Crime and Punishment

The word “crime” is frequently confused with the terms “evil,” “sin.” and “immoral,” with which it has no direct relationship. A crime is anything a person does that breaks a law of some government. Where there is no government, there is no crime, but there certainly can be evil, sin, and immorality. Conversely, where there is government, crimes are committed every day that are not evil, sinful, or immoral.

Laws of governments are man-made creations and may or may not have anything to do with moral principles (except that most man-made laws are a violation of moral principles.) It is in the interest of governments to obfuscate the difference between moral principles and government laws. One way governments do this is by gaining control of schools, which it then uses to teach children ideas which are useful to the government but not very useful to the students as free individuals.

The result is that most adults educated in government schools believe morality is defined by government laws, that obeying the law is equivalent of being morally good, and disobeying the law is equivalent of being morally bad. As a result, they believe there are no moral absolutes, and that morality can be changed, simply by changing the law. Thus, if a person wants his neighbors money and chooses to get it by stealing it, he is immoral because that is against the law. But, if he can manage to get the Government to take the neighbors money and give it to him, he has a moral right to it, because it is the law.

Government law is a great problem because it causes great moral confusion. Moral right and wrong, and to a great degree, practical right and wrong are not only not determined by government law, but contradicted by it. In most cases, it will not be immoral to obey a government law (although it is in some cases), but no one is morally obligated to conform to government law. The moral person must determine what is morally right first, then determine to what extent that morality can conform to government law, to what extent government law can be ignored, and to what extent and under what conditions government law must be defied.

To the extent it is possible to conform to government law without surrendering one’s volition or life, conforming is a cheap way to avoid unnecessary trouble. If government law must be defied, do it as discretely as possible, and do nothing to draw attention to yourself. If the government is unaware of your disobedience and totally unembarrassed by it, even if it does know, it will usually not bother you.

There is no reason to choose to openly defy the government or disobey its laws unless your are absolutely certain your are immune to the consequences. (This is possible, by the way, but very expensive.)

When dealing with irrational creatures, one can learn how they behave and take specific steps to protect themselves from that behavior. The exception is the rabid animal. This disease interferes with the normal controlling instinct of the animal so their viciousness becomes completely unpredictable. For that reason, the only protection from a rabid animal is to destroy it.

When men become irrational, they loose the ability to choose and behave rationally, but retain volition. Since that volition is not rationally controlled, their viciousness becomes completely unpredictable. For that reason, the only protection from an irrational human being is to destroy it.

Punishment, and especially, capital punishment, is a concept devoid of meaning outside the context of government. Nature, as the autonomist uses the word, that is, where there is no government, simply kills those who disobey her. Even those whose infractions are slight, suffer for their indiscretions, and every severe infraction meets swift merciless retribution.

Outside the context of a government, when you are threatened by the use of force, you may either defend yourself using force, or become the victim of force. How much force should one use to defend themselves? If threatened by a wolf or a lion, how much force would you use? That’s how much force you should use defending yourself against any creature threatening you. A man that threatens you with force is not a rational being and is to be treated like any other vicious animal, only be sure there is not a pack of them.

When there is a pack of vicious animals, it is likely the amount of force you are capable of will not be sufficient to defend yourself. In such cases, one should use the first principle of self defense, “don’t be there when it happens.“Never allow yourself to be surrounded by a pack of vicious animals, human or otherwise.

So, what should we do within the context of a government? Since a government claims the privilege of being the only entity in a given geographical area allowed to initiate the use of force, where successful, the only vicious animals you have to be aware of are government agents. But remember, they always travel in packs.

This is the one advantage a government provides. It makes it easy to know where the threat of force is coming from, and how they intend to do it. It makes it easier to practice the first principle of self defense.

What determines when a human being has become irrational? There is one and only one criteria for that judgment. In all other behavior, there is no way to determine if an individual’s behavior is rational or irrational. Until we can read other’s minds and experience their consciousness, the reason for other’s choices and behavior can never be certainly known. Only when an individual chooses to use force as a means of dealing with other human beings is it objectively certain their behavior is irrational.

In fact, we know, most people despise the truth and rationality which they prove by ruining their lives. So long as they are content to ruin their own lives, and the lives of any who are willing to follow them, it is no concern of yours or mine. It is when they choose to ruin the lives of others and we are the others, that their irrationality matters.

It does not matter how irrational people are in their personal or public lives, how much we may be annoyed or offended by what they say or do, how much we may be frustrated by the obvious deceit with which they deceive others, how successful they are at bilking the stupid public or winning elections. Not until an individual actually initiates the use of force against us is it our business. If we do our homework, however, this should never happen, and if it does, we ought not look around for someone to blame. Just figure out what you must do to either pay off whoever is threatening you, or defend yourself. If you must defend yourself, it is immoral to use anything less than the maximum force, or whatever else is required, of which you are capable.

The initiation of the use of force by one human being against another is a declaration, “I am a dangerous irrational animal, no longer fully human and unfit to live in a truly human society.”

If governments actually were the means to securing a society fit for human beings, there would never be a questions of capital punishment. The inhuman would not be allowed to destroy a human society. The irrational would be extirpated along with all other forms of disease causing organisms and parasites.

If you are harmed in any way, in your person or your property, justice is only served if the person responsible for the harm repairs or restores what was harmed. Everything else is revenge, which is based on the irrational principle, “two wrongs make a right.”

Vengeance is nothing more than a kind of childish vindictiveness dressed up in adult clothing. The desire to strike back is not exactly a rationally thought out plan for achieving the good. It is nothing more than an attempt to justify acting on an impulse or passion.

The idea of vengeance or retribution seems to be one area where even the most rational of men are most vulnerable. What is this feeling they express in such terms as, “we can’t let them get away with that,” or, “we need to make sure he gets what’s coming to him.” If we don’t “let them get away with it,” and do see that, “he get’s what’s coming to him,” what do we get?

You know what the usual answer is. “Satisfaction!” What? What satisfaction do we get? The joy of watching someone financially ruined? The pleasure of knowing someone died? The satisfaction of knowing that someone else experienced suffering?

Some might find some kind of perverse satisfaction in suffering, but normal rational people are only satisfied, with respect to harm that has been done, by seeing the harm corrected, not seeing more harm.

When a wild creature, a common product of the government’s welfare and public education system, enters some decent working mans’s home, rapes and murders his wife and daughters and destroys his home; then, if, by some extraordinary circumstance, the rapist is caught, he is put in prison, where he is fed, sheltered, clothed, educated, and entertained for the rest of his life with money extorted from the victim. That’s government justice.

Political justice is always a violation of natural justice. The fist purpose of a government is to protect itself. When one of its laws has been violated, it is not so concerned with whether one of it’s citizens has been wronged, if it is concerned about the citizen at all. Its first concern is with punishing any violation against itself, that is, a violation of its laws. This is obvious in the actual penalties it places on criminals. The penalties are never designed to remedy the harm done to the citizen, only to remedy the harm done to the state, that is, the government.

Revenge harms the perpetrator as much as the recipient.

Most people have been convinced that when a criminal is punished by incarceration or execution, that somehow justice has been served, and they ought to be satisfied. The fact that they are not satisfied becomes a source of great emotional conflict for the victims of crime. In this way, governmental justice doubles the injury of crime.

The government’s method of retributive justice perpetuates the evil idea of vengeance as an appropriate desire and method of dealing with others. This false concept is the root of all those evil movements that seek to cause harm to others as “payment” for some perceived harm to an individual or group that believes itself to be a victim.

The whole idea of vengeance is the corollary to the false idea that one person’s gain is automatically another persons loss. This is the moral view of the thief and moocher who believes the good is produced by some mystic force and is of fixed quantity and that any good that one individual enjoys automatically deprives another of that good. The fact that good does exist until someone produces it, and that there is not limit on how much good can be produced does not occur to this kind of mentality, which can only think of grabbing, expropriating, or taking over, the good that other’s have produced.

To the individual with this immoral view, if enjoying good deprives others of that good, than causing someone else loss or suffering, that is, depriving them of good, must be a benefit to whoever causes it. If one person’s gain is another’s loss, than another’s loss, must be gain.

This is obviously untrue. Causing another loss is a loss, period. There is nothing to gain from it. But causing another loss or suffering, or pain, is a great loss to whoever causes it as well. It has the subtle psychological degrading effect of reinforcing the false believe the doing harm accomplishes good. It never does.

If you are a victim of fraud, you are not a victim. It is your own fault. Learn from it. Any other course will only cost you more.

Here is a place where Randian Objectivists make a great mistake. It is not up to anyone to protect people against their own foolish mistakes. For the same reason that all drug prohibitions are wrong, protection against fraud is wrong. For the same reason it is wrong to make gambling, or racing automobiles, or sky-diving against the law, it is wrong to prevent people from falling for the promises of the con artist and quick-change artist. It is wrong to protect people from their own stupidity.

Our criminal system is an organized attempt to produce white by two blacks. —George Bernard Shaw Old socialist George had a much better grasp on what liberty and rationality mean than either the Libertarians or Objectivists. Two evil acts do not cancel, they can only produce twice as march harm.