Feds claim global reach on another victimless crime

Verbatim article from the Salisbury Post, NC, via Drudge;

A Salisbury resident has been banned from hunting anywhere in the world for two years as part of an agreement with federal authorities in Kentucky on charges that he illegally hunted in and took wildlife from that state.

Rodney L. Poteat agreed to the ban in U.S. District Court in Kentucky last week, according to a Department of Justice press release. Reached at his Perryman Drive home Wednesday evening, Poteat declined to comment.

He also agreed to pay the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources $5,300 in restitution, and $50 in special penalty assessments. The restitution is to compensate the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources for the fees Poteat would have paid for hunting in Kentucky between 2002 and 2011, the press release said.

Poteat was charged July 27 and sentenced Sept. 7. He received unsupervised probation. The hunting ban was a condition of that sentence, Justice Department statement said.

According to federal authorities, on Nov. 27, 2010, Poteat transported a 14-point white-tailed deer from Hart County, Ky. to his home in Salisbury. Poteat was required to purchase a non-resident hunting license and deer permit prior to hunting in Kentucky. He also was required to report the harvest of any deer taken in Kentucky, and to make a report before transporting the deer outside of Kentucky.

Poteat also pleaded guilty to knowingly transporting a bobcat from Hart County, Ky. to Salisbury in November 2010 without purchasing a non-resident hunting license. Poteat also failed to report the harvest of a bobcat taken within Kentucky, authorities said.

According to the press release, Poteat used to live in Hart County, Ky.

--------------

So this guy nails a bobcat and a 14 point buck and gets the (stupid) book thrown at him. Did he encroach on another person or their property?  Nope. Just hunting.

Just wonderin' if this ever happened to folks during the founding generation.  Probably not. Can you imagine the face of an 18th or 19th Century North Carolinian or Kentukian when you told them this story?

Gee, what did we do before we had licenses to hunt? I guess we were acquiring food and killing varmints illegally for millenia.

Just askin'.

...Big federal dopes.

We 'mericans aint too smart

Funny yet sad post from zerohedge.com:

It's Official: America Is Now As Dumb As A Bag Of Hammers

Ever wonder why America will elect precisely the president it deserves in just over a year? Here's why.

And the award for the best sarcastic comment below the original post is:

caerus

can someone explain this chart to me...i'm bad at math

---------
Ok, kids, stop doin' that homework and watch TV.

Rand Paul, defender of the little guy against .gov run amok

Rand Paul on Lou Dobbs on 9/7. 

Subject: Failed economic policies of the Obama administration, abuses of big government against its citizens and small businesses. Worth the six and a half minutes of your time:

Bloomberg article disses States' Rights, the 10th Amendment, the Bonnie Blue Flag, and Ron Paul

All in one short Editorial essay:

The concept of “states’ rights” has a disgraceful history as the intellectual backbone of the Southern cause during the Civil War. One hundred years later, it was still being asserted as a legitimate, supposedly nonracist, reason for opposition to the civil-rights movement.

But there’s another historical thread, too: a progressive one that claims the states can be “laboratories of democracy.” The phrase comes from a 1932 dissent by Justice Louis Brandeis: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

On the other hand, “Turn it over to the states” is a favorite dodge for national politicians of all stripes when there is an issue they want to duck. As if there were the slightest evidence that state governments are more efficient or less corrupt than the feds.

In fact, the evidence is quite the other way: If you had to choose between the federal government or the typical state government to handle your affairs, if you had any sense, you would choose the feds.

Look what they did to our Bonnie Blue Flag; this is the image used on the top of the article:

My comments on this article will follow later in another post.

Start with this, though: Statist bastards. They must be perturbed.

Thomas Jefferson's relationship with slave Sally Hemmings disputed -- new scholarship

In a book due out Thursday, eminent scholars say it’s unlikely that Thomas Jefferson fathered Sally Hemings‘ children, disputing a decade’s worth of conventional wisdom that the author of the Declaration of Independence sired offspring with one of his slaves.

The debate has ensnared historians for years, and many thought the issue was settled when DNA testing in the late 1990s confirmed that a Jefferson male fathered Hemings‘ youngest son, Eston. But, with one lone dissenter, the panel of 13 scholars doubted the claim and said the evidence points instead to Jefferson’s brother Randolph as the father.

The scholars also disputed accounts that said Hemings‘ children received special treatment from Jefferson, which some saw as evidence of a special bond between the third president and Hemings.

“It is true that Sally’s sons Madison and Eston were freed in Jefferson’s will, but so were all but two of the sons and grandsons of Sally’s mother Betty Hemings who still belonged to Thomas Jefferson at the time of his death. Sally’s sons received by far the least favorable treatment of those freed in Thomas Jefferson’s will,” said Robert F. Turner, a former professor at the University of Virginia who served as chairman of the commission.

read the rest.

Our debt crisis explained so simply that even a Congressman can understand.

This was posted as a comment below a post on humblelibertarian.com.  It sums up in a few lines what no MSM journalist can ever seem to spell out in a 10 minute report. 

Simply stated, and therefore brilliant:

The below states the U.S.A. financial position succinctly:

U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000

Now just remove eight zeros and pretend it is a household budget--

Annual family income: $21,700
Money the family spent: $38,200
New debt on the credit card: $16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Total budget cuts: $385

Do you understand why I like to say that knowledge of economics should drive your politics?

With that income, how do you even pay the interest on the debt?  You can't.

Time to cut the fedgov down a few pegs, wouldn't ya say?

Cartoon of the Day 8/31

Read the sign being written in the lower left hand corner, and marvel. This was in the Chicago Tribune in 1934, during the New Deal:

The indirect way the Federal Reserve contributes to our debt-slavery

...and undermines Capitalism:

July personal income and expenditures were quite surprising in that while many were expecting the drop in the market to force consumer saving to upshift (lower spending than income), not only was this not true, but expenditures spiked by 1 whole percent from -0.2% to 0.8%, on expectations of 0.5%, even as Personal Income came in line with expectations of 0.3%, up from a revised 0.2% (concurrent with extensive prior data revisions). This was the biggest difference between a monthly change in income and spending since October 209. The net result was a plunge in the savings rate from 5.5% to 5.0%. And while on the surface this would be good news, as in Americans are spending again, a quick look at the PCE components indicates that virtually the entire surge is due to a spike in Energy goods and services. In other words, the entire spike in spending was to... pay for gas and associated energy expenses. Which makes sense: in June this was a drop of -4.5%, it is only logical that the subsequent jump in Brent and WTI forced American savings to drop.

All in all: in July Americans continued to max out their credit cards to pay for gas. As for the income side, transfer payments as a % of spending refuse to budge: thank you Uncle Sam.

link to Zero Hedge post.

No mention of the Federal Reserve above, right?

Here is the bottom line, as understood by the Austrian school of economics:

We can't save money because our expenditures continue to rise as our income is stable or contracting. The squeeze is on. Oil costs no more to produce now than it did before. Commodities like oil and gold tend to go up in price in $ when the dollar is less valuable from the Fed doing their Quatitative Easing (printing digital money not worth the paper it's not printed on, to quote Gerald Celente).

If you can't save, you cannot extract yourself from debt-slavery. If the country cannot save, it cannot use it's capital (i.e. saved wealth) to reinvest in industry to increase the country's productive capacity. That, by the way, is the definition of Capitalism. Keeping an economy going by blowing savings on purchases, by definition, has a finite time in which to do it. Eventually your savings is gone, and you go into hock. Look at chart above during pre 2008 housing bubble. No savings, living off real estate equity. When real estate bubble pops, savings rate has to increase. Individuals realize they must do what their grandparents always said: save for a rainy day, save to invest, save, save save.   I, for one, sooo regret not taking that to heart, even though I knew better.

---------------------

(Anyone with a more sophisticated grasp of Austrian theory feel free to correct me in the comments.)

To Serve Man

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged Americans on Saturday to recall the spirit that united the country after the September 11 attacks and take part in a national day of service to mark the anniversary next month. [Hmm...yes, I do recall that--people helping people, nothing to do with sacrificing time and effort for the .gov]


In remarks acknowledging the "great challenges" that confront the U.S. economy[that is, impossible to overcome], and could hurt his reelection chances next year[ya think?], Obama also sought to rise above the partisan political rancor that has divided Washington all summer[LOL].


"As we mark this solemn anniversary, let's summon that spirit once more. And let's show that the sense of common purpose that we need in America doesn't have to be a fleeting moment; it can be a lasting virtue[i.e. collectivism is good--and should be indefinite part of this HM]," Obama said in his weekly radio address.  
--Reuters article, this morning via news.yahoo.com.


--------------


It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master.--Ayn Rand


--------------



The goal of the “liberals”—as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus, statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservative” was only to retard that process.)


The moral cannibalism of all hedonist and altruist doctrines lies in the premise that the happiness of one man necessitates the injury of another.--Ayn Rand


-----------------



To Serve Man:
"It's a cookbook"
(Damon Knight short scifi story written in 1950, made into a Twilight Zone episode)


Dear President Obama, public servant:
Eat me.

Uncle Sam I'm not

I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like his welfare-warfare scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks, or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals, I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like these dirty bombs, or how they kill with no qualms.
I do not like their fiat money, it is worthless paper and oh so funny.
I do not like taxation as theft, I will be happy when none are left.
I do not like this kind of hope. I do not like it. nope, nope, nope!

via http://blog.mises.org/, Justin Ptak.
Love it.

Your taxes pay Verizon workers while they are on strike, not unemployed

Obama's Latest Stimulus: Handing Out Jobless Benefits To Striking Workers


One of the oddities that seemed out of whack in this morning's weekly Unemployment Claims update was the explanation for the spike in this week's receipents of government generosity: apparently it had to do with the BLS handing out weekly benefits checks to striking Verizon workers. We will repeat the key word from that sentence because it bears repeating: "striking." Now, we may be wrong here, but if one is striking, one is not u-n-e-m-p-l-o-y-e-d, and hence the US government should probably not be using taxpayer money to double pay such individuals who have singlehandedly decided to forgo pay in return for making a labor statement. Otherwise, it kinda kills the whole "sacrifice" thing. And, lo and behold, as it turns out, we are not wrong. From JP Morgan: "Striking workers are generally not eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, but it looks like about half of the total amount of striking workers filed claims over these two weeks to formally determine their eligibility." Generally... except when the administration is willing to hand out money to anything and everything with a pulse. After all, there is that massive $2.2 trillion Bank of America balance sheet that has to be funded. And with direct reserve funding already failed, as per QE1 and 2, the only other possible way is via deposit increases. Alas, by the time this money could possibly be saved, it has been spent 5 times, the other 4 hitting Bank of America's bad credit card receivables department.


From JP Morgan:


Initial claims increase during week ending August 20, with or without striking workers






Initial claims for the week ending August 20 increased 5,000 to 417,000 from a figure for the prior week that was revised up. The Department of Labor noted that the Verizon worker strike generated about 12,500 claims during the week ending August 13 and about 8,500 claims the week ending August 20 (not seasonally adjusted). Striking workers are generally not eligible to receive unemployment insurance benefits, but it looks like about half of the total amount of striking workers filed claims over these two weeks to formally determine their eligibility. If we remove these striking workers from the claims data to give us a better indication of labor market conditions, claims would have increased about 10,000 to 409,000 between the weeks ending August 13 and August 20; the four-week moving average for claims during these weeks would be around 400,000, showing improvement relative to the July labor market survey week when the four-week moving average was 422,000.






Continuing claims for the week ending August 13 declined 80,000 to 3.641mn. Continuing claims have been basically flat since the end of March, but this was the largest single-week drop reported since mid-February. The insured unemployment rate for the week ending August 13 ticked down from 3.0% to 2.9%, equaling the low for the recovery to date.

link

Tea Party terrorists exposed

Humor is cute/silly, but the parallels drawn at the end are chilling--


link to Breitbart

Two great graphics from williambanzai7 on zerohedge





link

Time to clean up DC--Divine intervention

To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.--Deuteronomy 32:35

image via market-ticker.org

Aug 17-18 Gallup poll, Ron Paul in statistical dead heat with Obama

Please, someone check my pulse, I think I've died and gone to heaven:

Link to article from Gallup

Federal Reserve actions making things worse, not better

verbatim post from mises.org

Hayek's Ghost Haunts the World
by Jeffery Tucker

Did you ever have the feeling that we've been through this before?

Think of it. Those in charge have only recently sworn — yet again! — that if we keep interest rates at zero, keep battling the symptoms of recession and unemployment with spending and jobs programs, clobber the speculators with regulations, and otherwise keep trying to revive moribund industries, all will be well. Just don't cut government spending or let interest rates rise!

So where have we heard it all before? It was the 1930s, when the battle between F.A. Hayek and J.M. Keynes raged in the English-speaking world, not only in the academic journals but in the newspapers in London and the United States.

Hayek gave a series of lectures based on his previous works in German that tried to explain that the ruling elite and their theoretical apparatus had it all wrong.

In a thousand different ways he said the same thing: "To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about."

Further, "because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection — a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end."

The essays in which Hayek so prophetically explained the boom and bust are collected in the most convenient form possible: Prices and Production and Other Works. It is a 528-page book that explores every conceivable aspect of business cycles.

Because this book is in print, it is really inexcusable that the same errors should be revisited upon the world today, strangling growth and driving every major economy further into the depths.

Now, granted, many decades went by when these writings were hard to come by. Many people had only bound photocopies they would let others borrow. But since 2008, the Mises Institute has had them all gathered in a single book, with explanatory material and at the price of $25.

Wherever this book lands, and wherever it is read and studied, the answers to what to do and what not to do are clear as bottled water. Hayek could barely mask his frustration. This was hardly the first time that governments and central banks had tried to cure the bust with the very poison that had destabilized the economy in the first place.

He cites, for example, the expansionary policy of the Fed in 1927, which the Fed itself described as "the greatest and boldest operation ever undertaken by the Federal Reserve System." In Hayek's view, it was this very action that caused the explosion in stock prices that led to the bust that wouldn't seem to go away.

He concludes, already in 1932: "We must not forget that, for the last six or eight years, monetary policy all over the world has followed the advice of the stabilizers. It is high time that their influence, which has already done harm enough, should be overthrown."

Note the constant focus: the root of the problem is to be found in the boom, not the bust.

Hayek's frustration was not so intense as to prevent him from very patiently refuting every theory that imagined that the business cycle was caused by something other than monetary factors. He marched through the theories one by one until he concludes that only a distortion in monetary signaling can cause so many to be so wrong in their investment decisions.

Turning to positive theory, Hayek celebrates J.B. Say's view that, absent such interest rate and monetary manipulation, there can be no tendency for entrepreneurs to make such systematic errors that create economy-wide booms followed by busts.

And here we have the heart of the difference between Hayek and Keynes: one knew that markets work to give us the best of all possible worlds, while governments create and exacerbate malfunctions; the other imagined that governments were somehow capable of both perceiving and correcting malfunctions by means of the printing press, provided the right technocrats are in charge.

The fundamental differences are obvious in the 60-page critique that Hayek wrote of Keynes's own Treatise on Money (1930). The criticism came out in 1931, even as Keynes was working on his General Theory. Hayek — who, as Joseph Salerno points out in the introduction to the collection, was very young at the time but had the courage to correct the current giant of the English-speaking profession — corrects Keynes on point after point.

Hayek offers a polite but devastating demonstration that Keynes (a) was unfamiliar with any of the most sophisticated capital theory emerging from the Austrian tradition, (b) contradicted himself constantly, and (c) was so unclear in his writing and thought that he made serious correction almost impossible.

After this essay appeared, Keynes casually dismissed it with the comment that he no longer accepted the views put forward in that book. Keynes went one step further and wrote a petty attack on Hayek's own book! Hayek was so discouraged by this that he was loath to take up criticizing the General Theory with the same level of detail.

The experience of the 1930s and since underscores that Hayek's view, beautifully presented in this book, is the one that conforms to reality. Hayek is fastidious in crediting Ludwig von Mises for having been the first to link together all the theoretical parts that make up the Austrian business-cycle theory. Mises is "certainly to be regarded as the most respected and consistent exponent of the monetary theory of the trade cycle," he writes.

Hayek's argument is relentless but all the more praiseworthy given the times. Unlike today, where the dissent against the stimulus is intensifying, Hayek and Mises had very few colleagues whom they could count on to back up their arguments. For this reason, however, Hayek, writing in English, must have felt a special burden of proof. He wrote with vigor, scientific precision, and passionate intensity about the entire topic of boom and bust.

It's as if Hayek had an object in his hand, turning it slowly every which way and describing its shape, color, and size in every way he knew how.

It is also in these essays that Hayek first laid out the triangles that illustrate the relationship between time and the stages of production. This was a true innovation and one of his most lasting contributions to economics. The Hayekian triangle is brilliant in its simplicity, but it highlights a point that had been lost on economists at the time and has still not penetrated today: the capital structure is incredibly complex and embeds a vast range of time horizons within the plans of every actor.

Only a full comprehension of this point prepares a person to see how it is that the manipulation of interest rates by the central bank can cause such damage. But Hayek is also careful to note that reversing the course of monetary policy is probably not enough to end an economic bust.

Monetary policy might have caused the boom, but monetary factors alone are not enough to explain the fullness of the bust. There are other factors: taxes, which discourage savings and production; regulations, which block discovery and entrepreneurship; government spending, which draws resources out of the private sector; debt, crowds out investment, and more.

Hayek concludes by calling not only for an end to discretionary policy but also "a radical revision of public policy" in all areas. The same is precisely true today, which is why rereading Hayek's work from the late 1920s and 1930s is at once eerie and enlightening.

Many decades went by before English-speaking readers were made aware of a parallel series of writings that were taking place in Austria at the time. Mises himself wrote during the same period from 1928 to 1936 and on the same issues. His essays are collected in a book that is a kind of companion volume: The Causes of the Economic Crisis.

However, here we find a much clearer presentation: a different personality, a different audience, a different mode of writing and thinking. If anyone is left with a lack of clarity after reading Hayek, Mises provides the essence of the issue at hand in 1931:

Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.

Those words could have been written this very day, describing our very predicament. So it is with Mises and all the Austrians. They wrote not just for their times but for all times.

Quote of the Day

Credit expansion cannot increase the supply of real goods. It merely brings about a rearrangement. It diverts capital investment away from the course prescribed by the state of economic wealth and market conditions. It causes production to pursue paths which it would not follow unless the economy were to acquire an increase in material goods. As a result, the upswing lacks a solid base. It is not real prosperity. It is illusory prosperity. It did not develop from an increase in economic wealth. Rather, it arose because the credit expansion created the illusion of such an increase. Sooner or later it must become apparent that this economic situation is built on sand.

--Ludwig von Mises, 1931, speaking on central bank reaction to Great Depression

Goin' on vacation = Presidential hara kiri

Verbatim post; Nile Gardiner's Telegraph blog

President Obama begins his 10-day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard today, the third year in a row he has taken his summer holiday in one of America’s most expensive resorts. During his time there he will be experiencing the kind of luxury that the vast majority of ordinary Americans can only dream about: Barack Obama will be staying in a compound which costs more to rent for a single week than most American households earn in a year.

In previous years Obama’s expensive vacations have attracted relatively little attention from the US media, with the exception of Michelle Obama’s trip to southern Spain last August, which led to her being dubbed a “modern-day Marie Antoinette” by one columnist. This year, however, even some flagships of the liberal mainstream media have been raising eyebrows. The Washington Post’s coverage for example has been unusually critical, for a publication that usually shies away from making an issue out what it would traditionally view as the president’s private life:

With 14 million Americans out of work, a volatile stock market and a historic downgrade of the country’s credit rating, President Obama is set to begin a 10-day retreat Thursday at a 28-acre Martha’s Vineyard compound called Blue Heron Farm, which costs an estimated $50,000 per week to rent. That divide — and the presumed hypocrisy of a president who has pledged not to rest “until every American looking for a job can find one,” going golfing and biking on an island playground for wealthy celebrities — has been too much for political pundits to resist.

Obama’s decision to head to a popular playground for wealthy elites in the face of intense media scrutiny is a surprisingly reckless move. It is a particularlly foolish act just 14 months away from a presidential election where he will likely end up the underdog rather than the favourite. The contrast between an imperious, out-of-touch US president and the economic plight of tens of millions of Americans could not be starker. Obama’s holiday will no doubt come to haunt him in November next year, with the economy the number one issue for voters.

Which begs the question – why did the president go ahead with his vacation despite the worst approval ratings of his presidency, plunging stock markets, falling consumer confidence, and overwhelming public disillusion with his handling of the economy? I think the answer lies in Obama’s professorial-style arrogance, and a condescending approach towards ordinary Americans.

This is a US presidency with a distinctly Upstairs Downstairs approach towards running the country. At the end of the day, Barack Obama is in a serious state of denial if he believes the US electorate won’t care if their president acts with impunity at a time of tremendous economic turmoil and uncertainty. I suspect that when he returns to Washington in September, Mr Obama may get a rather nasty shock in the polls from angry voters who won’t take kindly to their president going AWOL in the lap of luxury during a major financial crisis.

Ron Paul, prescient for President, 2012

Knowledge of Austrian Economics is key for accurate predictions of the business cycle.  Austrian theory can tell you what will definitely happen in the macro-economy, but cannot tell you when.  This is primarily because the market is not "free" but is corporatist, being an unsavory marriage of government, central banks, brokerage houses, and specific businesses.

Here, Paul is quoted from a 2003 statement in the House Banking Committee, where he hits the nail on the head with how the housing bubble would burst.


Who do you want in public office, if not someone who REALLY understands how the economy works?

Every other GOP candidate is a Statist Keynesian dog. (Michelle Bachman is the closest to Paul, as she claims to have read and admires von Mises' work, but who needs another neocon in the White House?)

We, the people of the United States, constantly fleeced by the government and central bank, cannot afford another Keynesian neocon administration. It's time for radical change, and to begin to unwind the powers that be.

Money bomb on August 20th.

Vigilantism, a concept whose time has come

Verbatim post of Wendy McElroy at mises.org:

What will you do if rioting sweeps US cities as it did British ones last week?

Vigilantism is defined as "Taking the law into one's own hands and attempting to effect justice according to one's own understanding of right and wrong." Typically, it occurs when traditional law enforcement is absent, ineffective, or corrupt. When exercised in defense of person and property, vigilantism is the direct expression of an individual's right to protect himself or innocent others against aggression. It is also defined as "action taken by a voluntary association of persons who organize themselves for the purpose of protecting a common interest."

If an individual has this right, then, so too does a group acting in tandem. When such a group acts over time, it not only protects people and property but also tends to stabilize an entire community. Indeed, in his thesis "Pax Vigilanticus: Vigilantism, Order, and Law in the Nineteenth Century American West," Jared Kelley wrote, "I believe that vigilantism represents more than simply a reaction to crime and corruption, but an instinctual, psychological push to restore the status quo of a society disrupted by some crisis or exigency."

Vigilantism has deep roots in American history and culture. From tales of the Wild West to the caped-crusading Batman, the act of standing up to thugs is part of the national ethos. And the assumption of personal responsibility for self-defense is what drives the uniquely American pro-gun movement. But will the increasingly despotic police force allow citizens to arm and organize in self-defense against a marauding horde?

The UK's response to last week's riots may offer insight.

The Precedent of Britain

When plundering mobs descended on several British neighborhoods, they were met by residents who had formed protective barriers around their businesses and homes. They were met by vigilantes.

Officials in the UK, as everywhere, pronounce the word vigilante with intonations of horror and disgust. To them, a vigilante represents "society gone askew" every bit as much as the looter who smashes open windows, because both men constitute a basic denial of the officials' authority. No wonder the police are eager to portray those who protect their own persons and property as "lynch mobs" or otherwise threats to civil society. If a trend toward self-defense were encouraged, after all, then the police might be out of a job; the authorities might be out of power. And so, vigilante is a good word that has "gone bad," largely because the authorities fear its virtues.

Both the antagonism and fear of authorities were evident in Britain last week. In the wake of riots, the police attacked not merely the rioters but also those who patrolled their own neighborhoods and averted violence. But they did so surreptitiously.

Clearly, the police were upset with the vigilantes. While their official impotence was displayed on TV screens around the world, average people banded together to perform the work the police could not. According to the UK Telegraph, "as many as 1,500 Sikhs, some in their eighties," patrolled West London neighborhoods and chased off rioters. In East London, "Turkish shopkeepers" armed with baseball bats and pool cues fended off looters; "Turkish and Kurdish men lined the key street of Kingsland High to seal off their community. As one shopkeeper stated, "There were no police so we came out to defend ourselves. I don't know if it's breaking the law but what can we do?"

"The police attacked not merely the rioters but also those who patrolled their own neighborhoods and averted violence."

But the police need to walk a fine line in criticizing vigilantes. Many of the scofflaws are heroes within their own communities — and even beyond. The Independent noted, "In the more affluent neighbourhood of Stoke Newington further north — an area filled with boutique shops and independent retailers — there was widespread praise for Turkish people who stopped rioters." Meanwhile, those same communities are united in disapproval of the police performance.

While decrying vigilantism in general, therefore, the authorities have focused their ire upon one group in particular: the English Defence League (EDL) with whom the public is less likely to have sympathy. The EDL is a far-right-wing group known for violent street protests against Sharia Law and Islamic extremism. Clive Efford, the MP for Eltham, where rioting was severe, stated, "A group of the English Defence League turned up in the high street and have been drinking all day, and although they say they're here to assist the police, they [the police] have now diverted all these resources here."

Accounts from those who patrolled the streets deny that the EDL were prevalent. Whichever account is true, however, the authorities and the press clearly wish to paint these unsympathetic drunkards as the vigilantes. For example, the Morning Star stated, "In Enfield a mob of white men, again believed to have included members of the EDL, swarmed through the streets chanting 'England.'"
Meanwhile, the authorities are treating the respectable vigilantes with kid gloves. On the one hand, the police are expressing concern about their safety. CNN reported, "the Metropolitan Police has warned against vigilantism, calling on members of the public not to put themselves in harm's way."

On the other hand, the police are diverting people from vigilantism into other tasks that make them feel valuable. A borough commander of an embattled neighborhood announced, "I urge the public to remain vigilant and report any information you have to police"; potential vigilantes have been asked to work instead on identifying the looters for future prosecution.

Authorities have flipped the "default" switch on self-defense: namely, leave it to the police. As the International Business Times stated, "Contrary to everyday people, the police have been trained to handle difficult situations, and the powers that have been given to them by the government should not be conferred to the rest of the population."

A Concept in Need of Redemption

This is an amazing statement: the right to defend against violence is a "power" that is given to the police "by government" and "should not be conferred to the rest of the population." The two main reasons for denying the right to self-defense seem to be

1. without government training, people will get hurt; and
2. people who rise in self-defense will turn into a lynch mob.

Regarding the first reason, when the police cannot or do not offer protection, people and property will be damaged. The best chance of preventing that damage is precisely for people to defend themselves. Moreover, denying the right of self-defense to a person because he might get hurt is like denying freedom of speech because he might misspeak or denying freedom of religion because he could join the wrong church. The denial is not an act of concern or protection; it is the imposition of social control.

"Vigilantism is the opposite of a lynch mob."

Regarding the second reason: by invoking the image of drunken racist throngs, the British authorities are trying to make vigilantism into a synonym for lynch mobs. After rousing public fear and disgust, the government can "come to the rescue" and declare a monopoly on the use of defensive force. Because of images like that of a lynch mob, people reflexively turn away from the possibility of a private police force and private defense.

Return to the definition of vigilantism: "Taking the law into one's own hands … " The very definition draws a clear line between vigilantes and a lynch mob; the former takes the law into their own hands while the latter has nothing to do with the law except for breaking it. Indeed, as the London riots show, vigilantes are usually a defense against mobs, whether the ongoing thugs are looters or lynchers. Things can go badly wrong whenever there is a need for self-defense, but mistakes and missteps are aberrations that do not negate the essential nature of vigilantism. It is the opposite of a lynch mob.

The American Roots of Vigilantism

The first American "vigilance committee" of note was organized in San Francisco in 1851 to control the hooliganism that accompanied the gold rush. The population of the city had exploded from 812 in 1848 to approximately 25,000 in 1849, with more than half of the newcomers being foreigners. Crime surged along ethnic lines; for example, organized outlaws named the "Hounds" raped and brutalized the Mexican residents with impunity. Approximately 230 citizens formed the original committee, but it quickly grew to 700 members. An executive provided oversight and subcommittees policed the city.
Jared Kelley described the outcome:

The vigilantes incarcerated seventeen of "The Hounds" in the brig of a ship anchored in San Francisco's harbor … and drove the rest from town before the captured bandits were delivered to a legitimate court and the Committee of 1851 dispersed.

The vigilantism with which I am most familiar occurred during the 1992 riots in Los Angeles. In the wake of the savage police beating of a black man named Rodney King, the city experienced the worst civil unrest in its history. Although I had relocated a few years before, I kept in close touch with a friend who lived in a "threatened" neighborhood. At one point she reported that her Korean neighbors were standing on rooftops with automatic rifles. The Koreatown area of Los Angeles was heavily targeted by looters and arsonists. By the second day, police and firemen did not even bother to show up. In a flash, the Koreans organized and armed themselves to protect their community both from physical attack and from the flames. After seeing news footage of a gunfight in Koreatown, I called my friend and urged her to leave the area. She convinced me it was safe by recounting how the Koreans had expanded their protective perimeter to include the public library.

A Concept Whose Time Has Come

The American police would probably react more quickly and violently against both rioters and vigilante groups in the United States. And yet if riots did occur in American streets, neighborhood committees would almost certainly be organized as they were in Koreatown. People will not stand passively by while their homes and businesses are looted. People will not wait for an absentee police force and fire department. They will shield their families from danger.

If riots come, it will not be the rich who suffer; they will be watching the violence on TV in their gated or high-rise communities. It will not be the media pundits who comment on "how terrible and senseless it is for them to destroy their own communities" while, at the same time, they excoriate anyone who picks up a gun to defend that community. It will be lower- and middle-class people who pick up a gun or a baseball bat, because, at its foundation, vigilantism is also a grassroots phenomenon.

A vigilante is an average person who refuses to surrender to violence or authority. It is little wonder the elite look upon him and see a lynch mob.