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| Stuart Hayashi |
Throughout my childhood, I've been bullied. I was assaulted, harassed and ostracized by other kids from pre-school through the 12th grade.
But since high school, I haven't had to endure further such abuse, right?
When coping with my classmates‚ incessant taunting, I told myself, "Following graduation, you won't be hassled like this anymore. Aside from lawbreakers, no adult mistreats other humans so."
How naïve. Law-abiding, law-creating politicians get away with mistreating people more than criminals do. They avoid prosecution because the law itself is usually the instrument of brutality.
One of the greatest of the many falsehoods that teachers perpetrate is that "the democratic political process involves people resolving problems peacefully, without violence. This is how grown-ups prevent bullying."
Yet political process utilizes the threat of violence, including democracy.
A law can only be enforced through violence, even if certain offenses or punishments are minor, because the severity of a legal penalty increases according to how much one resists.
If you're caught jaywalking, a small fine will be levied. If you don't pay, larger fines are given. If you pay nothing, you'll be dragged to jail. If you continue resisting, you could be maced, beaten, or -- as a last resort -- shot. Every enforced law is backed by violence, with death as the final punishment, even if the original infraction was "small potatoes."
Defense lawyers represent you in court to help you avoid fines, injunctions, or imprisonment, but they're only obstacles separating you from ultimate destruction. If your attorney fails, you must face your punishment knowing that any further evasion of it will bring violent death closer to reality.
Such violence-backed laws are moral when they‚re in defense of life and property against initiations of violence, e.g., murder, rape, theft, fraud, contractual breach and even unintended damage to property or physical personage. Crooks start the violence and the property-defending law repels the violence they began.
Unfortunately, most politicians pass edicts beyond that purpose, issuing threats of battery upon people who have initiated none of it themselves. When that happens, it's the policymakers who persecute innocent people, and they therefore behave as bullies.
Government regulation equals bullying.
Take "eminent domain" -- a law that allows city governments to practically steal private land. This was tried as recently as 2002 in Waikiki.
Officials disguise this act's cruelty by offering the victims some payment. But it's impossible for victims to say, "I'm refunding your money, so please return my land." A legitimate transaction, unlike this one, is mutually voluntary.
Regulators make the excuse that it's okay to stomp on individuals’ rights because it's for "society," meaning that everyone is better off when politicians impose themselves on others. "Political power," Mao Zedong observed, "grows out of the barrel of a gun." Collectivist despots like him should know.
Even an openly "selfish" bully is less disgusting; he doesn't expect gratitude for his misdeeds. Politicians who micromanage other people's serene conduct for "the public interest" are more like the high-school bullies who cannot tolerate someone different from themselves and therefore try to pressure him to conform (in my experience, bullies harassed me for not having the same hairstyle that they had).
It saddens me that people fail to see the violence inherent in democratic legislation. So, just as Adam Smith described peaceful market forces as "the Invisible Hand," I refer to the threat of violence in regulation as "the Invisible Handgun" or just "Invisible Gun." Attorney Walter Olson calls it "the Invisible Fist."
On a related note, people are wrong when they say that the bullyish cliques that characterize high-school life aren't found in college. The snobby, elitist cliques of academia are Marxian students and professors who purposely intimidate everyone else.
Many in the anti-capitalist clique at the University of Hawaii verbally abuse all who remotely disagree with them, as one can observe when reading the school paper.
Leftist cliques of many universities have used force to shut down conservatives‚ speaking engagements (a few fanatics used death threats at U.H. against activist Ken Conklin). And many college students worship author Naomi Klein for her praising the vandalism of billboards.
Considering that the Marxian political system is consistently pro-violence, though, its more-destructive college-going adherents are actually practicing what they preach. It's politicians who claim to be peaceful, as they regulate other people's lives and property, who're acting hypocritically.
It's good that we chastise vandals and elementary-school scrappers, but we must remember that legislators who violate private property rights are also guilty of bullying that should cease.
Stuart K. Hayashi is a research intern at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. Hayashi is the founder of a news Web log, "The Fiftieth Star," at: http://50thstar.blogspot.com to be unofficially centered around activities at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His older editorials can be seen at: http://reason_club.tripod.com/stuart_editorials.html and he can be reached at: mailto:radical_individualist@hotmail.com
Related articles by Stuart K. Hayashi
The Invisible Gun
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?d631b884-9bbb-4fe3-bbd9-748388b6b720
What Capitalism Is and Is Not
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?86d8aa1c-76cf-4ee9-a690-704dc6b245d9
Freedom Before Democracy
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?695dd9df-b010-43c4-9e3b-68c1c0a15c39
Positive Reform Through Good Philosophy
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?e7faaca7-824d-44c6-8f0b-821e4ff876ea
Deference for the Loner
http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?2df48102-b9e7-49f5-a2e2-5f69cb028f20
This editorial is intended to provoke thought, discussion and an examination of issues. It does not reflect official policy of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. See the GRIH Web site at: http://www.grassrootinstitute.org/
HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to mailto:Malia@HawaiiReporter.com
