The Black Libertarian

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Dr. Marc Lamont Hill ― Strict gun laws are bad for blacks: Why African-Americans should value Second Amendment protections

The Daily News: 

"It's little-known that throughout its history, the United States government has gone to great lengths to disarm black people - from early "slave codes" that prohibited blacks from possessing firearms to exorbitant postwar gun tariffs that priced blacks out of the gun market.

As a result, blacks were rendered especially vulnerable. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan would probably have been far less effective if blacks had the same access to guns as the white citizens under hoods. The threat remains today - though the culprit is not white men under hoods but crime perpetrators of all colors.

Today's gun control laws may be racially neutral on their face, but they have a clear and disproportionate impact on poor communities of color, which are often left defenseless against predators in their own backyards.

Over the past 20 years, many states and cities have imposed gun laws that allow police and other state agencies to determine which individuals are worthy of gun ownership.

Consistently, blacks are overrepresented among the "unworthy," despite being statistically more likely to confront random violence. Gun bans against public housing residents, supposedly designed to prevent violent crime, have served to disarm poor blacks almost exclusively."

Read complete article here

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Dr. Walter E. Williams ― Black Progression and Retrogression


From Cybercast News Service:

There is no question, though it's not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind's history. 

What's the evidence? If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross domestic product, they'd rank among the 20 wealthiest nations. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, who headed the mightiest military in mankind's history. A few black Americans are among the world's wealthiest. Many black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities.

The significance of all this is that in 1865, neither an ex-slave nor an ex-slave owner would have believed that such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half. As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people. Just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation within which such progress was possible. That progress would have been impossible anywhere except in the United States of America. The challenge that lies before us is how those gains can be extended to a large percentage of black people for whom they appear elusive.

Read complete article here

Monday, December 22, 2014

Dr. CHE Sadaphal ― The Value of Life

C.H.E. Sadaphal is a board-certified physician and Libertarian writer.
"At no other point in my life has the harsh, cruel, oppressive, and perverse order in which we all live become so palpable and obvious and hits so close to home. This recognition comes after the nonindictment of Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the murder of Eric Garner, a decision passed down merely a week after the nonindictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the murder of Michael Brown. The former case is particularly troubling because the entire episode was filmed on camera and it is clear that Mr. Garner never harmed any police officer in any way. He simply asked to be left alone, and in his request for his person not to be molested by an aggressive police force, he lost his life after being put in a banned NYPD maneuver: the choke hold. Even the NYC medical examiner had determined that Mr. Garner’s death was a homicide, eliminating any other secondary causes as the immediate reason for death.
Yet despite all of this, the grand jury still decided not to indict Officer Pantaleo, who by the way had already been charged in two other instances of racially motivated police misconduct. How could any reasonable person look at all the facts and decide not to indict was the just course of action? After all, an indictment means that there’s enough evidence to warrant Officer Pantaleo to be put on trial with a proper defense and prosecuting team. If ever the officer didn’t intend to kill Mr. Garner, he still used aggressive force against a nonviolent citizen for a nonviolent crime using a violent and murderous tactic. Just like the grand jury for Michael Brown, the jury in Mr. Garner’s case was given evidence in favor of Pantaleo, with the same convenience of the offended being deceased and therefore unable to provide any arguments. These two unfortunate cases have proven that the grand jury system is not meant to foster justice and uphold the law but rather to protect those allegedly enforcing the law."

Derrick Grayson ― White Privilege Is Dead

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Jonathan Blanks ― On the NYPD Tragedy and Its Aftermath

Jonathan Blanks, a black Libertarian writer and researcher in Washington, D.C., offers his opinion on the recent murder of two police officers in New York City and the reactions that followed.

"As most people, I am horrified and saddened by the murder of the two police officers in Brooklyn yesterday. My heart goes out to the family, friends, and colleagues of officers Wenjian Lui and Raphael Ramos. But the reaction by some self-styled allies of the NYPD are nothing short of inexcusable. This sentiment may be best illustrated by former New York governor George Pataki:

 Like Eric Holder, I have immediate family that served honorably and proudly in law enforcement. To assert that people like Holder (and me) who criticize police practices and want police to be better than they are should be held responsible for the acts of a murderous lunatic is reckless and unforgivably insulting.

Need the preening, self-important politicians be reminded: the United States is a country where free speech is an essential tool by which the government for, by, and of the people is held accountable. To say that those who criticize the police are responsible for the random violence inflicted upon some officers by an evidently suicidal man is to express a sentiment that is not only baseless and malicious, but fundamentally un-American in implication."

Read complete article here

Falsely Accused of Rape? Rolling Stone Rape Story! Black on Black Murders!

Nick Gillespie ― In the Rush to Blame Everyone for the Shooting of NYPD Cops, Don't Forget to Include the Actual Shooter

From Reason Magazine:

Just as Sarah Palin's defense of gun rights has zero culpability in the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords and Dallas's right-wing "climate of hate" had nothing to do with Marxist-Leninist Lee Harvey Oswald's assassinaton of JFK, it's worth underscoring at every moment of what is already shaping up as a very ugly debate that the actual killer is the culprit here.
As the New York Daily News and other outlets are reporting, the apparent shooter was not only violent and unhinged but had bragged via Instagram that he was "putting wings on pigs" and "putting pigs in a blanket."
The distance between such rantings and, even worse, the act of shooting policemen sitting in a patrol car is so vast that they simply have no relation to legitimate and even impassioned criticism of the militarization of police and the protesting of specific acts of apparent injustice.

Monday, December 8, 2014

The Problem With Blaming Black Crime for Police Shootings




From Reason Magazine:

When a white cop kills an unarmed black man, many blacks see a pattern of prejudice that generates official suspicion, hostility and abuse based on skin color. Many whites, however, say it's the fault of blacks. If they didn't commit so much crime, they wouldn't get so much attention from police.

This is not just a favorite theme of overt bigots and Internet trolls. It's the view of Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Republican presidential candidate, and many other whites.

Black-on-black crime "is the reason for the heavy police presence in the black community," he asserted on NBC's Meet the Press. "So why don't (they) cut it down so so many white police officers don't have to be in black areas?"

In this view, African Americans have only themselves to blame for the presence and behavior of cops in their neighborhoods. If they would get serious about cleaning up the problems in their own communities, police would not be arresting or killing so many black people.

There's an element of truth to this line of argument. Violent crime rates are far higher among blacks than among whites and other groups. One reason cops have a disproportionate number of interactions with African-American males is that these men commit a disproportionate number of offenses.

Where the argument fails is in its assumption that blacks are complacent about these realities and that whites are blameless. The gist of the message is that blacks created the problem and blacks need to solve it.

Read complete article here

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Dr. Virgil Storr - Markets as Social and Moral Spaces

Virgil Henry Storr, a libertarian economist at George Mason University defends markets from it critics.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Police Misconduct, in Ferguson and Beyond


The violence in Ferguson is inexcusable. But it should not be seen as primarily a reaction to the grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson. Rather, it should be seen as a reaction to years of racially charged policing and a discriminatory justice. Focusing on Officer Wilson’s culpability detracts from the bigger, nation-wide story: That every month there are innumerable police abuses throughout the country that go unnoticed and unreported, and, even if they are reported, the accused officers will likely never be disciplined, much less charged with a crime.

Unfortunately, many of these abuses are disproportionately felt by people of color. Abuses can be small and nearly impossible to discover, such as stopping a car full of black men without probable cause, or they can be large and public, such as unjustifiably gunning down an unarmed black teenager. Sometimes the police action may be justified, and sometimes it may not, but the systems in place for determining culpability are egregiously biased in favor of police officers.

 Add to this an over-militarized police force that uses surplus military gear to violently break into homes 100 times per day, usually to only execute search warrants, and you have a recipe for disaster and an urgent need for reform. We should take advantage of this time of heightened awareness to reform a justice system that has too much power and too little accountability. Hopefully the violence in the street will not overshadow the legitimate protests, but I fear it may.

Trevor Burrus is a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies. His research interests include constitutional law, civil and criminal law, legal and political philosophy, and legal history