Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

A long time ago, in a galaxy not that far away, I was an auxiliary or reserve police officer, with a gun, a badge, genuine false arrest insurance, and everything. I signed up for a variety of reasons. The three greatest “authorities” on police work in a future libertarian society were (a) the Head of the Philosophy Department at the University of Southern California, (b) a real estate broker from the San Fernando Valley, and (c) a professor of economics from Brooklyn Polytechnic college.

They were the giants of the movement in those days—all of them gone, now, regrettably—and I more or less revered them. But when it came to describing the everyday mechanics of peacekeeping in a free society, with all due respect, they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. So I joined the local gendarmerie.

Then, too, I was planning my first novel, about a Denver homicide detective, and I wanted what I wrote to be authoritative. Frankly, I loved being a cop—it was like the Scouts with guns—and, ironically, it was that real estate broker, sometime later, who talked me out of a career in law enforcement, pointing out that sooner or later I would be compelled to ruin somebody’s life over a principle—say, marijuana laws—I didn’t believe in. I had been evading that.

The point of all this is that, if my fellow minions and I ever went to someone’s house to arrest him for armed robbery, burglary, or mugging, and he had his children with him, we would make damned sure that their mother, a maiden aunt, or Child Protective Services would step in to take care of them. They would be separated from their parent, the criminal suspect, as surely as if he were an illegal immigrant—and it would have absolutely nothing to do with his politics or ours. What else are you going to do?

Liberals today would have us not bust the guy.

President Donald Trump (and his I.C.E. officers) are being cynically framed by a gaggle of the lowest lives (Susan Sarandon, for God’s sake!) that American politics is capable of spawning. The only way to deal adequately with this dismal fraud is to go ahead and throw the damned kiddies in jail, so they can stay with Daddy and possibly Mommy and not get horribly separated.

I can see it now: when I was a little kid my folks used to take me to Elitch’s Gardens, a then-famous amusement park in the heart of Denver. In the center of the park there was a miniature play-land, with a teensy train scaled to five-year-olds, along with little cars, a fire engines and a silver bus. For some reason I loved that little bus and always looked forward to riding it for weeks. There was also a place called Tinytown, near Morrison, south of Denver, with houses scaled the same way.

Now imagine a tiny prison block—we could call it “the Fagin Wing” (or name it after Schumer or Pelosi)—attached to the full-sized adult facility, with plain, utilitarian benches the size of shoe-boxes, closely-spaced bars, and miniature cots like you’d buy for your dog. Everything would be painted in bright, attractive colors. After we record their tiny fingerprints and shoot their toddler mug-shots, each inmate would be issued one of those 1 1/2-inch Hohner harmonicas so he could play “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen” at two octaves above Middle C.

Baby-food and Lunchables would be served in tiny, pink, Barbie compartmented dinner trays with a gray, plastic prison sippy-cup on the side. Silverware would be provided, designed to allow prisoners to amuse themselves by digging mortar out from between the miniature bricks in their cells to tunnel out. Shivving others and other such naughtiness would be strictly punished with at least eight hours’ Time Out in the corner.

In the end, we’d provide a heavy wooden chair to strap them into, so we could tickle them until they wet themselves or puked.

The punishment must always fit the crime.

At that, it’s more humane than sending them to public schools!