People v. State

I’m finally getting around to reading Blackstone’s Commentaries, in a $1.99 app for the iPhone (the very first app I’ve actually paid $ for; I looked into also installing Black’s Law Dictionary, but it’s 54.99 freaking $$$) that I can recommend for its readability. (An app search turned up only this one app, created by SunScroll, containing the Commentaries, so it’s not hard to find if you’re so inclined.)

A few motives inspired this recent sally:

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Greg Gauthier has a thoughtful and thought-provoking post up at the Daily Anarchist titled “Who’s Your Daddy?”, wherein he questions the propensity to quote the Founding Fathers in support of this, that, and the other, and suggests it’s symptomatic of a juvenile lack of confidence in our own powers of intellect and judgment. As someone who’s quoted more than his fair share of Thomas Jefferson around here, I see his point, but have a slightly different take on the matter.

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Portland police Lt. Robert King said.

The official demonization of “anarchists” by State propagandizers continues on apace, in this instance by an agent of an “agency”-without-principals which intends to violently evict Occupy protesters from Portland parks this weekend. Meanwhile, a real-life “anarch” (leader of leaderlessness), Wendy McElroy, explores, at the Daily Anarchist, what an anarchist system of justice might look like, and in reply to a comment on her post writes:

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I am by no means a Nietzsche scholar or fan boy, but in light of what he had to say about the State I think it’s safe to say that those inclined to blame him for the Nazis are grossly mistaken. In any event, I want to distance myself from any vulgar and probably mistaken interpretation of his denigration of the “superfluous” and the “all-too-many” that I approvingly quoted along with his damnation of the State.

Albert Jay Nock notes what I think is the relevant distinction:

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(The title of this post is borrowed from the Wobblies.)

A comment by Ryan from Absurd Results on this post about the Georgist “Single Tax” and Thomas Jefferson’s “Ward System” gave me the opportunity to once again formulate, summarize, and clarify my political wish list. Ryan wrote:

As for Georgism, I have to admit, I find it intriguing—even more so when combined with Jefferson’s ward system. Actually, I think the ward system (which sounds a lot like Michael Rozeff’s panarchy) would be essential for a single tax regime, for it would more likely keep closed the door to statism by making the wards compete for citizens.

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Ann Althouse posts a righteous takedown of Herman Cain and his so-called 9-9-9 tax plan here.

There has never been a saner and simpler proposal for tax reform than the “single tax” on the unimproved value of land proposed by Henry George. The honest progressive and the honest capitalist alike would find in it, if they looked, a facilitator of their respective instincts. Most importantly, in stark contrast to the abomination that is “our” politician-created tax “code,” the “single tax” has its sure foundation in Justice, as illuminated by, among others, Thomas Paine.

Combine the “single tax” with Thomas Jefferson’s “ward system” and you have my political philosophy in a nutshell.

Thus wrote Justice Robert Jackson almost 70 years ago, as quoted in a NYT op-ed by Kent Greenfield which points out that “Constitution Day is probably unconstitutional.”

What is it that I find admirable and worthy of emulation in the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy? Pretty much the same things I find admirable and worthy of emulation in Aldous Huxley’s vision of a just society:

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Recently I described myself as a “Christian Deist” in a comment on this interesting blog, written by a lawyer who was denied admission to the Indiana bar by the Indiana Supreme Court apparently because of a legal philosophy similar to my own and his purported resistance to and criticism of the psychological evaluation of his sanity required by the Board of Bar Examiners because of the fact that years before his application for admission he had been arrested several times for protesting at abortion clinics and had refused to pay an unconstitutional civil judgment for attorney fees against him related to such protests. (Norm Pattis writes today regarding the disbarment of F. Lee Bailey and the fact that judges rather than juries decide such questions: “Deciding whether an aggressive, and often controversial, lawyer should remain at the bar is not a decision I would trust to a judge, ever.”)

What I mean by describing myself as a Christian Deist is illuminated by the following two articles, my discovery of which online was prompted by my discovery in a bookstore yesterday of Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief:

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Now, I have no special reason for going out of my way to insult by quoting as I have above Scott Greenfield (I still like the guy), other than that in his post today at Simple Justice from which I’ve quoted he appears to have gone out of his way to insult and misrepresent all anarchists (and reluctant anarchists) of good will everywhere.

Anarchy is not chaos. It’s “rulerlessness.” It’s not something unheard of in the modern world. In fact, it’s the prevailing condition of international relations between so-called “sovereign” states (despite the United States’ longstanding propensity to act as if it’s the world’s ruler). It’s the principle behind the vaunted “balance of powers” supposedly built into the U.S. Constitution (though this principle is itself unfortunately “balanced” in the Constitution by other elements aiming towards the concentration of power).

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