In discussing how to punish guilty public officials (“jobholders”), Mencken said, “What is needed is a system (a) that does not depend for its execution upon the good-will of fellow jobholders, and (b) that provides swift, certain and unpedantic punishments, each fitted neatly to its crime.”
Mencken’s proposed remedy “provides that any [citizen]…having looked into the acts of a jobholder and found him delinquent, may punish him instantly and on the spot, and in any manner that seems appropriate and convenient – and that, in case this punishment involves physical damage to the jobholder, the ensuing inquiry by the grand jury or coroner shall confine itself strictly to the question whether the jobholder deserved what he got. In other words, I propose that it shall no longer be malum in se for a citizen to pummel, cowhide, kick, gouge, cut, wound, bruise, maim, burn, club, bastinado, flay, or even lynch a jobholder, and that it shall be malum prohibitum only to the extent that the punishment exceeds the jobholder’s desserts. The amount of this excess, if any, may be determined very conveniently by a petit jury, as other questions of guilt are now determined…. If it decides that the jobholder deserves the punishment inflicted upon him, the citizen who inflicted it is acquitted with honor. If, on the contrary, it decides that the punishment was excessive, then the citizen is adjudged guilty of assault, mayhem, murder, or whatever it is, in a degree apportioned to the difference between what the jobholder deserved and what he got, and punishment for that excess follows in the usual course…. “
Regarding Mencken’s proposal for punishing bureaucrats–Brett Middleton writes,
“This is in regard to your lewrockwell.com blog entry on 10/23, in which you describe Mencken’s proposed justice system for those who take it upon themselves to punish a public official. If you’d like to see an example of a similar system in (fictional) action, I suggest that you try to find a copy of H. Beam Piper’s short novel “Lone Star Planet“. I think you’d appreciate the trials held in the “Court of Political Justice.””
So here I am, yesterday, on my daily drive home from work in Sugar Land, back to home in Houston, wending my way through a one-mile stretch that passes through an island of suburbia known as (we’ll call it, to protect the not-so-innocent, namely me) Brookhollow Place. It’s a well-known speed trap. Drive fast–they bust you. My last encounter with them was a bad day about 2 years ago. I had run a red light in down town Houston at lunchtime, and worked until almost midnight. Driving home, I went about 50 in a 35–in Brookhollow Place. The cop stopped me. I was in a suit that day, looked totally legit, driving a car with all lights working–you know, the kind of guy who doesn’t deserve a ticket.
I told the cop, “Man, this has not been my day, I already got another ticket a lunch,” hoping he would let me go. He says, “Let me see it,” getting my hopes up. He’s gonna give me a break, I thought. A few minutes later, he saunters back up to my car and hands me the ticket. “What did you need to see the other ticket for?” I splutter? “Just wanted to check your story out,” answers the redneck. [continue reading…]
[An edited version of an email I prepared and sent to friends shortly after Christmas, 1998. Before 9/11/2001, when the world was still innocent. Sigh.]
So our Cocker Spaniel, Muffy (yeah, that’s her name, what of it?), kicks the bucket a couple years ago [around 1996], when we lived in Philly. Cin loved that dog, I gave her to her back in college, in 1989, as a present. We buried her in Great Valley Pet Cemetary. Putting the rose in her little paws was too much to bear. I paid $400 for the hole in the ground but I was not gonna shell out $400 more for a coffin. Nosirree. I’m not some stupid, soft, manipulable yuppie. In fact, I insisted on carrying her out of the vet’s office, after they had to put her to sleep, in the black Hefty bag I had brought along to protect the car seats on the way to the pet graveyard. It was a pitiful scene, as wife and I walked out in tears, with our poor dead Cocker (nestled in a Hefty bag) in my arms. We made such a commotion and upset the other patrons waiting to get FiFi’s annual shots, that they didn’t even make us pay for the euthanasia (ohhhhh, but someday, I tell you, SOME DAY, we will pay for all those youths in Asia). I showed them. Or maybe, they were content with the $1300 we had shelled out the preceding 6 days on ultimately ineffectual Cocker Spaniel dialysis treatment. [continue reading…]
So the other day, Cin’s sister Amy and her family were visiting. On a fine Saturday morning, I decide to take my 6-year-old nephew, Thomas, and our standard poodles Sophie & Anna Belle for a walk to a park a few blocks fom our house. Well, I had to walk the dogs anyway, and it was an excuse to have a cigar. And I get brownie points w/ the wife and sister-in-law because it looks like I’m bonding with my nephew at the same time. A win-win. Also have a coffee travel mug full of beer–don’t want my WASP neighbors to sneer at me. Or my wife and sister-in-law. After all, this is like 10:30 in the morning. Multitasking, man. Made cell phone on the way there, and have a comic book stuffed in my pocket, just in case I get bored. Fat chance. [continue reading…]
If you ask, “Where exactly do I put dirty baby clothes? Where is this alleged special baby clothes hamper you always refer to?” and the wife answers, “In the green hamper on top of the little fridge in the laundry room–where we’ve been putting them for two months–where have you been? What planet do you live on?”–I suggest you don’t mutter under your breath loud enough for her to hear, “at least I don’t live on b*tch-world”.
Another suggestion: if you are leaving the house with wife and baby in tow, and the wife pulls your wedding ring out of her pocket, saying, “so, why aren’t you wearing THIS?”, don’t say, “Look, I’m walking your two poodles on pink leashes, I’ve got the baby in a Baby Bjorn carrier on my stomach, I’ve got a Brighton diaper bag over my shoulder–just how married do I need to look?”
I was interviewed today for the Who Owns You? documentary, by Taylor Roesch. We spent almost an hour on the interview part in my study (luckily I had put my standard poodles Sir Boudreaux and Anna Banana Belle to the groomers to avoid barkage), then a couple hours, with his two assistants Ben and Jorge, partaking of beer, bourbon, and cigars and on my back porch. Then I sent them off to Fogo de Chao. “Begone!,” I said, “you roving documentarians!”
Update: my friends mock my standard poodles. Some pix of my babies are below. And here are some blogposts about them: Poodles Bite; Anna Belle (da poodle) ‘n Me.
As noted at Libertarian Papers: For those who like paper, Libertarian Papers is offered in a Print Archive version, at cost, via print-on-demand. Our second print archive is Vol. 1 (2009), Part 2: Articles 18-44 (555 pages). It’s available for $16 (our cost), from Lulu. It may be ordered from our Print Archive page.
(Thanks to Gil Guillory for putting this print archive together.)
A French-German Tulane law student acquaintance of mine (he speaks nine languages–I only speak about 0.7), Frederic Sourgens, sent me his Inn of Court brief where he argues for the impeachment of President Jefferson for undertaking the unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase. A bit rough, but fun… Download file. After 30 pages of legal reasoning, it concludes: “President Jefferson must be removed from office because of his blatant disregard of the Constitution constituting a high misdemeanor of state and high treason against the United States.“
“Being tagged “right-wing” has not helped the libertarian movement. It’s hurt.”
I agree with the latter. But that does not mean that we are left–we are not. Nor does it mean that “There are also good strategic reasons for associating libertarianism with the left and not with the right.”
“Associating”? What does this mean? It is not left. It is not right. It is neither left nor right. Both left and right are statist, evil, and anti-libertarian. Let us not forget that. [continue reading…]
So what if I am or am not an “anarchist”? What the [f*ck] difference does it make? Is there some Board of Anarchists who’s going to censure me if I don’t stick to the Anarchist Party Line and recite the Anarchist Catechism?
I want individual freedom … as much as is offered on the menu. Everything else is debating strategy and tactics.
What difference does it make?? Why… because the libertarian–who believes in “individual freedom”, expressed usually in terms of individual rights against aggression–opposes all forms of aggression as being unjust… he opposes both private aggression (crime) and public aggression, and he recognizes that states of necessity commit aggression–or, as you might say, infringe on “individual freedom.”
As we are conceptual, language-using beings, it helps to use words for various concepts.
I had formed the impression, given Alongside Night and other writings of yours, that you would have agreed with all this, so I can’t understand your disagreement here. [continue reading…]
As noted at 
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