Warriors . . . Come Out To Play

By Victor J. Ward

My wife asked me for advice about a speech she was going to give. I told her that once she got on stage, she should invoke the words of Cyrus from the movie The Warriors:

"Can you dig it?"

(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bTUrWYv2vtU)

(She didn't take my advice.)


If I remember correctly, the movie is about all of the gangs of New York tying to kill the Warriors because it is believed that the Warriors killed Cyrus. (In fact, it is another gang, the Rogues, who killed Cyrus.)

Gang killing gang reminds me of one of the arguments that used to sway me towards statism. The argument says: Libertarians would satisfy the need for police officers through some type of free market/private defense/security system. Eventually, one of these private firms would dominate the others and become a monopolistic bully.

In other words, the private security firm would become like our current system of law and order.

I think it was Rothbard who disabused me of this thought. His reasoning was something along the lines of: For fear of creating a state agency, you are going to preemptively create a state agency. That makes no sense.

I think some who are still persuaded by the above-mentioned faulty reasoning believe that under the free market, if things got out of control, the dominant organization would be nothing short of a gang. A state-run agency, while having a few problems here and there, would still have an overriding sense of decorum.

Hopefully, even believers of this specious line of thought have been shaken to their core with the following story:

http://sfpublicdefender.org/news/2015/03/report-inmates-forced-into-gladiator-style-fights/

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Inmates-at-San-Francisco-Jail-Say-Deputies-Forced-Them-to-Fight-Gladiator-Style-297717971.html

Basically, Sheriff Deputies were forcing inmates to fight for food. If the inmates won, they got hamburgers. If they refused to fight, they got no food, or they got tased, or they got beaten.

If an inmate was injured, they could not seek medical treatment, because it would be difficult for a doctor to believe that the bruising around the eyes and a broken jaw happened Harry Reid style.

The officially sanctioned state thug agency is acting like, brace yourselves, a thug agency.

Often, when I hear about police officers being convicted of a crime and being imprisoned in the general population, I feel for them. I'm not saying that the officers may not have it coming, even under a Libertarian judicial system. I am saying  that thinking about any person getting tortured is a difficult thought.

But, how else should Justice treat these Sheriff Deputies? They have humiliated. They have abused. They have tortured. And all this was done under the Color of Authority.

They created a certain type of prison culture. They have made their bed, and in their bed they will probably die.

One last thought: Someone needs to call the irony police. This crime was reported by the San Francisco Public Defender, the agency charged with protecting indigent criminal defendants.

We are through the looking glass.