Ten observations on the Baltimore riots
On April 12, Baltimore police officers arrested Freddie Gray, who died one week later as a result of injuries sustained during the arrest, including a severed spinal cord, broken neck, and head injury. Following his funeral, riots occurred in which many cars and businesses were looted and destroyed. Ten observations follow.
1. Freddie Gray appears to have been kidnapped and murdered by police. Whether his death was ultimately brought about by physical assault by officers or by a “rough ride” while handcuffed and legcuffed in the back of a police van, there was no legitimate reason for Gray to be arrested. If people who were not agents of the state behaved identically, they would be facing more serious charges than the officers are currently facing, including kidnapping, first degree murder, and conspiracy.
2. The word of the other criminal suspect accompanying Gray is not credible. The suspect riding in the other side of the police van told investigators that he could hear Gray “banging against the walls” of the vehicle and believed that he “was intentionally trying to injure himself,” according to a police document obtained by The Washington Post. The problem with such a document is that the police can either fabricate it or gain such a statement under duress by threatening the suspect with decades of imprisonment if the suspect is uncooperative.
3. The government cannot be trusted to hold agents of the government accountable in an unbiased manner. As noted above, private citizens who behaved identically would be facing more serious charges and would likely be subject to death penalty proceedings. Additionally, a government prosecutor trying government agents by a jury of government-convened citizens in a courtroom presided over by a government judge is an enormous conflict of interest that would not be tolerated in any aspect of society that does not involve the government. Both of these facts show a bias inherent in the state to protect its own interests above the interests of justice. There is also the matter that any prison terms for the accused officers will be funded by taxing the citizenry.
4. Government police do not exist to protect the citizenry. Once again, the police excelled at assaulting, kidnapping, and murdering people like Freddie Gray who posed no serious threat while doing nothing to stop large numbers of criminals who were destroying property, businesses, and livelihoods. Somehow this comes as a surprise to most people, but it should not. The purpose of all government security forces is not the objective protection of the civilian population and their private property, as starry-eyed state propagandists would have us believe. The true purpose is threefold: protect the politicians from the citizenry by making it very difficult for citizens to violently overthrow the government, provide a last line of defense for the institution of statism in the form of martial law should the citizens succeed in violently overthrowing the government, and present a deterrent to other rulers elsewhere in the world who might seek to take over and capture the tax base for themselves.
This theory was observable in Baltimore, as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appears to have ordered the police to stand down during the riots, saying at a press conference on April 26, “…we also gave those who wished to destroy, space to do that, as well,” and saying to the police later, “Let them loot. It’s only property.” Notably, she made such comments while living in a gated community with private security and presiding over an institution that helps to deprive the residents of the looted and destroyed areas of the same opportunities for protection.
5. Gun control laws encourage crime. Gun laws in Maryland are among the strictest in the nation, and the city of Baltimore is number 36 on a recent list of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world as a result. Restrictions on the ability of morally upstanding people to carry arms make them more vulnerable to attack while doing little to keep aggressors from taking up arms, as those who will break laws against harming people and property will also break laws that forbid them from using guns to do so. Such laws do not even effectively apply to criminals in most cases, as the Supreme Court has ruled that compliance with gun registration and permit laws by a person who is legally prohibited from owning firearms is a violation of the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination.
6. The militia movement missed a golden opportunity. When the worst rioting occurred on the night of April 27, the police stood down and the National Guard was not yet mobilized and sent to the area. This meant that the rioters had free reign to loot and destroy unless private citizens were present to defend their properties. Had militia groups shown up to defend people and businesses from the rioters, they could have been the heroes of the day, providing security in the wake of a government failure. This would also have done much to combat the idea that militia groups are racist, as the scene of the riots is home to a large percentage of racial minorities. Unfortunately, they missed the best public relations opportunity they have had in years.
7. The rioters are not anarchists. Several members of the establishment media, as well as a few of the protesters themselves, have referred to the protesters and rioters as anarchists, using the word as a synonym for chaos. While this is common, it is incorrect. The word “anarchy” comes from Greek αυαρχος (anarkhos), meaning “without rulers.” To destroy private property and threaten people is to assert one’s rule over them and impose an involuntary hierarchy upon them, which is criminal activity that forms the root of statism. Those who behave in this manner are not anarchists, and those who call themselves anarchists while behaving in this manner are fake anarchists.
8. To understand the rioters is not to condone their actions. Several people from the area who were interviewed about the riots said that while they do not condone the behavior of the rioters, they do understand it. Several left-wing pundits echoed this sentiment. As usual, several right-wing pundits have conflated explanation with justification. But one can understand that the rioters have legitimate grievances without condoning their particular outlet for those grievances. While we can and should condemn the rioters for their poor marksmanship, this does not negate the fact that a group of people have been systematically oppressed by state power. This misunderstanding is nothing new, of course. The same thinking that led the right to denounce Ron Paul and Harry Browne concerning the reasons for the September 11 attacks is at work here.
9. Toya Graham is not an admirable person, let alone “mother of the year.” Many in the media are praising Graham for the way she dealt with her son upon seeing his involvement with the rioting. But in any other context, everyone would understand that this sort of violent parenting is child abuse. A true “mother of the year” would have raised a son who would not be participating in a riot that is targeting innocent people and their property, and would have done so by reasoning with him instead of initiating the use of violence against him. She is also the mother of six children by six different fathers, which shows poor decision making at best and an intention to abuse social welfare programs at worst.
10. All of these problems are ultimately caused by government. In 1910, the city of Baltimore enacted a racial zoning ordinance which created black ghettos where none previously existed. Since then, one government intervention has followed another to create the conditions for the death of Freddie Gray and the rioting that followed. Most of Gray’s lengthy rap sheet would be nonexistent if not for the War on Drugs, so police likely would not have bothered him. Without a government monopoly on security services, a police operation as corrupt as the Baltimore Police Department would have been fired by its customers and had its agents arrested by competing protection agencies for their aggressions against the citizenry. A free market in security services would also mean that the private security officers who protect people and property would out-compete the private security officers who stand down and watch crimes occur. Without a government monopoly on the law, people could possess any weapons they want to have and can get, so they could defend what is rightfully theirs against rioters more effectively. Without a government welfare system providing perverse incentives, the black family would not be in shambles and single motherhood would not be rampant. No matter where we look, government is the problem and removing it is the solution.
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