David McElroy

In Wildwood, N.J., somebody apparently thought it would be funny to post a sign in front of a small apartment building reading, “Parking for whites only.” Is it a stupid prank or is it “the worst thing anybody can do to anybody”?

We can all agree that racism is a bad thing. Right? But the U.S. culture has become so hypersensitive about the issue that it seems most “right-thinking people” go into overreaction mode when it comes up, because everyone seems to be competing to see who can be the most non-racist.

The latest example of this hyper-overreaction comes from a Philadelphia television station and the mayor of Wildwood, N.J. Here’s what happened:

A black couple have owned a small apartment complex near the beach in Wildwood for 11 years. They’ve apparently had minor problems with neighbors who don’t care for the apartments, although it’s not clear why. (Homeowners never like renters and apartment complexes, so I assume it’s just the standard reasons.) This past Wednesday, someone placed a sign on a pole in front of the apartments saying, “Parking for whites only.” Instead of taking the paper sign down and going about her business while muttering about the insensitivity and stupidity of some folks — which would have been reasonable — the owner took the sign to city police, who are investigating the “crime.” Mayor Ernie Troiano apologized on behalf of the city and told the TV station:

“This is the worst thing anybody can do to anybody. We never had problems with this neighborhood. For someone to do that, that’s a sick person.”

Really? This is truly the worst thing anybody can do, Mr. Mayor? Do you understand that this is just four ignorant words on a paper sign? How does it compare to killing someone? How about stealing people’s money? Is it worse than rape? Would you rather worry about someone posting that sign or about military aircraft dropping bombs on your home when you’ve done nothing to provoke it? Is the sign worse than police wrongly raiding a home, terrorizing people and killing your animals, then just saying, “Oooops,” afterwards?

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You might remember the story from last week about the woman in suburban Detroit who was facing jail time because her suburb didn’t like her growing veggies in her yard. The good news is that public pressure has forced the city to drop the charges. The bad news is that she’s still facing possible jail time for another offense. The bureaucrats are determined to make an example of her, it seems.

Although the city has dropped the charges about her vegetable garden, she was also charged with failure to have a license for her dogs. After she was charged in June, she immediately bought the license and showed the paperwork to officials. The woman’s lawyer said that charges are normally dropped in such a case after a person buys the license, but the city is pursuing this charge.

The lesson: Don’t make bureaucrats angry. If they want to punish you, they’ll find a way to do it.

Note: Hat tip to the Agitator for alerting me to this update on the story.

Update: At her blog Friday afternoon, Julie Bass clarifies and corrects some things which the newspaper story apparently got wrong. She says the city still might reinstate the charge related to the garden, because it was dismissed by a judge without prejudice.

Classic comedian Henny Youngman frequently used a joke in which someone would ask him, “How’s your wife?” His reply: “Compared to what?” When people are asked how they like the modern nation/state, you can’t evaluate their answers without knowing “compared to what?”

If you allow someone else to frame a debate, he can control what your answer is going to be. If you allow the state and its supporters to frame the debate as being between the coercive state on the one hand and the lawlessness and casual violence you see depicted anywhere without the state on the other, most rational people are going to opt for the state as the lesser of the two evils. But it’s a false dichotomy.

Some libertarians or anarchists (of various stripes) want to live in a world with no rules and no order. I want them to be able to live that way, but I don’t want my part of the world to look like that. I want voluntary order, but I want it organized by somebody other than the coercive state — and I want a choice of whose system to live under. What’s more, I want the choice to establish my own system to compete with the others if I want to.

A friend of mine sent me a link to a story that NPR’s Planet Money team did a couple of weeks ago about PorcFest, which is a popular annual “freedom festival” in New Hampshire sponsored by the Free State Project. The headline on the NPR story calls it “libertarian summer camp.” Among other things, the reporter talked about how the bacon he bought for breakfast hadn’t been inspected for safety and how financial transactions were difficult using differing systems of gold and silver. The implied criticism is that this is the way things have to be without the coercive state. Is that true?

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