Eight observations on the Memphis police shooting
On August 1, Memphis, Tenn. police officer Sean Bolton found a 2002 Mercedes Benz parked illegally. He pulled in front of the car and shined his spotlight inside. He then approached the vehicle and engaged in a struggle with Tremaine Wilbourn, who was in the passenger seat. Wilbourn then shot Bolton several times, mortally wounding him. Wilbourn and the driver fled the scene, leaving behind 1.7 grams of marijuana in their vehicle. The driver later turned himself in and was released without charges. Wilbourn turned himself in on August 3 and is facing first-degree murder charges. Eight observations on this incident follow.
1. The War on Drugs is a war on people. When government agents wage the War on Drugs, they do not ultimately fight against drugs; they fight against people. They may confiscate drugs, paraphernalia, and money believed to be part of the drug trade, but they are ultimately depriving drug users, sellers, and manufacturers of their liberty and property. If they resist, then they are frequently deprived of their lives as well.
2. Agents of the state who enforce laws against victimless activities are aggressors. Under the common law as well as libertarian principles, a crime requires a victim. Some person must be harmed and/or some property must be damaged. In other words, some violation of rights must have occurred. All other behaviors may be disliked, but are not legally actionable under such a standard.
The current legal code is quite different, however. It consists of threats made by sociopaths who managed to win popularity contests, and very few of these are within the realm of punishing rights violators. While the current system rewards government agents who enforce such “laws,” these agents are the real criminals by common law as well as libertarian standards.
3. Killing an aggressor is not murder; it is self-defense. “You gunned down, you murdered a police officer, for less than 2 grams of marijuana,” said Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong during a press conference on August 2. As explained in the previous point, when a government agent enforces an unjust law, that agent is the aggressor in the situation. Although a jury will almost certainly disagree in cases where the aggressor wears a government badge and costume, a person who is aggressed against has the right to defend oneself from an aggressor by using any level of force necessary to end the threat. As government agents are hired to use as much force as necessary to gain the compliance of the population, it is reasonable to expect that deadly force will be necessary if one wishes to use violence in self-defense against them.
4. Actions have opposing reactions. “You literally destroyed a family,” said Armstrong. That may be, but how many families have Bolton and other government agents like him destroyed with the War on Drugs? In 2013, the number of arrests for drug offenses was estimated at 1,501,043, which was higher than the number of arrests for violent crimes (480,360), driving under the influence (1,166,824), larceny-theft (1,231,580). Only property crimes (1,559,284 arrests) ranked higher, and some of these (as well as the other categories) are indirectly caused by the economic side effects of the War on Drugs, as pushing drugs into the black market both encourages criminal violence as a form of dispute resolution and raises prices to a point where drug addicts must steal to finance their habits. When government agents fight a war on people as explained in observation #1, the people will eventually fight back.
There is another aspect to Newton’s Third Law as applied to this situation. Statistics correlating crime rates to race aside, there is a perception that white police officers are disproportionately killing black citizens. This has led more peaceful activists to form the Black Lives Matter movement, and has led more violent activists to riot in Ferguson and Baltimore. In some cases, this perception encourages black citizens to shoot at white police officers as a form of retaliation for perceived injustices.
5. Wilbourn was not a coward. “I think it’s safe to say that when you look at this individual, you’re looking at a coward. He’s a coward,” Armstrong said of Wilbourn. The word “coward” is defined as “a person who lacks the courage to do or endure dangerous or unpleasant things.” While killing an aggressor in self-defense is morally justifiable, ending another person’s life is not a pleasant experience for most people. Engaging in a gun battle with a government agent is certainly dangerous, as many people who do so do not survive the experience, and those who do usually face decades in a cage, capital punishment, or both. Wilbourn engaged in these actions and is likely to be sentenced for first-degree murder, so clearly he did not lack the courage to do so. His actions were therefore not cowardly, but somewhere on a sliding scale between bravery and foolhardiness.
6. That being said, Wilbourn was also not a hero. Upon hearing statements like observations #2, #3, and #5, statist apologists are prone to emotional outbursts in which they declare the speaker to be insane and/or treasonous, and accuse the speaker of idolizing and sympathizing with criminals. Fortunately, logic overrules emotion, and we may thus dismiss such foolishness. Basic logic shows that the idea of the winner of a conflict being a hero does not follow just because the loser of the conflict was a villain. The facts of the case show this as well. Wilbourn was on probation for an armed bank robbery after being released two years early from a 10 year federal prison term in July 2014. When common criminals and state agents fight, those who seek liberty should pull for no one rather than pull for the common criminals.
7. All lives do not matter. “There is a theme that Black lives matter,” saidArmstrong. “At the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, do all lives matter? Regardless of race, creed, color, economic status, what profession that person holds. All lives matter … and this is just a reminder of how dangerous this job is.” The idea that all lives matter implies that there is some inherent value to human life. This is false because there is no such thing as inherent value. It is known both rationally and empirically that all value is subjective. Goods and services are worth what people are willing to pay for them; no more and no less. People get the dignity and respect that other people are willing to afford them; no more and no less.
At this point many people will object, wondering how human life can be respected if it has no inherent value. But respect for human life comes not from value, but from the very act of argumentation. When people agree to engage in rational argumentation, they implicitly accept certain behavioral norms. One such norm is to respect the lives of the people who are receiving one’s arguments, as acting in a contrary manner implies that force is preferable to reason. If an arguer believes this, then it begs the question of why the arguer is arguing rather than resorting to force. The arguer is clearly being deceitful in one way or another; the arguer may simply be lying, or may be using argumentation as a ruse while preparing to use force.
There is also the matter that the right to life, like any other right, is proven by rational argument and is therefore subject to rational argumentation. To claim a right for oneself while violating the equivalent right of other people is moral hypocrisy, and hypocrisy cannot be rationally advanced in argument. Therefore, a murderer can claim no right to life because a murderer is defined as a person who has violated the right to life of another person. Thus, the lives of murderers do not matter, which serves as a counterexample to the claim that all lives matter.
8. Contrary to establishment media content, the true nature of this struggle is not black versus white, but blue versus you. The establishment media continues to make the story about race, but this is a deflection to keep people from fighting the real enemy. Even if there were no racial component whatsoever, there would still be a group of people who call themselves “the state” and violate the behavioral norms that everyone else (aside from common criminals, mafia members, and terrorists) follows. The state is the real enemy, but the establishment media cannot say this because doing so is against their rational self-interest. It is far easier and safer for them to repeat propaganda and serve as lapdogs for state power than to do authentic journalism, and siding with the people against the state would jeopardize their cozy relationship with the political class.
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