{"id":17214,"date":"2014-12-12T21:35:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T19:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=17214"},"modified":"2014-12-19T07:36:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T05:36:22","slug":"ilana-mercer-on-eric-garner-100-innocent-under-libertarian-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=17214","title":{"rendered":"Eric Garner: 100% innocent under libertarian law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Garner was doing nothing naturally illicit when he was tackled and placed in the chokehold that killed him. It can be argued, if anything, that Garner was being entrepreneurial. He had been trading untaxed cigarettes in defiance of the state\u2019s \u201cslave patrol\u201d and \u201cComrade\u201d Andrew Cuomo\u2019s \u201cCigarette Strike Force,\u201d in the words of liberty\u2019s Don Quixote, William Norman Grigg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Had Garner\u2019s naturally licit trade not been criminalized by today\u2019s Tammany Hall, he\u2019d be alive today.<\/p>\n

\"ilana_nuut2\"<\/a>\u201cGarner,\u201d wrote Grigg, \u201chad suffered years of pointless and unnecessary harassment by the costumed predators employed by the New York Police Department,\u201d when he declared, minutes before he was killed: \u201cEvery time you see me, you want to mess with me! I\u2019m tired of it! It stops today!\u201d<\/p>\n

Grigg noted: \u201cEric Garner\u2019s exasperated proclamation \u2018It stops today!\u2019 is cognate with \u2018Don\u2019t tread on me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The killing of Eric Garner was caught on camera and uploaded to YouTube. A grand jury, however, failed to see what was as plain as day to everyone else as well as to the city medical examiner. An autopsy revealed that the Garner death was a homicide, brought on, July 17, by \u201ccompression of the neck and chest, along with Garner\u2019s positioning on the ground while being restrained by police.\u201d<\/p>\n

The footage also shows that the cops who jumped Eric Garner with such enthusiasm were oblivious to his repeated pleas for air. Neither was an attempt at resuscitation commenced once they realized Garner was unresponsive. Instead, the cops panicked, barking orders at observes to disperse.<\/p>\n

Garner\u2019s manner of death conjures the manner in which Carol Anne Gotbaum met her untimely demise, in 2008. Gotbaum, a petite, 45-year-old slip of a woman \u2013 she weighed 105 pounds \u2013 was likely asphyxiated in Phoenix\u2019s Sky Harbor Airport by some corpulent cops. She had become distraught \u2013 not dangerous \u2013 after she was detained at the airport and not permitted to proceed to her destination. Unhinged, Gotbaum took off down the concourse hollering. She was quickly scrummed by meaty policemen<\/a>, tackled to the ground, a colossal knee jabbed into her skinny spine. Gotbaum was then thrown in a holding cell, where she was shackled and chained to a bench. Minutes later Gotbaum was dead.<\/p>\n

Her bruised body was autopsied. As inevitably as water spiraling down a plughole, the police were exonerated. Famous forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden said: \u201c\u2026 the most likely cause of death has to do with asphyxia and could be a result of too much pressure on her chest when they were putting on the handcuffs and the shackles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carol Anne Gotbaum was white. Cops are equal-opportunity offenders. Factoring into account the disproportionate representation of blacks among the population of law-breakers, cops aggress against whites and blacks more or less equally. (Except that whites don\u2019t riot and loot.)<\/p>\n

Not to be conflated are the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, of Ferguson fame<\/a>. While the evidence of police wrongdoing in Garner\u2019s death is incontrovertible, the reverse is true in Brown versus Officer Darren Wilson.<\/p>\n

As the evidence shows, Michael Brown initiated aggression. He had aggressed against the store keeper and the policeman, who protected himself from this rushing mountain of flesh. In libertarian law, the individual may defends himself against initiated aggression. He may not initiate aggression against a non-aggressor.<\/p>\n

\"Into<\/a><\/p>\n

Eric Garner, on the other hand, had aggressed against nobody. Whereas Brown was stealing cigarillos; Garner was selling his own cigarettes. The \u201claw\u201d he violated was one that violated Garner\u2019s individual, natural right to dispose of his own property \u2013 \u201cloosies\u201d \u2013 at will.<\/p>\n

In libertarian law, Garner is thus 100 percent innocent, for the good libertarian abides by the axiom of non-aggression. When enforcers of the shakedown syndicate came around to bust him, Garner raised his voice, gestured and turned to walk away from his harassers. He did not aggress against or hurt any of the goons.<\/p>\n

To plagiarize myself in \u201cTasers \u2018R\u2019 Us<\/a>,\u201d \u201cLiberty is a simple thing. It\u2019s the unassailable right to shout, flail your arms, even verbally provoke a politician [or policeman] unmolested. Tyranny is when those small things can get you assaulted, incarcerated, injured, even killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Again: Garner had obeyed the libertarian, natural law absolutely. He was trading peacefully. In the same spirit, he turned to walk away from a confrontation. Befitting this pacific pattern, Garner had broken up a street fight prior to his murder.<\/p>\n

The government has a monopoly over making and enforcing law \u2013 it decides what is legal and what isn\u2019t. Thus it behooves thinking people to question the monopolist and his laws. After all, cautioned the great Southern constitutional scholar James McClellan, \u201cWhat is legally just, may not be what is naturally just.\u201d \u201cStatutory man-made law\u201d is not necessarily just law.<\/p>\n

Unlike the positive law, which is state-created; natural law in not enacted. Rather, it is a higher law \u2013 a system of ethics \u2013 knowable through reason, revelation and experience. \u201cBy natural law,\u201d propounded McClellan in \u201cLiberty, Order, And Justice,\u201d \u201cwe mean those principles which are inherent in man\u2019s nature as a rational, moral, and social being, and which cannot be casually ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eric Garner was on \u201cpublic\u201d property. Had he been trespassing on private property, the proprietor would have been in his right to remove him. However, Garner was not violating anyone\u2019s rights or harming anyone by standing on a street corner and peddling his wares \u2013 that is unless the malevolent competition that sicced the cops on him has a property right in their prior profits. They don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2014 by Ilana Mercer<\/em><\/p>\n

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