When the state turns you into a criminal, friends become enemies

By David McElroy · May 10, 2012

Cleaning out the notebook….

In the last couple of days, it’s become widely know among certain libertarians and anarchists that someone they knew and trusted in Philadelphia was arrested for drug sales and coerced to become a government informant. A lot of people are very angry with her for betraying them in order to cut a better deal for herself. I’m surprised that anybody is surprised.

If you’re curious about the situation, you can read more here, but I’m not really interested in getting into the details and the blame. The bottom line is that police arrested a young woman and then released her after they blackmailed her into worked for them. (Oh, wait. It’s not supposed to be blackmail when the state does it, I guess.) She was set loose to inform on her friends about their drug purchases and to set up people selling drugs.

When police had enough evidence, they arrested a bunch of people and they eventually found out that the friend they had trusted was the one who set them up. They’re angry and hurt. She’s trying to justify what she did.

All I can say is that when someone holds a gun — metaphorical or otherwise — to your head, you’re probably going to do what the people with the gun ask you to do. This woman betrayed her friends to save her own skin, but I have trouble getting too upset about it and I certainly can’t act surprised about it. That’s what almost everyone does in the same situation. It’s easy from the safety of our homes to pontificate, but it’s a very different thing when you’re sitting in a jail cell facing the prospects of losing everything. Self-interest almost always kicks in. Right or not, that’s just reality.

The important lesson here is simple. If you decide you want to do something illegal, don’t let anybody know. The people you’re sure you can trust today can be the ones who lead to police knocking your door down tomorrow. I think people should be able to use and sell whatever drugs they want, but the reality is that if you do it in this country today, you have a very good chance of bad things happening to you — especially if you’re selling.

I’m fortunate that I have no interest in recreational drugs. (I don’t even use alcohol, which I consider the most dangerous of the recreational drugs — and it’s the legal one.) I think you’re smarter to stay away from them, but if you choose to, remember that the current legal and political culture means that every friend or associate who knows what you’re doing has the potential of destroying your life. Is it worth that risk? I don’t think so, but your answer might be different from mine.

If you hold anarchist or libertarian views, do you give up the moral right to use current law in disputes with others? On this week’s EconTalk podcast — which I’m going to write about soon if I find the time — I heard an interesting story about libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick. He’s the author of the 1974 book, “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.”

He was renting an apartment in New York City from author Richard Bach (who wrote “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”). Bach had been raising the rent each year, but Nozick found out that the apartment was supposed to be covered by rent control — so Bach wasn’t legally entitled to raise the rent.

Nozick went to Bach and pointed this out, but Bach waved a copy of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” at him, saying that his libertarian ideas had waived his right to claim anything under the rent-control law. Nozick disagreed and sued him. Bach lost and had to pay the money back.

So the question is this. We don’t believe that it’s moral or pragmatic for the state to control rent (or set other prices). Is it reasonable for someone to insist on what current law allows him? Or is he morally required to give up an advantage written into unjust law?

It’s a tough moral question, in my view. I can see a valid argument for both positions. On the one hand, you can say that if you’re required to live under rules that take away from you in some areas, you have to compensate by getting what you can where the law allows. On the other hand, you can simply say that you’re not going to hold anyone to anything he wouldn’t be held by in a completely free world. I think you have to decide this one on a case-by-case basis, but it’s messy. Do you have any thoughts about it?

If someone is routinely identified in newspaper stories as a “community activist,” odds are pretty high that the person is nothing but a troublemaker. There’s a guy like that who’s a hanger-on in Birmingham city politics. He’s the political equivalent of an ambulance chaser — always looking for a controversy that will allow him to get in front of a TV camera demanding answers. I just wonder how these gadflies manage to support themselves.

You know how the U.S. Postal Service keeps saying that it’s going to shut down some of the little-used rural post offices that are costing so much money? Because there’s always political pressure, the USPS caves in and leave them open — and that’s happened again. A cost-saving plan that was expected to shut down some tiny and costly offices will close exactly zero post offices, but reduce the hours that many of them are open. Isn’t it time to just sell off the behemoth and let private companies operate whatever it’s profitable to operate — and kill the rest?

I have one last story to tell about Thomas, who died Monday. He used to sleep on the bed with me at night sometimes, but then (years ago) he started staying downstairs with a couple of the other cats at night. Since he started going downhill in January, he started sleeping in the office with Lucy and the “office cats.” He hasn’t slept with me in the bedroom for years.

But for some reason, he wanted to stay on the bed Sunday night. He started out at the foot of the bed, but when I woke up not long after going to sleep, he was up next to me as close as he could get. This surprised me considering how weak and lifeless he had been, but I was glad to have him sleep next to me for the first time in a long time.

After he died Monday afternoon, it hit me that it’s amazing he slept right next to me on his last night alive. It’s almost as if he knew he was dying — and wanted to be close to me again. I’m probably superimposing human thought and emotion on him, but it somehow feels right. I like believing it, whether it was true or not.

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Tyler Barnes will never be a basketball star. He probably peaked as a star high school player in Louisville, Ky. But for the last four years, he’s been a walk-on player for the University of Alabama. He’s a chemical engineering major with lots of academic honors who rides the bench because he loves being part of a team. He sometimes gets into games with a minute or two to go, but only if Alabama has a big lead. This Saturday, it was senior day for Alabama basketball, so it was his last chance to play in Coleman Coliseum. Alabama Coach Nate Oats says that one of the team starter’s came to him an hour before the game started — and fellow senior Alex Reese asked Oats if Barnes could start in his place for this one game. Even though the game was huge for Alabama, which is ranked No. 6 in the country and trying to wrap up an SEC title, Oats agreed. Barnes started and played the first three minutes, grabbing what was only the fourth rebound of his career and missing his only shot. Barnes has a great future as an engineer, but you’ll never again hear from him as a basketball player. For three shining minutes Saturday, though, he was a starter for a top-10 college basketball team — and his parents were in the stands from Kentucky to see it. There’s a lot of ugliness in college basketball right now, but this story makes me happy.

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

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