Tag Archives: Law

Restorative Justice: The Nuremberg Option

Once we are victorious, justice will need to be enacted, both for the sake of justice itself, and to placate the baying mobs.

But victor’s justice can be damaging to the victor. Spilling too much blood, disorderly or mob justice, or simply enacting justice too strenuously or thoroughly can easily backfire and damage a society, particularly one undergoing a newborn restoration. Justice must be measured. Justice will be needed, I doubt restoration will be doable without the justified execution of thousands, but we can ensure that it doesn’t become unjustified execution or go beyond the thousands.

So, I will lay some groundwork for the implementation, based on the Nuremberg trials. Nuremberg was a clear example of victor’s justice, but it was measured and didn’t cause blowback, thus it provides a good basis for victor’s justice. Beyond the principles of international law it established (I will note here, international law is a farce as the international community is not sovereign), the trials worked based on two interrelated assertions:

  1. That some crimes are so great that they can be prosecuted retroactively even if they do not violate the existent law at the time of the offence.
  2. In such cases, only the offenders and major offenders were subjected to trials and potential jail or execution, while lesser offenders and followers were merely probated or restricted.

The first assertion is a secularized version of aspects of divine/natural law; God’s law is higher than man’s law, takes precedence, and is always applicable even if man’s law disagrees. Because of this, we can easily adopt the original version within our own ideologies. Part of the second assertion has already been raised by Moldbug; we retire and bar the whole of the present regime from public service, and furthered by me, where we execute some of the most criminal. It strikes a good balance between the practical and humane and the need for justice to be done.

These assertions are already fairly well accepted as legitimate, and so will be relatively easy to sell to all sides of the reactionary bargain. They also solve two legal problems we will face during the restoration: Most of the major crimes being committed (abortion, cultural genocide, the destruction of communities and the family, usury, inflation, etc…) are legal and most people are involved in them to some degree. By adopting the necessity of the application of divine law but restricting it to only the major offenders we can ensure justice is done, without going beyond justice.

A few practical examples: it would be impractical to bring justice to every women who had an abortion and every pro-abortion individual, so we can offer them a general amnesty (making abortion and the promotion of it illegal and punishable going into the future), while we can execute abortionists and the most vile proponents, apologists, and promoters of this evil. Jailing every banker would be a miscarriage of justice and politically untenable, but we could execute the main leaders of the federal reserve and jail the more predatory bank and credit card company executives. It’d be untenable to bring justice to every family court lawyer and judge, but an example could be made of the more despicable ones. And so on and so forth.

So, when the restoration occurs and the time for justice is at hand, the leader should establish, quickly and firmly, an orderly plan for justice based on these principles. These principles are, obviously, very broad and more work would definitely have to be done on the practicalities of implementing justice come the time, but I think it wise to have some basic principles of restoration justice established and propagated throughout reaction while we have the luxury of time and cool heads, so the restoration doesn’t get caught up in the moment and commit acts it will regret.

Order and Freedom

Freedom comes from social trust, social trust comes from order.

Formal rules are only necessary when there is a lack of social trust. When people trust each other, there is no need for an impartial mediators such as law and bureaucracy, as social norms . When I lend money to a friend, I do not make him sign a contract, because I know he will pay me back. Evolutionist X outlines this more thoroughly.

Social trust is built through repeated positive interactions. If I’ve lent $10 to a friend before and he paid me back, I’d consider lending him $20 at later time. If he has a repeated history of paying me back and spotting me when I needed a loan, I may even lend him $1000 if he needed.

I would probably not loan $10 to someone I had never met. But, if I’ve loaned to many friends (and they’ve reciprocated) within a social circle over the years and was always paid back, and I met someone new within that social circle at dinner and they forgot their wallet, I’d likely be willing to spot him $20 for dinner. By being part of the social circle he has inherited that social trust.

Social trust is destroyed through negative interactions. If just once my friend stiffed me, I’d probably never loan to him again; it’s possible I may no longer remain his friend. I’d also be less willing to loan to other friends in the future. If I was stiffed a few times, I’d probably never loan again.

Social trust builds on itself. If I loan to a friend, he’s likely to loan to me in the future, and I in turn am then even more willing to loan to him in the future, and upwards rides the virtuous cycle. Likewise, social distrust spirals downwards. If my friends stiffs me, I refuse to loan to someone else, who in turn refuses to loan to me, which in turn makes me even less likely to loan to others, and downwards spirals the vicious circle.

Eventually, the virtuous cycle results in a social norm of lending and repaying. The vicious circle results in no social norm of lending and repaying arising. Rather, if someone ones to borrow money, legally enforced contract loans become necessary. The vicious cycle leads to law and regulation. It also leads to much higher transactions costs. In the virtuous cycle, a $1000 loan requires little more than politely asking a friend or two and providing an explanation. A $10 loan requires nothing more than a “can you spot me til payday?”  In the viscious circle, a $1000 loan requires lawyers, banks, contracts, insurance, and interest. A $10 loan is impossible because the extra costs would be worth more than the loan itself.

Those first few interactions are critical. If my first interactions are positive, the virtuous cycle will build itself and will naturally continue. Once I’m caught up in the virtuous cycle with strong social norms, even the occasional defector will be regarded as a bad apple rather than representative of the group. Only a critical mass of defections will destroy the cycle. On the other hand, if my first few interaction are negative, the vicious circle will start to decay. Once I’m trapped in the vicious circle, the positive interactions will be seen as the unrepresentative outliers. It is nigh impossible to rebuild a virtuous cycle as a critical mass of non-defectors will rarely build up as others defect on them.

Because of this, it is necessary to stop natural defectors from destroying those initial interactions. Order is what prevents defectors from defecting. If a potential defector knows he will be punished should he defect, he will not defect and will not start a viscous circle. In the loan example, if someone knows there is a social norm of shunning by the group for refusing to pay back a loan, they will likely not defect.

Because there is order in the group, we can freely loan. There is no need for laws or regulations regarding loans because we know the social norms will enforce repayment, and these social norms were originally built by the maintenance of order.

We can also see order builds upon itself. The social norm of punishing defectors, leads the the social trust virtuous cycle, which leads to the creation of the social norm of repayment.

If freedom is your goal, order will break down; if order is your goal, freedom will naturally result.

As we can see above, freedom is the natural result of order. Social norms lead to social trust which leads to further social norms which frees us from regulation and bureaucracy.

We can start this order with law as well. If the authority emplaces an authoritarian initial law that harshly punishes stiffing on a loan, people know defectors will be punished and will be willing to engage in those initial positive interactions, even with people they don’t know. The virtuous cycle builds upon this initial law.

In this situation a man’s handshake becomes his bond. When a man’s handshake is his bond, there is no need for contracts, there is no need for lawyers and no need for regulations on the minutiae of contract law. Social norms enforce the spirit of the agreement and there is freedom in loan-giving.

On the other hand, if that initial law against stiffing on a loan is not put into place, people can not trust that defectors outside their close social circles will be punished. So defectors defect. With no social norms people turn to written, enforceable contracts. As they write contracts, they will realize the letter of the agreement is enforced, the spirit is not. This leads to the necessity of lawyers to ensure the letter is correct and the need for detailed regulations to define every aspect of lending contract. With no social norm enforcing the spirit of the law, people will learn to manipulate the letter. In order to prevent the injustices of those manipulating the letter of the law, further regulations will be introduced to prevent manipulation. This will result in a bureaucracy to create these regulations, which will itself be manipulated, and so on down the vicious cycle, as more regulations are placed upon more regulations. Order and freedom break down, replaced by the letter of the law and regulation.

Order is freedom, chaos is tyranny.

As above, we see that order leads to freedom. In a ordered community, strong social norms make intrusive, detailed regulation or bureaucracy unnecessary. The social norms uphold themselves while allowing freedom.

On the other hand, where there is no order, where there is chaos, laws and regulations become necessary. If you can’t trust your neighbour not to defect, not  to violate the spirit of any agreements, you need laws and regulations to enforce agreements make up for the lack of social trust.

Increased regulation is a sign that your community is becoming more chaotic and more disordered. Increased tyranny is a result of disorder.

As well, tyranny creates chaos. As shown, as regulations increase the letter of the law and of the agreement becomes more important than the spirit. When the letter become more important, people stop simply not defecting. Instead, people try to defect as much as possible on the spirit while still holding to the letter. Trust breaks down, and chaos reigns.

Increased regulation leads to more chaos, which leads to more regulation. Tyranny is not order, tyranny is chaos and chaos is tyranny.

Order is freedom.

If you desire freedom, order should be your primary goal.

The Law is a Death Threat

VD linked to a post by law professor Stephen Carter that makes a point that can not be made enough, so I’m going to reiterate it here:

That’s too bad. Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.

The government exists solely to force people to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. No matter what the government is doing: public health care, economic redistribution, taxation, fighting obesity, etc., it is doing so by force. At the very least, they have forcibly taken taxes from the citizenry to pay for whatever activity they are doing.

Every law is a threat of violence: Do (or don’t do) this or we will sic the police on you.

The police’s sole purpose is violence, they exist solely to enforce the law through the use of the threat of violence and, failing that, violence.

But even further than that every law is at heart a death threat: Do (or don’t do) this or we kill you.

Don’t believe me, consider the one thing every government needs simply to exist taxation.

Pay your taxes or the IRS will fine (or jail) you. If you refuse to pay the fines, they send police to take you to jail. If you refuse to go to jail, the police will threaten you or forcibly move you to jail. If you do not bow to their threats or rseist them forcibly moving you, they will shoot you. If you resist being shot, they will shoot you until you are dead.

If we remove all the intermediary bureaucracy, the law is: pay your taxes or we will shoot you until you are dead.

Smaller laws and regulations hide this behind layers of bureaucracy. You might have to deal with the Department of Administrative Affairs, then the DAA’s enforcement arm, then the courts, then the Department of Justice, all before finally meeting the police, but if you refuse the law long enough, eventually the police will be there (if they’re don’t eventually arrive, then you simply don’t have to obey, but anarcho-tyranny is another topic for another time).

The police are the eventual enforcement mechanism of any law or regulation, however many layers government may use to muddy the waters, and the police’s job is, at base, to kill you if you don’t obey. Again, the police’s job is muddied as are society is soft and unable to deal with reality, but everything the police do, the Miranda Rights, the “please come with us”, the “do you mind answering a few questions”, the handcuffs, the tasers, the “stop or I’ll shoot”, all of it, is predicated on: if you don’t obey, we will kill you.

Most people in the West abide by the law and so they never go farther than a layer or two into the bureaucratic swamp; even most criminals generally obey the police before it becomes necessary for the police to kill them, so this reality is obscured by common social delusion. This delusion is how leftists can always cry for more laws but whine when the police enforce the laws on the likes of Michael Brown or Erik Garner.

Now, just because every law is a death threat and the police’s job is to kill you if you don’t obey, doesn’t make the law necessarily evil. Sometimes death threats and killing are justified. If someone was trying to rape your daughter, “stop or I’ll kill you” is justified, as is following through on the threat if necessary. Arguably, it’s the only just course of action. So, by calling the law a death threat and saying the police’s job is to kill is no indictment against the law or the police, it is simply a recognition of reality.

This reality is important to remember whenever we theorize on politics or call for more laws: more laws means more death threats and more reasons for the police to kill. It is also important to remember when someone gets themselves shot by the police: the police exist to kill, that is their job.

So remember for all political philosophy or law-making:

The government’s sole purpose is violence and every law is a death threat. Unless you are willing to kill for something no law should be made over it.

The Real Meaning of Zimmerman

There is a subtext to the Zimmerman controversy that I have yet to see fully explored, but is probably the most important aspect of the trial.

Steve Roney (h/t: SDA) almost touches upon it, but it gets lost in his larger argument that Zimmerman was a working-class man acting uppity:

Of course, this is more or less what the police would do; and it is obviously not a hanging offence when they do it. The problem is that Zimmerman, though in fact legally entitled to do this, was not formally qualified. He was acting above his station, in the minds of the professional elite, including “professional” journalists.

One can see how this would ring all kinds of bells, if subconsciously, in the typical newsroom. What professional group is more threatened by citizen volunteerism these days than the media? Zimmerman and those like him are to them an existential threat. It was in their vital interests to take him down by whatever means necessary.

While Rebel University touches upon the fringes of the issue:

By suing the HOA and winning this settlement, Martin’s parents have helped ensure that the crime rates go up in their own community, since other HOAs will learn from this and determine that having a neighborhood watch is an unaffordable risk. Having a neighborhood watch guarantees that there will be confrontation between the watchers and the “suspicious people”.  That creates the possibility that the watchers will be attacked by the “suspicious people” and that creates the possibility that some of the watchers will defend themselves with lethal force.  It is unavoidable.  The HOA lawyers will determine that having any sort of neighborhood watch is unaffordable.

If you’ve been following the Zimmerman trial even slightly, you’ve probably seen the accusation that he was acting like a ‘wannabe rent-a-cop’ or something similar a number of times, due to his involvement in his local neighbourhood watch. As The Crimson Reach stated, the entire premise of the moral outrage against Zimmerman was due to the fact that “Zimmerman found Martin suspicious, followed him in his car, called it in, got out of his car.”

This is what the left finds offensive. This is what the Cathedral finds offensive. This kind of behaviour is what the Cathedral is trying to eliminate through Zimmerman’s show trial.

They do not want you to get out of the car.

Zimmerman did.

****

If we look at the history of Zimmerman, he was a model citizen with a minor black mark or two from his youth:

At the time of the shooting, Zimmerman was employed as an insurance underwriter and was in his final semester at Seminole State College for an associate degree in Criminal Justice. In one of his interviews with police he stated his goal was to become a judge.

In early 2011, Zimmerman participated in a citizen forum at the Sanford City Hall, to protest the beating of a black homeless man by the son of a white Sanford police officer. During the meeting, Zimmerman called the behavior of officers on duty “disgusting” and detailed officers napping while on duty and refusing to take on difficult assignments.
…
From January 1, 2011 through February 26, 2012, police were called to The Retreat at Twin Lakes 402 times. During the 18 months preceding the February 26 shooting, Zimmerman called the non-emergency police line seven times. On five of those calls, Zimmerman reported suspicious looking men in the area, but never offered the men’s race without first being asked by the dispatcher. Crimes committed at The Retreat in the year prior to Martin’s death included eight burglaries, nine thefts, and one shooting. Twin Lakes residents said there were dozens of reports of attempted break-ins, which had created an atmosphere of fear in their neighborhood.

In September 2011, the Twin Lakes residents held an organizational meeting to create a neighborhood watch program. Zimmerman was selected by neighbors as the program’s coordinator, according to Wendy Dorival, Neighborhood Watch organizer for the Sanford Police Department.

Zimmerman was a normal person who cared about his community and acted to protect it. He voluntarily took on the mantle to watch his neighbourhood for suspicious activity and to stand up against police corruption.

George Zimmerman worked to build organic community. Any normal person would be thrilled to have a neighbour like Zimmerman keeping an eye out on things.

That is why he was made an example of.

****

In this particular case, he saw this suspicious-looking individual in his neighbourhood after a period of break-ins and other crimes. Like a concerned citizen who cared about his community, he reported the incident to police, then followed to keep a look out on the suspicious individual.

That was his crime. He cared about his community enough to try to keep it safe. He got out of the car.

And that is the whole point of this fiasco. It is the whole reason they rage against “stand your ground”. It’s the whole reason they fight gun freedom.

The Cathedral does not want you to get out of the car. The Cathedral does not want you to protect yourself or your community. The Cathedral does not want you to be able to trust your neighbours.

If you see Kitty Genovese, the Cathedral wants you to walk past. If you see a crime being committed against someone else, the Cathedral wants you to ignore it. If you see a suspicious person in your neighbourhood, the Cathedral wants you to ignore him.

Why?

So your neigbourhood loses social capital. So you can not trust your neighbours to watch out for you and your home. So you are forced to rely on the police and the state for safety rather than your neighbours.

They want you to destroy your trust in your neighbours and your local community so you become dependent on the state for security.

The Cathedral can not simply outlaw organic community-building and looking-out for your neighbours because that would enrage too many and would show their hand, which depends, in a large way, on being subtle. But someone died in this case in a possibly questionable manner, so the Cathedral had an opportunity to make an example. Zimmerman was the example.

Zimmerman was persecuted by the state for the purpose of making you think twice about helping your neighbour.

If I see someone suspicious in my neighbourhood and think of keeping an eye out on him? I remember Zimmerman: maybe I shouldn’t, it could escalate and I could become the next 2-minute hate target.

I hear what might be a cry for distress? Not my problem, it’s probably nothing and even if I intervene I could become the next Zimmerman.

I see someone rooting around in my neighbour’s backyard? If I intervene I could be the next Zimmerman.

Then, once everyone’s to afraid to intervene, out come the Kitty Genovese stories. I cried for help, why did nobody came to my aid? Someone robbed my house in broad daylight, why did no one intervene? A dozen people saw me being mugged, why did no one help me? Crime and drugs are rampant in my neighbourhood, why is nothing being done? This is the tenth time my garage has been tagged and my garbage overturned, why are my neighbours doing this to me?

The inevitable conclusion, I can’t trust my neighbours. I’m not safe in my neighbourhood.

Whatever the useful idiots might parrot, that is the whole purpose of this farce.

They want you to question yourself when you hear someone in trouble. Eventually, when enough people question themselves and do not intervene because they do not want to go risk a year-long trial, death threats, and public opprobrium, community trust collapses, because nobody is intervening to keep neighbourhoods safe.

Eventually, organic community dies, and the police and the state can step in.

The long march progresses.

“You can’t trust your neighbours, but you can trust us. We’re from the government and we’re here to help you.”