most of the time.

And as I learn more, a trend towards belligerent behavior seems to emerge. It angers me for the obvious reasons, but the truly helpful and respectful cops stick out in my head and lead me to ask, “Why is this happening?” Many people have been collecting the evidence for this trend and asking the same question (Radley Balko’s blog is excellent in this area). I’ve heard a lot of answers: some blame the drug war, others blame the influx of military into law enforcement ranks, and still others blame it all on standard-issue government evilness. But I found another, more direct and provable answer in an article at PoliceLink.com entitled Street Survival Insights: Behavior Traits that get Cops Killed; Long Known, Still Ignored.

The long and short of it is that a study was done fifteen years ago and, while the conclusions were speculative and hard to prove, five traits of behavior likely to get cops killed were dreamed up arrived at. Of these five behavior traits, the very first three have directly to do with friendliness, openness, and generally acting like a human being among equals:

1. Friendly.

   This adjective was frequently used to describe the murdered officers, along with “well-liked,” “laid back,” and “easy going.” While a friendly demeanor “does much to promote a positive image for the officer and the department, overly friendly behavior at an inappropriate time” can backfire, the researchers warn…

2. Service-oriented.

   “Tends to perceive self as more public relations than law enforcement,” the researchers said of the prototypical slain officer. Of course service is part of your job. But on the street, your “customer” is not always right. To protect and serve the community, the researchers remind, “officers must realize that they need to protect themselves first” and not indulge a “misguided sense of service” that results in “placing prisoners’ comfort over their own personal safety.” In policing, your success—and your safety—often depend on your ability to get people to do what they don’t want to do.

3. Hesitant about using force.

   Victim officers tended “to use less force than other officers felt they would use in similar circumstances,” the researchers found. And they customarily “used force only as a last resort;” their peers said they themselves “would use force at an earlier point in similar circumstances.” Courts have clearly confirmed that it’s justifiable in situations you reasonably perceive as threatening to employ even pre-emptive force to stop a threat; you don’t have to wait until you are assaulted or injured. Yet some trainers are noticing that some officers today seem so hesitant about using force that it appears they are more afraid of being sued or thought overzealous than they are of being murdered!

If you’re wondering why the relationship between community and police has been eroding so consistently for so long, you need only read that article. Law enforcement professionals have been told for fifteen years that several of the core behaviors that comprise civil society are likely to get them killed. We should not be surprised that they are not friendly, respectful, genuine, or judicious. The attitudes that embolden officers to embrace militarization, treat the community like occupied territory, and abuse their privileges are the result of some vague conclusions of research conducted by the FBI - not exactly the paragons of community-level law enforcement.

But one of the sad answers to my question.

The feds are declaring war on Appalachia by designating 65 counties as constituting a “High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area“. It has long been known that marijuana cultivation and sale in that area is big business, bringing in over $4 billion annually from top dollar east coast markets to one of America’s most impoverished regions. With a war on terror going on, targeting poor, rural people is a curious allocation of scarce funds.

Now, for the feds to summon this level of coordination among the alphabet soup of local, state, and federal law enforcement organizations, they must perceive a huge problem. Usually, these kinds of major drug economies revolve around violence: brutal drug cartels that paralyze communities with fear, leave a trail of bodies, and force helpless local communities to appeal for federal intervention. So is that the case?

No, the problem is that the trafficking is too peaceful:

In the official “Appalachia HIDTA FY 98 - Threat Abstract,” the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) states that Appalachia warrants a federal crackdown because “in this tri-state area financial development is limited, poverty is rampant, and jobs are few. Marijuana has become a substantial component of the local economy, surpassing even tobacco as the largest cash crop. This has contributed to a high level of community acceptance of marijuana production, distribution, and consumption. Many honest local merchants do not recognize signs of illegal drug enterprises and in effect help launder drug proceeds. In such an environment eradication and interdiction efforts are difficult, as is obtaining intelligence, indictments, or an unbiased jury.” In other words, people are poor, locals are not that concerned about residents who are doing this, and people are not informing on their friends and neighbors to the extent that the government desires.

The problem is too much community! Yet again, government targets organic human association, seeking to replace it with an occupation culture of snitches, arbitrary searches and seizures, and the impunity of bureaucratic carpetbagging. They will tear whole communities to shreds - all in the name of keeping people from getting high.

However, it sounds like these kinds of invasive enforcement programs have resulted in a citizen backlash in the past:

In Northern California, residents have turned out to oppose aggressive marijuana eradication, because of the negative community impact it has. Forming “Citizens Observation Groups,” locals have documented government helicopters violating federal laws on flying altitude; environmental regulations; endangered species protection; and kept track of illegal search and seizure operations including the number of children that have been terrified by the men with face paint and automatic guns. More importantly, by documenting police actions, they have been able to raise awareness within their own communities and present a united front to their local government. This united front eventually lead to county supervisors voting to reject funding for the program.

If there was ever a countereconomic battlefield worth fighting on, this is it. We left libertarians should keep an eye on this issue.

This is from Voltairine de Cleyre’s 1894 address, In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation. She is responding to Goldman’s maxim: “Ask for work; if they do not give you work, ask for bread; if they do not give you bread, then take bread.” What I love about her favorable yet cautious response to that phrase is the way she penetrates the illusory fervor of the mob mentality, extracting instead the need for reflection and understanding.

You are told you have the power because you have the numbers. Never make so silly a blunder as to suppose that power resides in numbers. One good, level-headed policeman with a club, is worth ten excited, unarmed men; one detachment of well-drilled militia has a power equal to that of the greatest mob that could be raised in New York City. Do you know I admire compact, concentrated power. Let me give you an illustration. Out in a little town in Illinois there is a certain capitalist, and if ever a human creature sweat and ground the grist of gold from the muscle of man, it is he. Well, once upon a time, his workmen, (not his slaves, his workmen,) were on strike; and fifteen hundred muscular Polacks armed with stones, brickbats, red hot pokers, anti other such crude weapons as a mob generally collects, went up to his house for the purpose of smashing the windows, and so forth; possibly to do as those people in Italy did the other day with the sheriff who attempted to collect the milk tax. He alone, one man, met them on the steps of his porch, and for two mortal hoers, by threats, promised, cajoleries, held those fifteen hundred Poles at bay. And finally they went away, without smashing a pane of glass or harming a hair of his head. Now that was power! And you can’t help but admire it, no matter if it was your enemy who displayed it; and you must admit that so long as numbers can be overcome by such relative quantity, power does not reside in numbers. Therefore, if I were giving advice, I would not say, “take bread”, but take counsel with yourselves flow to get the power to take bread.

There is no doubt but that power is latently in you; there is little doubt it can be developed; there is no doubt the authorities know this, and fear it, and are ready to exert as much force as is necessary to repress any signs of its development. And this is the explanation of EMMA GOLMANN’S imprisonment. The authorities do not fear you as you are, they only fear what you may become. The dangerous thing was “the voice crying in the wilderness” foretelling the power which was to come after it. You should have seen how they feared it in Phila. They got out a whole platoon of police and detectives, and executed a military maneuver to catch the little woman who had been running around under their noses for three days. And when she walked up to them, why then, they surrounded and captured her, and guarded the city hall where they kept her over night, and put a detective in the next cell to make notes. Why so much fear? Did they shrink from the stab of the dressmakers needle? Or did they dread some stronger weapon?

Ah! — the accusation before the New York Pontius Pilate was: “she stirreth up the people”. And Pilate sentenced her to the full limit of the law, because, he said, “you are more than ordinarily intelligent”. Why is intelligence dealt thus hardly with? Because it is the beginning of power. Strive, then, for power.

In this era of ever expanding access to information, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep the people down by force. This problem has been solved largely by inventing myriad means of distraction. Not only does this quell substantially the corrective dynamics that moderate outward inequality and subjugation, it also prevents the understanding of the self that is so crucial to unlocking the seat of true power.

I don’t really care whether you believe in God or not. What I care about is the human spirit, for that is the only gateway to our best nature. And that, my friends, is the only divinity we’ll ever be able to count on in any measure, regardless of the exact character of its source (which we insult one another by arguing over, as if we have the words to express the subtlety of these immensely personal experiences).

The more I study the task of liberation, the more clearly and urgently I perceive it as a struggle of self against the authoritarian within far more than against the authoritarian without. The latter’s position is far less precarious if they have set the terms by which you judge your own potential - if they have trained you, in other words, to oppress yourself. And similarly, I believe that the overthrow of the former will ultimately be more rewarding to the individual and, by extension, society.

As an end note, let me remind the reader that I wrote extensively about the crossover of spirituality and individualism in my essay, History as the Evolution of Identity.

Recently I have discovered a renewed interest in left libertarian and anarchist concepts of community solidarity. My interests lie in finding ways to build community relationships and institutions that devolve important decisions to the interpersonal, neighborly level - rather than counting on government bureaucrats and politicians to fix all our problems. I believe that this reliance on an outside force to manage us - a top-down, progressive-era holdover - has damaged what was once a bottom-up, dynamic consensus. This breakdown in neighborliness is partially responsible for many of our present social ills, and reflects the dark side of the centralized, managerial State that so many Americans seem to want.

Inviting cops into our neighborhoods should be a last resort, because law enforcement professionals view everybody - not just the elements you find undesirable - as a potential criminal. They write traffic tickets; they harass citizens; they conduct reckless raids against innocent citizens; the list just goes on. Residents should be very careful when inviting outsiders - such as police officers - to make decisions on how the neighborhood’s business should be conducted. Ideally, cops should be called only as an alternative to a neighborhood resident employing force himself in self-defense, and only in reaction to a particular threat.

Maybe there was once a time when police officers lived in the neighborhoods they patrolled, knew everybody by name and whose kid was whose, and exercised a form of reasonable discretion (even if that discretion was poisoned by racism, classism, etc.). Maybe they policed on the basis of what was best for the community rather than maximizing their arrest statistics to secure federal funding. Those times, however, are no more: police are intervening in neighborhoods more and more, with less and less of a sense of statutory limitation, and a growing sense of entitlement to dictate to people the most mundane details of their lives. This dependence on such authoritarian elements is surely brought about by the increasing atomization and isolation of residents, who cannot look to the community to realize their values. When neighbors are strangers, there isn’t even the opportunity to establish an authentic sense of shared interests or common concerns, let alone the true security situation.