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Oct. 15, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
36:34
459 Bullying Little Girls

Continuing dispatches from the war on terror

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's 9.48 on Sunday, October the 15th, and there were a couple of very interesting posts on the board this morning that I thought I would have a few wee comments about before toodling about with my day, and then getting ready for the show at 4 o'clock.
First of all, for those who are, I don't know if you've listened to these in sequence or not, but the first episode of Ask a Therapist has been posted, and you might enjoy that.
It's show number 458, a number that still staggers me from time to time.
But let me just mention a few things about what has been posted on the board.
First, is that in California, there was a rather interesting incident that occurred in Sacramento.
And this is the text.
This is from San Francisco, sfgate.com.
Upset by the war in Iraq, Julia Wilson vented her frustrations with President Bush last spring on her MySpace.com page.
She posted a picture of the president, scrawled, quote, Kill Bush across the top, and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand.
She replaced the page last spring after learning in her 8th grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.
Oh, dear. Too late.
Federal authorities had found the page and placed her on their checklist.
They finally reached her this week in her molecular biology class.
The 14-year-old freshman at Sacramento is blah, blah, blah, taken out of class Wednesday in question for about 15 minutes by two Secret Service agents.
You wouldn't want to send one just in case.
The little girl knew jujitsu.
The incident has upset her parents, who said the agents should have included them when they questioned their daughter.
On Friday, the teenager said the agents questioning her over her page on the popular teenage internet gathering site led her to tears.
Blah blah blah. Of course they yelled at her for 15 minutes, threatened her with juvenile detention, which I guess is sending her away to some sort of teenage prison.
And... They basically, their argument, which is very interesting for me at least, the argument was that they said that it was illegal for her to do what she did.
Now that is an absolutely fascinating argument for members of the government or government agents to make.
They said it's illegal, it's a federal offense, federal crime to threaten the president.
And this really is fantastic.
I mean, nobody wants any children to be threatened, of course, by scary men in trench coats with black glasses and those little men in black ties on.
But it really is fantastic that they descend upon this little girl.
Because, obviously, the cover story is that these government agents have such basic respect for the sanctity of human life that they don't feel comfortable.
They think it's bad for anyone to even threaten the life of another human being.
Now, the fact that the life of the human being who's being threatened is George Bush's, and he, instead of threatening, actually went out and ordered the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, that's not...
Illegal. It's not illegal to declare war under false pretenses and to profit from the murders of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, just counting the recent Iraq war and not even counting Afghanistan and so on.
But that's not illegal.
It's not illegal to actually go out and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
But it is illegal for a teenager to even say that that's...
An obviously harmless teenager to even say that should be the case.
When you can actually get people killed, saying that you want them killed is not illegal, but in fact something to be praised, protected, and defended.
But if you have no capacity to do it, then of course it is illegal.
But... I mean, this is obvious.
This is so ridiculous.
But the basic contradiction that's in this from the state standpoint, I think, is amply displayed by the arguments that they make against the little girl.
So they basically come down and scream at her that she did something that was illegal.
Let me just see if I can dig up where it came in here.
That what they did was illegal, but they never made any arguments from morality against her, which I think is very, very important and something that, you know, it's important to understand where the existing power structure is and how this sort of, this curtain is coming down on what the current system of ethics is or sort of quote ethics is.
So, because they basically yelled at her and told her that it was illegal to do what she did.
They made no arguments from morality against her.
They didn't say it's wrong to threaten people.
They didn't say it's wrong and immoral to post that you want someone dead.
They didn't say any of those kinds of things.
All they did was they said that it's a federal offense to threaten the life of the president.
And that really is a wonderful set of progress, right?
And I think that when you have Secret Service agents out there who are unable to come up with a credible argument for morality about why they are aggressing against a citizen, even against a 14-year-old girl, in other words, if I was a Secret Service agent out there berating this girl, And I were to tell her, well, it's wrong to threaten someone's life.
It's wrong to pose threats against someone's life.
Then, of course, even a 14-year-old girl, and I'm guessing even a 7-year-old girl, We'd see the rank hypocrisy in claiming if I was the secret service agent and were justifying my actions based on an argument from morality.
Obviously, the sort of shot-back answer would be, well, is it worse to threaten people or actually kill them?
I mean, if you're so concerned with the sanctity of human life that you're acting against somebody who is merely threatened rather than somebody who's caused the death not of one person but hundreds of thousands of people, Then why you, you know, surely I'm pretty far down on the list that you need to go and deal with, right? So that is, that's very, very important, right?
So what they're doing is saying, it's illegal, and we can send you to Juvenile Hall for making this threat.
It's a federal offense. And there's no argument for morality in it.
That's fantastic. What incredible progress we're making.
Or rather, what incredible regressions the government is making in its discussion of things ethical.
Because the only thing that freedom needs to win this rather grim and pitched battle against the expanding power of the state...
It's for the state to drop the pretense of moral motivations.
The only reason that the state exists is because people think that it's moral.
Now, you don't see a whole lot of moral arguments for the state anymore, even coming from the state.
I mean, the war on terror is not a moral argument.
It's an argument from effect.
It's an argument from fear.
And that is a very, very powerful thing.
What it means is that the naked power of the state is emerging from From the soupy, claustrophobic, camouflaging fog of false arguments for morality, and you're beginning to see the naked exercise of power.
You should not do it because it's illegal, is the last gasp of those in power.
I mean, when you get to that state, so to speak, when you get to that phase in the fall of a hegemonic structure, you are just...
We're miles and miles, light years ahead of when people still believe that the government should solve the problems of poverty and so on and so on and so on.
And that's, you know, one of the things that the war in Iraq for sure has done with the government is that, I mean, the government pursued an unjust war, won't get out, and the arguments now are not around I mean, nobody really buys this, except a couple of hillbillies with three teeth out in Arkansas, maybe.
Nobody really buys this whole, well, you can't cut and run kind of nonsense, right?
Government cuts and runs all the time.
It's not really a very good argument.
But there's no sort of morality, right?
So, if you remember sort of Colin Powell's, what is it, the Pottery Barn argument, you break it, you bought it, kind of thing.
Well, of course, you know, the funny thing about that, nobody ever said this in the media when that incredibly ridiculous comment came out of Colin Powell's mouth, right?
Like, you break it, you bought it.
Great! You break it, you bought it, right?
Don't tax other people, right?
I don't get to break something in pottery bond and then impose a tax on everyone in the store to pay for the thing that I broke, right?
I mean, if you broke it, you know, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and all of the other, you know, rat finks at the top, if you broke it, then you all open your wallets and you pay for it.
I mean... You know, this idea that it's a collective entity, right?
This is one thing that's true about government as a whole, and this is somewhat true of the church.
It's more true of government, that whenever an achievement is made, then the collective is not invoked, right?
So you see people running for office.
I did this, I did that, you know.
Whenever there's something, you know, that is considered to be an achievement is created or a positive virtue, then it's almost the government, you know, the people in the government who did it and who should take the positive, the praise and so on.
But when everything negative happens, it's like, well, you know, we're all in this together, right?
So, of course, there's no we in the government when it comes to should we invade Iraq or not.
There's no we there. I mean, the government makes it independently of the people other than scaring the living crap out of them.
With all this talk about the potential for nuclear war.
But there's no we in that decision.
The government just goes and declares war, even over the pretty vociferous objections of enormous segments of the American population.
And, of course, I mean, the enormous anti-war demonstrations that occurred prior to the war in Iraq were the largest and most extended and most passionate that the world had ever seen.
So there's no we there.
He doesn't go and declare war.
But then when the war is declared, then it becomes a we argument, right?
Well, we're in there. We can't cut and run.
You know, so whenever the positive things occur, then the government takes the credit.
And whenever negative things occur, then it becomes a we argument.
This also occurs in family as well.
And so I just wanted to sort of I sort of point that out, that this is a sign of...
I know a lot of people are going to say, well, this is really bad.
These federal agents are aggressing against a 14-year-old girl.
And of course it is.
There's no question. But if you look at the subtext of what's going on here, then it becomes, there's a law.
You have to obey it.
We're going to bully you, and we're going to threaten you with being sent to juvenile hall.
That's really what the government is reduced to.
This is sort of like with parents when the children become teenagers and can begin to think for themselves and also are growing big enough that they can no longer be physically intimidated.
In fact, if they so chose, they could probably physically intimidate their parents in return.
And what happens then is that the fundamental powerlessness of the parent begins to be exposed and of course all of the accumulated crimes that the parent has committed against the child during the course of raising the child The parent begins to fear retribution and an awakening, and so the parent gets more hysterically angry, and the parent also says, you know, you have to obey me, I deserve your respect, and this and that and the other.
But without any arguments for morality, it just becomes like, obey me because I'm your parent.
There's no sort of, I'm wiser.
Because then, of course, the child is now old enough to sort of say, well...
You know, basically show me.
This is a lot of the cynicism that teenagers go through, as I've talked about before, is this unmasking of supposed virtue of the parents, that they use the argument for morality and the child's desire to be good to break the child's will and spirit and crush him into a fine, obedient little mist and so on.
But as you get older, of course, you begin to question the virtue of your parents, which is exactly as it should be, otherwise the species would still be in moral caves and physical caves, I bet.
But when the parents are simply...
When it comes down to threats, right?
Parental power is almost at its end.
When it just comes down to pure threats, right?
I mean, once people stop believing in the ethics of their government, the government really won't last very long.
Because, as you can sort of see in popular culture...
I was watching... I was on a plane.
I went to... I had to go to Boston for a meeting on Friday.
I was on a plane and I was sort of stuck there.
So I watched a fairly bad sitcom called The New Adventures of Old Christine.
And in it, she was talking about how she is, Julia Louise Dreyfus from Seinfeld, she was talking about how And she takes cold medicine to fall asleep.
And her brother, who is her nanny, I think, her manny, he said, you know, I'm not going to make fun of you if that.
And she turned around and she said, yeah, well, I'm not going to make fun of you for your glaucoma medicine, which I guess is a reference to him smoking.
Part. And the audience laughed, right?
And of course, it sort of struck me kind of funny, right?
That in popular culture, you can make jokes about recreational drug use that people find very funny.
But of course, if she turned to him and said, well, I don't make fun of your desire to rape little boys, there would be like horror in the hall, right?
I mean, both things are illegal. Both things will get you sent to jail.
And I do believe that the drug use may get you sent to jail for a hell of a lot longer, if I remember anything about the prosecution of priests.
Both things are illegal but the audience laughs at one and would be struck down with horror at another, right?
So within the popular sort of mindset There is no horror about the use of drugs, right?
So I watched one or two of the episodes of the show Weed, which is about a suburban mom who sort of gets by by selling a pot.
And it's an entirely different show.
There's some comedy in it, there's some sort of rich human characterization and so on.
I don't think it was... I think it's a bit of a thin premise to hang an entire show on, but...
It's interesting that if she were running a pedophile ring or something, then it would not be at all a show where you would allow comedy and rich characters and funny situations and so on.
And so even in sort of the popular culture, in the majority of people, there is no real belief that ethics have anything to do with government edicts, right?
And this is true, of course, in the rise of tax evasion and the rise of the gray markets and the black markets and so on.
That government is really just considered to be an annoying power structure that grabs your money, but there's no real ethical allegiance to it.
And those who are still pretty patriotic have at least now got something which people can turn the screws on for them, right?
So I was watching a political debate this morning while having some cereal, and there was some...
You know, weaselly Republican guy on there being interviewed by Tim Russert, and Tim Russert was saying, so, if you knew then what you know now about Iraq, would you still have voted for the war?
And of course the guy won't answer.
Right now it all becomes about, it's a fledgling democracy, we need to protect it, and blah, blah, blah, and all this sort of nonsense from all these people in air-conditioned offices telling other people that they should die.
Absolutely repulsive and revolting from a moral standpoint.
But it is, you know, one of the sort of final nails in the coffin of any kind of ethical belief in the existing power structure.
And that is something to be rejoiced in, right?
I mean, we should look at this and not say, oh my God, the government is just becoming really scary.
I mean, of course it is, right? There's no question about that.
But it's becoming scary and it's becoming screechy and it's becoming more brutal because it is no longer able to surf on the easy waves of people accepting the argument from morality, right?
Because it's like the arguments about welfare that have gone on for many, many, many years, which I certainly participated in.
When I was younger and sort of my teens and 20s and so on, you know, you would go up against somebody about welfare and they would say, well, you don't want the poor to starve in the streets and this and that.
And You sort of have to pull out a whole ream of ethical theories and statistics, but there would be no easy comeback to that.
There's an in-depth knowledge, right?
But now, at least, when you talk about welfare, everybody kind of realizes in their gut, enough evidence has accumulated, but all but the most slavishly paid intellectual toadies who praise the state for the crumbs of the state power...
Everybody sort of realizes, and I've certainly found this to be the case in discussing this stuff with people, everyone realizes that the welfare state is a complete, abysmal, monstrous, horrifying quicksand of grinding horror.
And so everyone realizes it's got to change.
And when you say, you know, nobody says, when you talk about ending welfare, nobody anymore says, well, the poor would just starve in the streets, or at least I haven't had that.
In a while, people feel uncomfortable about it because they don't know exactly what alternative there is that would be productive.
But they sure don't say, oh my god, we can't change a single thing about the welfare state because it's just so wonderful and it gets people out of poverty and so on.
It's like race relations.
You talk about changing some of the laws around what they call positive discrimination or reverse racism or whatever.
The affirmative action stuff or any sort of stuff to do with race relations, nobody really sits there and says, no, why would we need to change anything?
We've almost reached a nirvana of racial equality.
Everyone realizes it's a complete mess.
It's like talking about the reservations where you stick the Native Americans and, you know, and then...
Rot and beat up their kids and burn their kids' hands with cigarettes and, you know, when the kids are teenagers, drink photocopy fluid to get high and die.
I mean, nobody's sort of saying, well, gee, that's a, you know, why would we need to touch that?
It's perfect the way it is.
And so everyone sort of recognizes that it's all a complete mess and complete nonsense, so now, you know, now is the time, right?
Now is the time to talk and now is the time to put positive and viable alternatives out there for people so that they're Almost complete skepticism of the virtues and motives of government.
And you can see this in the changes of portrayals of government officials in the popular media.
We'll talk about Prison Break again another time.
But there's another example where you see a pretty clear-eyed view of government.
One other short article, which I'll mention here.
A Hollywood officer accused of pointing a gun at family during road rage.
A Hollywood police officer is under investigation by plantation police, accused of pointing a gun at a family of seven in an off-duty road rage incident police record show.
And this guy...
Is on paid leave pending the investigation.
Isn't that great, eh? I mean, you try that, right?
Try that at a company where you sort of pull out a gun and threaten people, and then they'll give you a free vacation, the paid leave, pending the investigation.
And, of course, his attorney says, oh, anyone can make an accusation for almost any reason.
It's almost impossible to defend somebody when you don't even know what the accusation is, or you haven't seen the report, blah, blah, blah.
September the 19th, incidents as aggravated assault with a firearm, and they declined to discuss it, and so here's the story.
Juan Calais, 34, was driving the family van home that evening while his wife and four children, ages 3 to 13, sat behind him.
His uncle sat in the front passenger seat as the group traveled down Cleary Boulevard about 7.15 p.m.
Calais' three-year-old daughter, Wendy, started playing with rainwater dripping from a slightly opened window.
According to the police report, a man driving a pickup noticed Wendy's hand sticking out the window.
The report says the man cursed at Kelly and said he was a bad parent for letting her stick her hand out the window.
He just kept screaming at me, talking about my daughter, calling her dirty, Kelly said Thursday.
Kelly said he cursed back, a decision he now regrets.
The pickup then stopped in front of Kelly's van and the driver in plainclothes jumped out and pulled a silver handgun from his waistband, the report says.
I see him reach for the gun and I was like, oh no, not this, Kelly said.
He just comes out, points the gun at my head and says, don't call the police because I'm a cop.
At that moment, Callie said his uncle's cell phone rang.
Don't reach for nothing because I will shoot you right now, the man with the gun said.
According to police reports, he trained his gun on all seven in the van.
Finger on the trigger, Callie's family told police.
Callie's family were terrified.
Sorry, Callie's children were terrified.
Wendy started crying, he said, pleading, Mommy, I'm scared.
They were trying to hide under the seat under the gun he was pointing, he said.
For a few minutes, Callie and his wife pleaded with the man to leave.
To not scare the children, the man walked away and drove off.
Callie called 911 and reported the license plate number on the pickup.
The family later identified McCarthy from a photo lineup and gave identical descriptions of the incident, police reports say.
Callie said his children are haunted by the encounter.
My little three-year-old still talks about it, he said.
It's definitely a fearful event.
McCarthy, who was off duty at the time of the reported incident, has had only two minor complaints against him, Holly.
Hollywood police said he was exonerated in both cases.
Of course, you know that's objective justice when the police are trying their own people.
Police on Thursday could not provide information on any commendation or awards McCarty received, but his attorney says he had been commended in the past for saving someone's life.
McCarty worked for the New York Police Department prior to joining Hollywood.
Officials in New York could only confirm McCarty worked there and declined to provide dates of employment, disciplinary information, or commendations.
Here's a guy who devoted two decades of his life to defending the community, Milad said.
He's now going to be tarnished in the public arena for something he hasn't been charged with.
Yeah, of course, the police never do anything like that.
But it's really a fascinating, fascinating incident, of course.
It tells you an enormous amount about police culture and the immunity, right?
As is sort of mentioned in Prison Break, these guys act like they're untouchable, like they're above everything, like they're government.
And this guy's like, don't call the cops.
I am a cop. Don't call those who are going to protect you because I'm pointing a gun.
My guess is that this guy was drunk or high or something like that.
It's obviously such a self-destructive act that it would be hard to do while you weren't tight or high on something.
But, you know, just think of what's happening to these children.
Yes, they're absolutely terrified.
And, you know, we have, and I hate to say it, but it seems to be quite true, we have here a bunch of libertarians in the making.
We have here people who have, especially children, Who had a real exercise of state power.
Like, they've seen the government up close, right?
Which is, I can wave guns, and I'm immune, right?
I mean, this guy had been some private citizen.
Imagine if he was a Mexican guy.
I guess the family's Mexican, right?
Or Hispanic. If this had been a Hispanic guy who pulled a gun on a governor or a couple of cops or something like that, I mean, this guy wouldn't, his ass wouldn't even get back in his own seat before it landed on the floor of a jail cell.
But the cops are untouchable from that standpoint, so this is not going to go anywhere.
He'll get some minor disciplinary action that'll be suspended for another month or two with pay.
Right? And then, you know, sort of slither off to some other place.
You know, like they'd reassign all these pedophile priests and just sort of put them somewhere else where there's no real history and so on, right?
And this, I mean, it's just, it's, again, it's quite fascinating.
This is somehow, these kinds of incidents, which are not uncommon, right?
Not uncommon, especially for minorities, right?
We tighty-whities don't see them as much.
But it's not wildly uncommon for these minorities to face these kinds of issues where, Cops are just, you know, they bully them because they feel that these people feel that they have no power and so on.
And nobody takes this seriously in the police community, right?
Can you imagine that if an employee of Taco Bell did something like this in the parking lot and he just waved guns around and then they say, no, but he was employee of the month last year, so doesn't it sort of balance out?
It's like... He spent 20 years serving up tacos, and now he's tarnished from one little incident where he waved guns at three-year-olds and threatens to shoot people.
And of course, it's also very interesting when you look at the response of the government to a 14-year-old girl posting innocently passionate emails about her hatred of George Bush.
And she gets the visit, she gets threatened with incredible reprisals.
And then you look at how the government treats a cop who actually pulled a gun and waved it in the face of a family, a father and his wife, uncle and children.
Well, he gets suspended with pay and nothing's really going to happen.
I mean, it really is just fantastic to see how all of this is working.
This is the unhinging of power, right?
We're actually watching.
We're hearing the rustle of the curtain coming down on this absurd fascistic drama.
These are all the signs that occur when a power structure has lost its argument for morality.
It begins just sort of striking out wildly.
And those of us who remember our histories...
From children to teenage life, we can remember all of this stuff occurring with our parents, that our parents, who seemed larger than life and too powerful for words and so on, were suddenly revealed as screechy, whiny, petulant, complaining, less than children themselves, absurd kind of caricatures of human beings themselves.
Because they could no longer use an argument for morality when we got older, other than, you know, we gave you stuff, but not really ethics in the way that, you know, they couldn't really appeal to any principles, because once you get old enough as a teenager to understand principles, in the same way that the Secret Service agents who were bullying this girl couldn't really appeal to any principles, they could only say, it's illegal, and we'll throw you in juvie for what you did.
But they couldn't really appeal to any moral principles.
It's wrong to threaten people because, of course, it's completely ridiculous for Secret Service agents to be screaming at a girl that it's wrong to threaten people.
I mean, that's just absolutely absurd.
Even if we take out of the fact that, you know, killing Iraqis is a lot worse than threatening Bush in a ridiculously childishly scrawled MySpace website.
I mean, this is hilarious.
So they can't appeal to an argument for morality anymore.
And so what's happening is they just have to, I mean, the costs of compliance are going up, right?
This is what happens when an argument for morality begins to really falter, is that the costs of compliance goes up, right?
So if you're at, I don't know, like a dinner party, and you go out on the balcony for a smoke or something, and there's someone out there who's smoking a joint, Your only real concern is that somehow you're going to get caught.
But if somebody was out there, you know, like stealing the host's stuff or, I don't know, beating up someone else, I mean, obviously you'd call the cops, you'd do this, but when you see somebody smoking a joint, your only concern is like, holy crap, I mean, I hope I don't get mixed up in this somehow.
What if the place gets raided, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And it's got nothing to do with ethics.
Nobody really believes this stuff.
I guess there's a couple of Christian nutjobs who believe it and bray about it to their congregation because they just like expanding state power and doing stuff for the rulers with guns.
But nobody really believes this stuff.
And as far as taxation goes, nobody believes that it's your civic duty to pay taxes.
You don't really hear that argument anymore.
You certainly do hear a little bit of you have to pay your taxes because there are troops in Iraq who need your money.
But fundamentally, you know, nobody really believes that the welfare state is moral.
Nobody believes that the war on drugs is moral.
Nobody really believes that the war in Iraq is moral.
I mean, nobody believes any of this kind of stuff.
I mean, no intelligent, educated person really believes any of this kind of stuff.
And really, the weight of evidence has shifted so far to the side for liberty and freedom that...
You don't have the same sort of tunneling upwards to the light from a depth of 10,000 feet with your bare hands through solid rock that used to occur before the preponderance of evidence had shifted over to the side of freedom.
But these kinds of incidents are very powerful and very helpful in this regard, right?
It's just, you know, more nails in the coffin and more steps towards freedom.
Now the last thing that I mention here is that somebody posted a question.
One of these nitpicky city questions about sound.
Somebody playing, you know, a loud stereo in the middle of the night and how would a free society handle that question.
And again, of course, not the most important of issues, but it did seem to be quite important for this gentleman to get an answer, so I'll sort of throw my two cents in here to see if it sort of helps.
Now, of course, of course, there's no question whatsoever that to play loud music outside of somebody's house at 3 o'clock in the morning is an act of aggression.
It is an act of invasion, and it is...
An invasion of your primary property, which is your own body, right?
I mean, if somebody is playing loud music and disturbing your sleep and so on, then for sure it's an act of aggression.
Sleep deprivation is a fundamental act of aggression and it occurs when you're poked awake or loud noises startle you awake and so on.
So, of course, it's an act of aggression.
If you're sitting there and somebody's pumping loud rap music out into the air, then they're invading your property.
Your property, of course, is your land.
You own the air above it, which is why planes can't fly over your house at 10 feet above your ground.
But it's definitely an invasion of your property.
I mean, you kind of own your property to some reasonable depth, right, in a sort of pie-shaped cone to the center of the earth and, you know, upwards to the sky to, you know, someplace above your house, right?
Because otherwise, if you didn't own the ground underneath your house, then somebody could sort of tunnel under your house and cause it to collapse, and it would be no violation of your property rights, which would obviously be quite silly.
And so you own the ground under your house.
You own the air over your house, which is why somebody can't build a huge house on stilts and put it over your house, blocking out the sky and all that kind of stuff.
So, yeah, you own the air that's, I mean, to some reasonable degree above your house, and you own the ground as it goes into the ground underneath your house.
I mean, it's sort of a natural sort of thing.
Amen.
So, of course, if somebody is putting sound waves into your property, then they're trespassing, as surely as if they walked in there, right?
Now, you know, there's some reasonable degrees of difference between noise pollution at the ether extremes, right?
I mean, there's a difference between children playing near your house at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and there's a difference between that and somebody playing, like, mega rap on volume 50 at 3 o'clock in the morning, right?
So there's a certain amount of noise pollution.
I mean, if somebody's barbecuing and a couple of wisps of smoke drift across your backyard, it's not likely that you're going to call and get this person nuked from orbit because he's polluting your air.
But if he releases mustard gas, I mean, it probably would be a slightly different situation.
And of course, like all of these things, there are gradations that are sensitive and personal, and there's no objective way to define exactly what noise level constitutes, blah, blah, blah.
But, you know, human beings are reasonable, and human beings, of course, want to minimize, most human beings want to minimize effort.
So if it's, you know, a plane passing with a slight rumble or a train in the distance at 2 o'clock in the morning, then that's one thing.
If the train, you know, passes 10 feet from your house, then that may be another thing, right?
So... This, the question of music is obviously one that if it's disturbing your sleep, if it's, you know, it's absolutely aggression in the same way that if somebody set up a huge sonic chamber, you know, across the street from your house and set a massive sound wave towards your house causing it to collapse, that would be considered an act of aggression, right?
Because their use of their property is disturbing your use of your property in this case causing your house to collapse.
Now just because they didn't set foot on your property Doesn't mean that they haven't done anything aggressive.
But we also do allow minor infractions on our property at just about any time, right?
I mean, if somebody is walking along the street and they drop their wallet and it rolls onto your little lip of the grass, right?
And then they reach down onto your grass and pick up their wallet.
I don't think that many sane human beings would say, well, you can shoot that guy for trespassing.
He just dropped his wallet and he picks it up.
In the same way that if somebody throws a frisbee and it sort of lands on your front yard, that you're not going to shoot them for grabbing the frisbee, even though they're trespassing on your property.
So in this way, minor infractions for property rights, who cares?
They're not really worth the effort of anything.
So a bit of music in the afternoon, not a big deal.
Somebody's playing some Bob Seger in a barbecue, not too loud, that's fine, but of course, rap at 3 o'clock in the morning, blah, blah, blah.
So what will DROs do?
Well, of course, DROs will perfectly deal with this kind of stuff.
Everything in anarchy is so easy to deal with, as long as you recognize the grey areas.
And these grey areas is exactly why governments can't exist.
Governments always come down black and white in one place where it's completely inappropriate.
So, yeah, you know, if somebody's playing really loud rap music at 3 o'clock in the morning, you'll call your DRO and they'll send someone over and say, can you please turn this down?
You're disturbing your neighbors and so on.
And if the person basically tells the DRO guy to screw off, and this happens, you know, on more than one occasion, then the DROs turn off the water and electricity to that guy's house until he moves.
I mean, it's all so perfectly simple.
But you have to remember, prevention is so much better than cure, right?
So it seems to me unlikely that if you have a sort of neighborhood association or somebody owns the property or DRO is responsible for policing the property, They're not going to let some biker gang into a residential street because the biker gang is going to have a history of this kind of noise pollution or whatever.
I don't mean to discredit biker gangs.
This sort of popped into my mind. But you will have had to earn the right to live on a residential street.
Not just anyone is going to buy it, right?
I mean, the government doesn't care particularly who buys.
Your neighbors will, but they have no control.
You have a DRO. House comes up for sale.
It could well be that the DRO is going to say, well, do you have I have a history of causing disturbances to your neighbors, right?
If you do, then they're not going to let you in because they'll get someone else to buy the property and reduce their policing costs thereby.
Remember, anarchy is all about prevention, not cure.
It's only in the government where you get these kinds of ridiculous situations where people are playing loud music and then the cops come by and they turn it down.
You know, it just goes back and forth like that.
But, oh yeah, absolutely.
It's complete invasion of your ear canals for somebody to be blasting music and depriving you of sleep.
And the best way to deal with that situation is to prevent it so you don't end up with these instability and high costs of having to do remedial action against people who are trespassing.
So you simply prevent these issues and you have to earn your way into a quiet neighborhood by having a history of being a good neighbor.
I mean, that's, you know, this is what anarchy is all about.
Rewarding the good and punishing the bad and preventing it.
These kinds of situations.
Anyway, I hope that helps. Thank you so much for people who are posting.
The donation drought has been broken this morning.
I actually hadn't received a single donation since October the 6th, which was almost two weeks.
Something like that. Almost two weeks.
It was a heck of a long time.
I'll tell you that much. No, not quite.
Not quite. Nine days.
But the drought has been broken this morning.
I hugely appreciate it. So thank you so much.
And if you are mulling over donations, now is the time.
Now is the time to do it.
To lift my spirits to the stratosphere.
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