Respecting Authority?
Yesterday at the library, one of the patrons was printing some pages of official-looking forms and volunteered the information that they involved her son, who was in prison for heroin. It was hard enough holding my tongue when the mere possession, consumption, and trade of narcotics is not fundamentally criminal by any rational measure, but then she also said he needed this prison experience to "learn to respect authority."
My opposition to the "War on Drugs" does not mean I wholeheartedly approve of drugs. I do think that drug addiction is evidence of some deeper issue that needs to be resolved for an individual to live a healthy life. However, government prohibitions and draconian punishments exacerbate the problems rather than address them. And the "authority" that prohibits drugs and punishes those who engage in the drug trade is wholly illegitimate.
A sound understanding of individual rights defines the sphere of authority for anyone. Self-proclaimed "authority" like the government trespasses against the individual authority we all have over our own lives, and claims superior ownership over every aspect of our existence. Permits, licenses, taxes, prohibitions, and other arbitrary laws do not protect or improve society despite the propaganda we are fed every day.
Every cop is fundamentally Cartman from South Park, and their authoritah is equally bogus. Bullies violate your authority whenever they exercise their counterfeit version. Elections, uniforms, and old documents do not magically transform bullying into virtue.
Holding one's tongue while on the job when people demand respect for Cartmanesque "authoritah" is one of the many burdens of a philosophical anarchist in a statist world.
I wholly appreciate your comparison to Cartman, I have never heard Cartman described as Cartmanesque and I love it! I agree that the authoritah is misplaced, the arbitrary laws are not sound whatsoever and I feel like we should not tolerate them! How do we go about not tolerating them? ahh thats a huge topic, civil disobedience I guess. Self governance as well. At least humanity is working towards these goals!
People who demand authority don't have, people who don't boss others around rarely need exert power over others.
I dunno, I agree that the war on drugs is ridiculous, but if someone steals my car I don't want to go after them myself. Maybe I lived in a privileged position, but the police have always had a positive influence on my life.
Objecting to a corrupt government monopoly service is not rejection of the principle. In this case, rejection of government cops is not rejection of security services, criminal investigation, or recovery of stolen property. The problem is, the vast majority of police work involves none of these things. It is primarily revenue generation and enforcement of absurd laws against non-crimes. My encounters with cops involve a bogus ticket from a coproach who was looking for an excuse to fill his quota and a refusal to address a tire slashing when everyone knew damn well who slashed the tires on my car. Incompetence and outright malice are the name of the game.
Then in that case, I agree. Filling quotas is an institutional problem that should be illegal.
It is officially illegal, but it's the only explanation for his behavior. He threatened me with a open container alcohol violation because I had picked up some litter that included beer cans. And he ticketed me for "failure to maintain my lane" because I pulled over toward the shoulder to let an apparent tailgater (the cop) pass, and returned to my lane when he did not pass. And the Judge decided he believed the cop more than he believed me because cop. This is the consequence of a tax-funded monopoly: arbitrary abuse under color of law.
Authority is a spook.
I agree, there's no justification whatsoever to lend any authority to any external agent to interfere with the exercise of anyone's free expression of their innate rights of action.
I hope you can detect a soupcon of sarcasm here (and apologies I don't have the proper diacritical on my keyboard).
I am VERY opposed to unregulated action by those in positions of authority, including the police- but there's some small hope established law moderates their predictable excesses, where there's almost none when the seriously addicted and intoxicated are given, or simply take, free rein.
From personal experience of frequent occurrence in my business, the first eventuality is difficult but navigable and hasn't led to personal injury or substantial financial damages over nearly 50 years of business life (and some of that business life was in flagrant disregard of the prevailing law back in the day)- but there's nothing like some drunk fuck or speedballer junkie holding a sawn-off shotgun a foot away from your face, covering your wife and baby, to realize there are very, very many in the world who clearly don't accept, whether they possess "a clear understanding of individual rights" or not, anything except the "authority" their weapon enables. That sort of thing happens nearly every week in small-town America.
It's a terrible problem some police, administrators, and legislators operate in the same manner, but it's not that common. It does appear to be escalating greatly in the past few years alone, however much the US has been trending to an integrated police state since the 1950s, but it's still not common.
"We, the People" actually proclaimed government at all levels somewhere along the line. You can disagree with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as amended and elaborated over the past 240 years (I assume you're in the US), just as I do in details- and if we can come up with a workable, agreeable alternative to interest enough people, we could then offer a different social contract and operate within its strictures, but we actually need that kind of agreement, and it needs both formal declaration and SOME kind of immediate situational control mechanism (it's called police power now, but I'd love to see some kind of alternative, given its present defects).
My suspicion is, between only the two of us, let alone the many millions who SHOULD be engaged in the discussion, we wouldn't be able to progress beyond statements of principle to engineer any actual, substantially foundational agreement.
So whatcha think, dude?
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