I have often wondered, does American culture encourage crime?
The government clearly does, and since culture is influenced by
law, the answer seems an obvious yes. This is not an anti-American
column, but it is anti-government.
by A.J. Viarengo
I have often wondered, does American culture encourage crime? The government clearly does, and since culture is influenced by law, the answer seems an obvious yes. This is not an anti-American column, but it is anti-government.
The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world (743 per 100,000 people). The rate is over 1000 for adults; that’s over one percent. This rate began growing in 1977 and has remained stubbornly high. We also incarcerate more youth than any other country in the world, which suggests we will remain at the top for at least one more generation unless we force a radical change.
Our Constitution was the first to limit government; at the time of its ratification, most countries had kings who told their people that the Lord had so placed them in power. Today’s judges have assumed that role, with elected officials as the aristocracy, public employees the bourgeoisie, and private-sector workers the serfs. According to United Prison Ministries (upmi.org), “violent crime was not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States from 1980 to 2003. … Nearly three quarters of new admissions to state prison were convicted of nonviolent crimes. Only 49 percent of sentenced state inmates were held for violent offenses … The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges.”
Yet in our state, the aristocracy eagerly passes laws against everything, which keeps the prisons swelling (at a cost of $11 billion this fiscal year). Gov. Jerry Brown, aka Gov. Moonbeam, said that if we don’t pay more tax, we won’t be safe. It’s quite a racket, and begs the question, who is most ignorant, this governor, the people who voted for him, or those who fall for the scare tactics? While we approach 10 percent unemployment, the government is more eager to punish us for victimless “crimes” than to properly tax imports (the only federal tax in the original Constitution), allowing jobs to be shipped overseas.
One local bourgeois example happened just recently at Solorsano Middle School; a student I know was threatened with disciplinary action for photographing a fallen tree in the May storm. The “teacher” forced him to delete it. Why? Pure abuse of power – just another swelled-head “educator.” And they wonder why kids diss school.
In Miami Beach a witness was filming a Memorial Day arrest; the police noticed this and smashed his phone. If they weren’t acting in appropriately, what did they have to hide? Of what were they afraid? And they wonder why the people do not trust police.
Never be afraid to question authority! (We do not want to become another Singapore.) I see the ’60s and the Cultural Revolution as the best thing that ever happened to America, not for some of its socialist goals, but to whittle down the aristocracy, and the robed fiefs, all of whom make up the greater authoritarian “Pig!”
Some of it was misguided and overdone; I can relate to that with my own contempt of court, half my life ago, for refusing to serve on a jury; I since learned what jury nullification is and can’t wait to employ it if the circumstances fit. They tell you it’s your duty to serve on a jury, but they don’t tell you the power that comes therewith. They want you to be a subject, not a citizen. The difference: A citizen knows his rights.
Authority varies directly with abuse of power. The government’s “wars” on alcohol (then called Prohibition), poverty (the Great Society), drugs, and terrorism are all blatant failures; each has created more of what it claimed that it sought to defeat. At first, the misguided notion that we can force a cure of societal ills by continued abuse of law could be passed off as a mistake, but by now it is clearly either ignorance or conspiracy. We have had sporadic wins, such as Cohen v. California (1971), the most important case of the 1970s. I would love to see the revival of non-violent sit-ins sweep across the country and bring the government to a screeching halt. Bodies Upon The Gears (Mario Savio, hero)!
Guest columnist Alan Viarengo is a local statistician, Libertarian, political activist.
