I’ve waited my whole life to come to realize, through some dawning revelation, why precisely I’m supposed to like the Symphonie Fantastique. Today, right now where I sit, I’m fully prepared to say what I’ve put off saying for as long as I can remember: the Symphonie Fantastique is wrongly named.

For numerous reasons, I vehemently disagreed with his assessment. But there’s one reason I want to focus on in particular. The individual who posted this also happens to be a libertarian like me and like Hector Berlioz, the composer of Symphonie Fantastique.

My response:

I’m going to have to disagree with you here…Symphonie Fantastique is a grand example of a composer breaking conventional molds of form and orchestration. Five movements. Strange instruments. An implied program. Intentionally irreverent use of religious cantus. One of my personal favorites. Hector Berlioz don’t care!

Hector Berlioz embraced an attitude of intentional, intelligent irreverence toward all things customary and conventional. Throughout his life, he challenged the status quo, musically and otherwise. He wasn’t a rebel just for the sake of being a rebel; he understood exactly what the state of the world was and how he could change it. He held individual expression up as a pinnacle virtue, harnessing his own to influence others peacefully and thoughtfully.

Like many libertarians, Berlioz was a voracious autodidact. Unlike many other composers of the era, he received no formal musical training early in his life. Nor was he precocious like Mozart. Rather, he diligently studied harmony textbooks, teaching himself how to write music.

When he turned eighteen, Berlioz left home to study medicine in Paris. After a short stint at the university (and a reviling experience of viewing a human corpse being dissected), he abandoned medicine and attended the Paris Conservatoire. There, under the tutelage of Jean-François Le Sueur and Anton Reicha, Berlioz refined his composition skills.

This was a time not unlike today: A “new economy” was emerging. “The decay of absolutism on the European continent spelled the end of artistic patronage on the part of the aristocracy and the church,” writes musicologist Richard Taruskin. “The broad middle-class public now replaced the traditional elite.”

According to historian Giorgio Pestelli, these economic allowed for the emergence of the modern freelance musician. “Free from immediate detailed instructions from his master or protector,” composers and musicians “could be subject in a similar way to the kind of demand imposed by the musical market.” The “new course” appealed “above all to the competitive spirit” and, in so doing, rewarded entrepreneurial insight.

Like many young entrepreneurs today, Berlioz needed to supplement his income. In addition to composing, young Hector also worked as chorus singer and vaudeville performer. Over time, his hard work paid off as he became famous as a composer and conductor across France and western Europe.

Berlioz’s most famous and most remembered work is Symphonie Fantastique—by far. Since its first public performance in 1830, critics and audiences alike have proffered their strong opinions on the 50-minute-long behemoth. Some love it. Some hate it. Some are downright flummoxed by it.

Symphonie Fantastique called for ninety instrumentalists at a time when the standard orchestra employed half that. Compared to contemporaneous scores, Berlioz’s presents dynamics, articulations, and other expressive markings with revolutionary explicitness and meticulous detail. Brass players need mutes and the timpanist needs “sponge-headed sticks.” The range of wind instruments extends from the piccolo to the tuba. While all of these things are commonplace now, they were utterly radical at the time.

To add to the uproar, Berlioz tied the music to a program in a particular way. Purely instrumental music was elevated, becoming sacrilegiously tantamount to opera. “Berlioz wished to have [the program] distributed to audiences to prepare them to understand the work,” says Taruskin. “[M]any in the Victorian era understandably found shocking.”

The program describes each of five (five!—as opposed to the standard four) movements in scenic detail. “Funeral knell, ludicrous parody of the Dies irae,” part of the fifth movement program, alludes to Berlioz’s satirical use of a Catholic funeral hymn in a movement entitled “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath.”

Libertarianism has an ideological component. Economic freedom, civil rights, free speech, private property—they’re all part of the package. But libertarianism also has an attitudinal component. Liberty lovers aren’t afraid to brazenly resist established norms and expectations. Like Hector Berlioz, we don’t fit nicely into the mold society prescribes. We question what others accept and rebuke anyone who stands in our way.

These bills make an Orwellian use of terms like freedom. The ability to exclude people for irrational and arbitrary reasons is not an instance of liberty. Libertarians will earn the wrath of decent LGBT people everywhere without offering a solution other than state force to the problem of discrimination. We have a chance to show that our individualist principles apply to persecuted minorities as much as non-minorities. It’s not something to botch.

Thomas L. Knapp responded with:

Not sure what you mean by “exclude.”

If I don’t want to bake a cake for you, it doesn’t matter what my reasons are. You don’t own me. I own me. I get to decide whether or not I bake a cake for you — and that decision IS an instance of liberty.

Knapp and I don’t disagree about the importance of personal freedom. I tend not to couch it in terms of ownership, but I understand the gist of it. I do however disagree with him on this one. Power is still being exercised when you deny someone a service for irrational bigoted reasons. It’s not a form of power based on physical violence, but it still counts as such. It represents social ostracism and economic reward/punishment. The latter involves the control of economic resources and selective distribution of them to effect changes in the character or behavior of another. Does this mean we should combat it with physical force? Not at all. There is still the principle of proportionality to consider. Non-violent controlling behavior is ethically met with non-violent means. Of course, if people violently assault peaceful sit in protesters they are entitled to use violence in self-defense.

Another point I made worth revisiting was:

What about the issues of private property rights and trespass? One way to approach that question is through contextual or dialectical libertarian methodology. Private property rights are contextual and relate to occupancy or use. They are one value among others to consider in assessing the morality of an action. In the context of bigots irrationally excluding people from spaces otherwise open to the public, the value of private property rights is trumped by the need for social inclusion.

Why does one have to choose between these two particular values? The sit-iners are not engaged in any aggressively violent actions, so they aren’t violating libertarian principle. As far as private property rights go, there isn’t any violent destruction of property involved. Social inclusion can be fought for through non-violent social activism. The practicality of which was shown by the Civil Rights Movement. In other words: these values are not mutually exclusive. They both serve as supports for genuine freedom.

If someone did destroy property during the course of a sit-down protest, we could still show sympathy and forgive them. This is dictated by the context of their actions. We could even socially pressure the property owner to do the same. A court could refuse to hear a restitution claim. It would be cruel to target the racially oppressed for prosecution in this context.

One final thing is left to address. Does this mean that all uses of coercion to defend property are unjust? Not at all. If a criminal gang tries to take your food, it’s perfectly acceptable for you to use force to defend it. This is due to the rationality of the action. As Ayn Rand could tell you, ethics and rationality run together. Let us work to make ethical rationality a reality.

As I’ve written elsewhere, lunch counters throughout the American south were being desegregated years before passage of the 1964 Act. How so? Through sit-ins, boycotts, and other kinds of nonviolent, nongovernmental confrontational social action. (Read moving accounts here and here.)

Sheldon provides additional evidence of the practicality of this approach in another piece:

Even earlier, during the 1950s, David Beito and Linda Royster Beito report in Black Maverick, black entrepreneur T.R.M. Howard led a boycott of national gasoline companies that forced their franchisees to allow blacks to use the restrooms from which they had long been barred.

These bills make an Orwellian use of terms like freedom. The ability to exclude people for irrational and arbitrary reasons is not an instance of liberty. Libertarians will earn the wrath of decent LGBT people everywhere without offering a solution other than state force to the problem of discrimination. We have a chance to show that our individualist principles apply to persecuted minorities as much as non-minorities. It’s not something to botch.

What about the issues of private property rights and trespass? One way to approach that question is through contextual or dialectical libertarian methodology. Private property rights are contextual and relate to occupancy or use. They are one value among others to consider in assessing the morality of an action. In the context of bigots irrationally excluding people from spaces otherwise open to the public, the value of private property rights is trumped by the need for social inclusion. This doesn’t sanction state force, but it does sanction non-violent protest. Civil Rights protesters were even entitled to use defensive force against the thugs who used violence against them for conducting sit-ins. The same would apply to contemporary LGBT protesters.

I am not saying private property rights are always trumped by other concerns. Your right to the product of your labor is not trumped by the state’s need for revenue. I am saying that morality demands trade offs sometimes. This means that some things relevant to liberty are more important than private property rights. Let us consider this as one of those instances.

Translations for this article:

• Portuguese, Tragam de volta as táticas do movimento pelos direitos civis.

This is often due to their position on civil rights legislation. The basis for that particular stance is to be found in the libertarian conception of property rights, freedom of association and non-aggression. Uninformed critics will miss this and attribute the libertarian position to racism. That having been said, there is something amiss in the traditional libertarian attitude on this question. Something that is worth addressing.

To begin with, the traditional libertarian position ignores the initiatory coercion that can flow from discrimination. Let us consult Roderick Long for a definition of coercion:

the forcible subjection, actual or threatened, of the person or property of another to one’s own uses, without that other’s consent.

If someone peacefully walks onto the premises of a business open to the public, they are not coercing anyone. The forcible removal of them from the property by private or public force would constitute an act of coercion.

What about mere denial of service as opposed to forcible removal? This may not involve literal physical force, but it still represents an attempt at authoritarian control of resources. This is especially true when an employee has no issue with serving someone, but the employer has set rules forbidding it.

In light of the above, it’s important for libertarians to recognize that there is nothing to be gained from expending rhetorical energy in opposing civil rights laws. The only exceptions being to demonstrate the viability and desirability of non-governmental solutions or to show how governmental solutions fail to accomplish their intended or stated goals.

The only allies one will acquire through thoughtless criticism of civil rights legislation are bigots. Aside from principled libertarians, they are the only ones who are against governmentalism of this type in this area of social life.

Does the above mean that we libertarians, concerned with civil rights, should embrace force as a solution or be less critical of the use of force? Not at all. As Sheldon Richman points out:

As I’ve written elsewhere, lunch counters throughout the American south were being desegregated years before passage of the 1964 Act. How so? Through sit-ins, boycotts, and other kinds of nonviolent, nongovernmental confrontational social action. (Read moving accounts here and here.)

The tactics of the civil rights movement were eminently libertarian. They deserve to be emulated and studied by contemporary libertarians. There are a whole host of other social problems that could be addressed by this style of direct action. Let us left-libertarians lead the way in embracing this radical approach to social change.

The consequences of this violence are disastrous for individual liberty. This violence and bigotry makes trans* people afraid to express their gender identities. It makes us afraid to walk in certain places and times. Freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and gender self-determination are jeopardized by violence, bigotry, harassment, and murder.

Rather than protecting people from these crimes, the police and prison systems all too often perpetrate them. In October, a drag performer in Texas was tased by cops and died shortly after. CeCe McDonald still languishes in prison for surviving a hate crime in which her racist and transphobic attacker died. The state’s criminal justice system all too often incarcerates trans* and gender non-conforming people for defending themselves from violence.  A 2011 report found that 29% of trans* people had experienced police harassment and abuse. Is it any wonder that 46% said they “were uncomfortable seeking police assistance”?  In the struggle against gender violence and abuse, the state is not an institution we can rely on for help.  It is damage we must route around.

I hope you will take some time tonight to find a Transgender Day of Remembrance event in your community. Please take some time today to mourn the many trans* folks, especially trans women of color, who have been murdered. Trans* lives matter. Violence matters. Freedom of movement, gender expression, and gender self determination matter. Today let’s mourn our dead; tomorrow let’s fight for the living.

About half of Lynch’s points boil down to, “Obama is for x, because he makes speeches talking about x all the time.” He starts out with the best one of all:

“Unlike the many presidents who preceded him, he cares about what is best for the greater good. He truly does represent The People. His actions have always been motivated by a sincere desire to do what is best for the majority, even if it meant losing ground with the wealthy, influential or powerful minority.”

Um, yeah. That’s why he adopted a Republican “universal healthcare” proposal to require everybody to buy private health insurance — and give taxpayer money to the ones who can’t afford it. That should be popular with “The People,” all right — at least those who own stock in insurance companies. That’s why he quietly promised the drug companies he wouldn’t use Medicare’s bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices. That’s why Joe Biden conducts copyright enforcement policy out of Disney’s corporate headquarters and the administration backs draconian copyright legislation dictated in secret by proprietary content industries.

Among my favorite other howlers:

“2. He is for civil rights. He has consistently spoken on behalf of the disenfranchised, the underdog and the most controversial members of society …”

Yeah, I know he said a lot of stuff about gay marriage and ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. But he refused to actually stop prosecuting gays in the military before the law was repealed, or to put enforcement on the back burner, even when he was fully capable of using his executive authority to do so.

And notice Lynch doesn’t say “civil liberties.” Obama said a lot of stuff about them, too — back in 2008. Since then he’s expanded unconstitutional wiretapping, run interference for the telecoms that help out with it and given amnesty to people who systematically ordered and engaged in torture. Holding war criminals accountable would be “divisive,” you see. He owes the late Nuremberg defendants an apology — they were only following orders, too.

4. Healthcare. I think we already covered that.

“5. He is for the middle class. Here are just a few of the comments made by President Barack Obama in recent months …”

A lot of presidents were for a lot of stuff, if you stick to reading their collected speeches. In practice, Obama’s farm policies are written by ADM and Monsanto, and the office of Secretary of the Treasury is permanently reserved for Goldman-Sachs alumni, just as under his predecessors.

Obama’s actual economic policy is classic Hamiltonianism: Responding to technologies of abundance that reduce the need for capital and labor by using Rube Goldberg mechanisms to artificially prop up the demand for those inputs — even if it means giving people tax breaks for throwing stuff away and replacing it. The stomach-churning irony is that most of the same greenwashed Whole Foods liberals who applaud this also condemn planned obsolescence and the Military-Industrial Complex, which were designed to accomplish exactly the same result. The proper approach to technologies of abundance is to make sure their benefits are fully internalized by workers and consumers, by ceasing to enforce monopolies, artificial scarcities and rents of all kind. If it takes only fifteen hours of labor a week to produce our standard of living, it should only take fifteen hours of labor to enjoy that standard of living. But that would annoy Obama’s Big Business friends.

My favorite, though, is this:

“10. He is for peace. Let us never forget that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 …”

Yeah, he uses that Peace Prize as a paperweight to hold down his drone kill list. Obama didn’t end the war in Afghanistan — he  transformed it into a remote-control video game war in which wedding parties can be massacred at the push of a button. And of course, Lynch can’t resist throwing in a mention of the Zero Dark Thirty crap about killing Bin Laden.

I can’t help picturing someone fifty years ago breathlessly gushing “I love JFK because he’s the Peace President” — while ignoring the Bay of Pigs, the Diem assassination and Green Berets in Vietnam.

Lynch’s points, edited for substance, are basically on the same level as a guy in a bar decked out in Full Cleveland thirty years ago saying “I feel comfortable with Reagan.”  Obama’s the Reagan of moderate center-left NPR liberals who shop at Whole Foods. If you’re satisfied with the image of peace and social justice, while government in substance continues to serve the same powerful interests, keep right on voting — that’s what it’ll get you.

And indeed, he did—all throughout his political career. As president he used executive order to ban the importation of certain shotguns, and later he threw his weight behind the Brady Bill and 1994 Assault Weapons Ban.

As governor of California, Reagan signed the Mulford Act into law in 1967. Written by Republican Assemblyman Don Mulford, the legislation was the most sweeping state edict in all the country, prohibiting the more or less free carrying of firearms in public. It went along with the rest of his heavy-handed entire law-and-order agenda and inspired an avalanche of new gun laws nationwide.

The purpose of the law was to disarm the Black Panthers, a radical leftist group that openly carried firearms, kept an eye out on the police, and even took their rifles to the state Capitol to protest what they decried as racist legislation.

In the late 1960s, the racism of gun control was fresh on many Civil Rights thinkers’ minds. Upholding gun rights for freed slaves was a primary motive behind the Fourteenth Amendment. State-level gun control became instrumental in suppressing blacks.

The history of American gun control is a history of racism and prejudice. In the early 20^th century, the Sullivan Act in New York, banning the carrying of small arms, was likely aimed at Italian Immigrants. But for most of modern history, the major target was blacks.

David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito explained the general dynamic in their book Black Maverick: T.R.M. Howard’s Fight for Civil Rights and Economic Power (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 103–4:

As black assertiveness [in Mississippi] increased, whites came forward with proposals for tougher gun control. The sponsors did not hide the centrality of race in their concerns. White concerns about gun control for blacks was not new. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, several southern states had enacted gun control laws that restricted access of cheap handguns to blacks. The term ‘Saturday night special’ may have originated during that period as a racial slur. In early 1954 an editorial in the Clarion-Ledger had stressed the dangers posed by .22 caliber pistols and rifles. Focusing on the example of an ‘allegedly “crazed” Negro’ who killed three white men, it lamented that these ‘weapons are easily obtained and ammunition for them can be bought anywhere.’ If this problem persisted, the editorial continued, laws should be enacted [for] ‘control of the sale of weapons and ammunition or the keeping of records on all such sales.’

In September 1954, a more ambitious proposal “to require registration of all firearms and records on all sales of ammunition” came close to becoming law. The backers explicitly promoted the bill as part of a package of “segregation-supporting” legislation and linked it to the crackdown on civil rights.

After racists bombed his home, Martin Luther King, Jr., generally an advocate for non-violence, procured weapons and attempted to get a concealed carry permit, but was rejected. The first major gun confiscations targeted blacks, who couldn’t rely on the police to protect them because the police were their enemies. Groups like the Deacons for Justice and Defense fought off the Klan and protected innocent blacks in the Jim Crow South.

Elaine Brown, head of the Black Panther Party in the 1970s, recently explained:

The position of the Black Panther Party was that black people live in communities occupied by police forces that are armed and dangerous and represent the frontline of forces keeping us oppressed. We did not promote guns, but rather, the right to defend ourselves against a state that was oppressing us — with guns. There were innumerable incidents in which police agents kicked in our doors or shot our brothers and sisters in what we called red-light trials, where the policeman was the judge, the jury and the executioner. We called for an immediate end to this brutality, and advocated for our right to self-defense. Today, the brutal police murders of Sean Bell in New York and Oscar Grant in Oakland are just two examples of how little has changed. The gun-control discussion could result in policies that further criminalize and target black people.

Conservatives, at their most radical, have made this connection: Condoleezza Rice and Ann Coulter have also argued that blacks should arm themselves if they want to protect themselves against racial violence. But not only rightwingers hone in on this: Ice-T argues that the right to keep and bear arms is to resist tyranny and “to protect yourself from the police.”

When Reagan and Nixon and the other Republicans in the 1960s advanced gun control, they were at least in part pandering to law-and-order conservatives who wanted police to have yet more power to protect them from minorities and the poor. If racism was not in the intent, it was definitely part of the effect.

Even today, gun laws are much like drug laws in that they are disproportionately used against minorities. Gun control is the chief impetus behind New York City’s Stop-and-Frisk program, which in 2011 ensnared young black men more times than there are young black men in the city, and targets minorities by a ratio of nine to one. Conservatives who defend this program are defending gun control at its most invasive—the wholesale profiling and searching of people in the attempt to procure guns, which conservatives claim people have a natural and constitutional right to carry in the first place. Liberals opposed to this program should recognize that to violate gun rights, government must violate other rights.

In the federal prison system, almost half of those convicted for gun control violations are black and a quarter are Hispanic. Because of mandatory minimums for gun violation, the average convicted gun offender—usually someone who never hurt anyone with the weapon—rots in prison for longer than the average convicted rapist.

Some on the left have begun rediscovering the racist roots of gun control. Adam Winkler’s Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America—reviewed here by Thaddeus Russell—tells the story of gun confiscations committed by racist police working with the KKK. Adam Winkler’s Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America also gives a perspective unusual among modern liberals. Craig Whitney discovers the intractable culture war in the debate in Living with Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment. Don Kates’s Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out is a compilation from years ago. Yet the anti-gun control scholarship on the left remains thin.

There are left-friendly arguments for gun rights, but unfortunately we rarely hear them. Gun control is like the drug war, in that it empowers the police with a possession crime, which necessarily means violations of privacy rights, using snitches and dubious informants, and disproportionately high prison sentences for the non-violent act of illegal gun ownership. According to the Department of Justice, the average federal conviction for weapons violations resulted in 87 months in prison compared to 82 months for drug offenses and 28 months for property crimes.

It is impossible to keep criminals, of all people, from getting firearms—and if this wasn’t true ten years go, it will be in the age of 3-D printing. But in the quest to disarm the rabble, the police state can flex its power over the most vulnerable and marginalized people in society.

Hatch has volunteered for political campaigns, held down a job at a thrift shop, and shown a capacity to live independently. But because she has Down’s syndrome and an IQ of 52, her parents argued that she should be forced to continue living in a group home.

Hatch was held in group homes against her will. As her friend Jim Talbert testified, “She just kept saying she hates it here, she hates it here, ‘Please come get me.’” But under the law, she could not leave. It was a form of imprisonment enacted not as punishment but under the paternalistic auspices of “care.”

Fortunately, Jenny Hatch won her lawsuit. While the judge ruled that she needed guardians, her friends Jim Talbert and Kelly Morris were appointed to that role on a temporary basis. She was already seeking to live with them, and the judge has ruled that this guardianship should eventually give way to her independence.

In response to the ruling, Jenny Hatch said,  “I’m so happy to go home today.” She should have been able to go home without needing to fight in court.

This ruling is a victory not just for disability rights, but for basic human rights. A victory for free association, a victory for freedom of movement, a victory for individual autonomy.

These basic rights have been repeatedly denied to people with disabilities. Some, like Jenny, are held against their will in group homes. In some state-funded group homes, staff sexually abuse the residents. A 2011 report by the New York Times examined hundreds of cases and found that “employees who sexually abused, beat or taunted residents were rarely fired, even after repeated offenses, and in many cases, were simply transferred to other group homes run by the state.”

Disabled women “are raped and abused at a rate at least twice that of the general population of women.” This epidemic of sexual violence has occurred alongside a long history of forced sterilization. Both the state and society have enabled a total assault on the bodily autonomy of women with disabilities.

These violations of individual rights are enabled by pernicious myths. There’s the myth that people with mental illnesses are violent and dangerous. There is the new baseless claim by Eustacia Cutler that autistic men like me are pedophiles.

But perhaps the foremost myth is that people with disabilities are in some sense not full, autonomous human beings. This myth says that we are not capable of deciding our own destinies. This myth was in full force as Jenny Hatch’s parents argued in court that she should not be allowed to choose where she lives and who she lives with.

The reality is that people with disabilities are human beings. Human beings are entitled to such rights as bodily autonomy, free association, and freedom of movement. Everyone deserves liberty, regardless of their abilities.

The panic itself apparently fostered a “shoot first” mentality among police, reflected in a record number of so-called “justifiable homicides.” US Attorney General Eric Holder called this state of affairs — the spike in cop deaths, not the over-reaction — unacceptable, promising federal action.

Like most moral panics used to justify government “just doing something,” this one turned out to be — to say the least — quite overblown. Smith County, Texas, Sheriff J.B. Smith was quoted as saying: “I think it’s a hundred times more likely today that an officer will be assaulted compared to twenty, thirty years ago. It has become one of the most hazardous jobs in the United States, undoubtedly — in the top five.”

Well, not quite (that’s a polite, family-friendly substitute for “bull—-!”). In fact on-the-job police deaths had declined by almost half over the previous twenty years, at the same time as the number of police nearly doubled. The short-term upward fluctuation in police deaths was an anomaly, albeit a very visible one against the background of such low levels. That’s why statisticians look for large sample sizes.

Libertarian columnist Radley Balko reported in April of this year that police officer deaths were down 48% from last year — the lowest in sixty years. Death rates for cops is actually lower than that of the general population in 36 of America’s 74 largest cities. The job-related death rate for police is below that of several other occupations, including firefighter, coal miner and sanitation worker (from the carbon monoxide fumes they breathe walking behind garbage trucks).

But if violence AGAINST cops hasn’t increased, violence BY cops certainly has. Complaints of police brutality rose 25% in the seven-year period after 9/11, compared to the previous seven-year period. Despite an overall decline in crime rates and danger of on-the-job injury, police have developed an intensified sense of entitlement to minimize risk to themselves by any available means — no matter how unreasonable.

Nearly every day Balko, who specializes in stories of police abuse, cites accounts of police shooting non-hostile dogs and even unarmed citizens. Grounds? “The officer felt threatened.” Every day another story of a person tased or beaten to death — while in an epileptic seizure or diabetic coma — for “resisting arrest.” Police do whatever they feel necessary to avoid “feeling threatened” under any circumstances, and their political masters back them up.

With crime and on-the-job police deaths their lowest rates in decades, cops defend their hyper-militarization, aggressiveness and SS-chic aesthetic with siege mentality rhetoric about an “unprecedented danger” to police. Frankly, they sound like Lt. Calley psyching himself up to massacre the inhabitants of My Lai.

Situations that cops thirty years ago would have defused with talk and reason are now resolved with “less lethal force” such as the use of tasers on agitated 80-year-old women whose homes were invaded at 3AM. Even talking to a confused or upset person apparently poses a monstrous threat to life and limb — or at least an unacceptable inconvenience for someone in a hurry to reach the donut shop — justifying instant resort to boots and batons, tasers or bullets.

In recent years police resentment has escalated against the growing use of cell phone video to hold cops accountable for brutal assaults on non-violent citizens, perjury, and falsification of evidence. The proliferation of recorded police misconduct on YouTube is forcing a sea change in law enforcement culture, and they don’t like it. They grouse that they “can’t do anything” any more, that they’re “on a leash,” due to constant public scrutiny.

This sense of bruised entitlement is reflected in constant reports of police violence and harassment against citizens legally recording their activities. Other than accidentally witnessing a Mob execution, being spotted recording a cop in the process of brutalizing a prone citizen is about the single biggest danger to your health imaginable. This sense of entitlement to brutalize the citizenry whom they allegedly “protect and serve” resembles nothing so much as that of a big whiny baby, overdue to be weaned from the teat.

This is all typical of government activities aimed at “protecting” the citizenry: At a time of record-low objective danger, police attempt to whip the public into a frenzy of fear (cough cough TSA cough) to justify treating us with unprecedented indignity. Eighty years ago H.L. Mencken explained that government constantly instigated fear campaigns against imaginary hobgoblins to secure public acquiescence in the assault on their liberties and pocketbooks.

Don’t fall for it.

Rand Paul’s comments regarding the federal ban on racial discrimination in public accommodations (Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title II) have brought the libertarian position on civil rights to public attention.

Read the full TGIF here.