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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 846, November 8, 2015 If you're much under sixty, it might surprise you to learn that liberalism used to be sum-uppable in the single sentence "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death Your right to say it."
Special to L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise Recently, Quentin Tarantino said, "Frankly, it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater. I'm not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. That is slanderous. That is not how I feel." My goodness, whatever does he mean? I'm a cop hater, and I will tell you why. I am a cop hater because police initiate force and I am against initiating force. I am a cop hater because every cop is paid in stolen money, and every cop is an enforcer for the system. I am a cop hater because cops enforce unjust laws and enjoy doing so. I am a cop hater because cops in Houston broke eleven of my bones in January 2004 and felt completely justified doing so. I am a cop hater because cops rape, murder, and beat people for no reason, to satisfy their own need for power, because cops are bullies, because cops stand by each other. If cops were going to start arresting cops, if cops were no longer initiating force, if cops were not corrupt, if cops were not paid by tax (stolen) money, I would be willing to reconsider. But I would probably go right on hating cops until every single cop who has ever committed a crime, who has ever beaten a protester, who has ever shot an unarmed man, who has ever raped an unarmed woman, who has ever enforced an unjust law apologised, admitted their guilt, and took responsibility to compensate their many victims. There is not a single police officer currently employed in the United States who is willing to stand against the system, who is willing to refuse to enforce unjust laws, who is willing to arrest other cops, who is willing to admit their guilt, who is willing to refuse the blood money, tax money, stolen money in their pay cheques. And if there is such a police officer, I suggest that person should resign, immediately, before the other cops kill that person. What, then, is it all about? I'll tell you what. Quentin Tarantino went to a protest in New York City and spoke out against police brutality. Here is what he said:
Now, what in that statement is controversial? Oh, sure, in that statement he calls murder by police officers murder, and he says that those who murder are murderers. Gosh, that's really going too far, huh, Mr. Police Officer Friendly, isn't it? Quentin Tarantino said Tuesday that his remarks condemning police brutality have been misrepresented to "demonize" him and deflect attention away from the issue. "All cops are not murderers," Tarantino told The LA Times in his first public response to the controversy. "I never said that. I never even implied that. What they're doing is pretty obvious," he said. "Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It's to shut me down. It's to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument." "I'm not being intimidated," he said. "Frankly, it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater. I'm not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. That is slanderous. That is not how I feel. But you know, that's their choice to do that to me. What can I do? I'm not taking back what I said. What I said was the truth. I'm used to people misrepresenting me; I'm used to being misunderstood. What I'd like to think their attack against me is so vicious that they're revealing themselves. They're hiding in plain sight." One police union after another has boycotted Tarantino, and by Friday protests reached a crescendo with the National Association of Police Organizations — a group representing 1,000 police units and associations and over 241,000 sworn law enforcement officers — calling for a total boycott of his films, including the upcoming "Hateful Eight." (see above citation from LA Times) So, there you have it. Tarantino acknowledges that police commit murder and that those who do should be called murderers. And he doesn't hate cops. But I do. And I think you should, too. The police are not here to help. The police are rarely in a position to prevent crimes and under no legal requirement to do so. The police are frequently fat and lazy. The police do not respect individual liberty, privacy, nor sovereignty. Police are frequently immoral. Police do not care about wrongdoing by police and do not want to have their authority challenged, regulated, inspected, supervised, or over-ruled. Police behave in hateful, evil ways. Now, not all police are guilty of every one of the things I've mentioned above except, I believe, accepting payment in the form of stolen money (since taxation is necessarily and always theft), and initiating force to impose unjust laws. What should you do about it? You should not involve the police if there is ever any other way of resolving a matter. You should not expect the police to do the right thing. You should be aware that the person who reports a dead body or any evidence of any other sort of crime to the police is going to be a suspect because pinning the crime on someone is good for police and prosecutors (who benefit from having a high percentage of convictions) and because they aren't interested in the truth, nor in justice. You should keep and bear arms and take other steps to protect your freedom and privacy. You should be responsible for your own actions. You should not expect the police to protect you. And, of course, you should never, ever attack the police physically in any way, because they will beat you to death, they will claim you were attacking them, and they will fabricate evidence to convict you. You should be aware that the success rate of cases where a person claimed self defence in any physical altercation with or killing of a police officer have a very, very low rate of success. The police do commit murder and they do get away with it. People who kill cops do get caught, because the cops are very determined on this point, and they do get convicted. Speaking out against police brutality is a logical activity. Writing about it is, too. But expecting the cowards in government to ever do anything to limit police power, to reduce their budgets, to put civil liberties above police power, to encourage private security arrangements over government ones, would be very misguided. The police like their power and they have a great many allies. People in government like being bribed, paid off, given campaign contributions, and otherwise "encouraged" to fund police departments, big police expenditures in weapons and armour, and new and more invasive technologies of all kinds. So, don't put your faith in politicians, unless you really enjoy having your trust betrayed. Cops and cop lovers will say that I am against cops. I'm not against them, as long as they resign, stop accepting stolen money, admit and apologise for their wrongdoing and pay compensation to all of their victims. Cops and cop lovers will say that I want cops to be killed. I don't. Far from it. Much like Zeus in Die Hard with a Vengeance I'm aware that if one cop gets killed, very soon we have thousands pissed off cops making trouble for everyone. What if you don't hate cops? Then you don't. I cannot agree with your point of view, but you are free to have your own. No doubt there are people reading this essay who will decide that they should be free to have their point of view, but I should not be free to have mine. And they'll say all kinds of foolish things about a "thin blue line of heroes" and claim that there are things wrong with me. Others will say that hate is wrong, and that admitting that I hate something, even something evil, is a bad idea. I disagree. I think hate is normal, ordinary, and human. Hating evil is not wrong. You would not, for one moment, object to people in concentration camps or gulags in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union hating the concentration camp guards. Perhaps you could explain to me the actual difference between the thugs in police uniforms and concentration camp guards. There certainly are things wrong with me. But hating cops isn't one of them. Hating cops is logical, it is sensible, and it is moral. If you love being oppressed, if you love being harassed, if you love being beaten, if you look forward to being raped, if you want the police to kill you, then you might not hate cops. But my guess is that the people who will be most against my point of view are people who like bullies, and bullying. After all, people, including some in the freedom "movement" didn't like it when I came out in favour of Joe Stack killing an IRS supervisor by flying a small plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, some years back. (I wrote about it here in TLE, you can look it up.) People, including at least one who pretended he was a libertarian for a time, didn't like it when I exposed the home addresses of federal judges who felt that your car should not ever be safe in your home's driveway from espionage devices. Some of those people were USA Marshalls who demanded that my essay be removed from TLE, and GoDaddy who threatened to close the domain name because of my essay. (I used a terribly clever trick to get their addresses: I looked them up in the published telephone directories for their communities.) Naturally, I shrugged my shoulders, published the essay in my book Being Libertarian and encouraged Neil and Ken to remove the "offending" essay knowing that dozens of mirror copies would be immediately available on other sites. I also note, for the record, that to date nobody seems to have done anything about those pesky judges who hate freedom and privacy. Presumably fewer hotheads are taking actions based on my writings than some people seem to have feared. Am I for armed revolution against the system? I think it would be justifiable, certainly, but I don't think it would succeed. Nor, if successful, would it change much. People seem to want a machinery of government and to hear its noises, as Henry David Thoreau pointed out in 1848. So if there were an armed revolution, the victors would set up a new government. And as The Who sang, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." So, what do I want? I don't want an armed revolution. I don't want police brutality. I do want to be let alone. I do want freedom, sovereignty, peace, and justice. And if there were ever any police who wanted those things too, who stopped being police and sought those things, I would most certainly not hate those particular individuals, once they stopped being police. Why do I want freedom, peace, and justice? Well, after all, I was promised flying cars, trips to the Moon, and a free country. Since the government, the politicians, and the society that I live in refuse to live up to those promises, I'm going to have to obtain them for myself. And freedom, peace, and justice are necessary elements of these other goals. Another useful question would be: why don't you want freedom, peace, or justice?
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