Rand Paul is Right: Cig Taxes Factored into Garner's Death

Reasonable people can disagree on whether racism was involved in the tragic death of Eric Garner. My own suspicion is that this misfortune could have transpired just as easily with a white man resisting arrest and/or a black cop choking him.

And even though lots of people don't want to hear it, reasonable can disagree on whether illegally excessive force was to blame. Personally, watching the ubiquitous video of Garner's arrest, it looks like excessive force to me. But the simple fact is that a Staten Island grand jury saw evidence that led it to conclude otherwise. People should at least entertain the possibility that it might have gotten the ruling right.

But you know what reasonable people can't dispute? New York's cigarette taxes are partly to blame for Eric Garner's death. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky made this point Wednesday night on MSNBC

's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," and liberals have been freaking out about it ever since.

"I think it's hard not to watch that video of him saying, 'I can't breathe, I can't breathe,' and not be horrified by it," Paul said. "But I think there's something bigger than the individual circumstances. ... I think it's also important to know that some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so that's driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive. But then some politician also had to direct the police to say, 'Hey we want you arresting people for selling a loose cigarette.'... For someone to die over breaking that law, there really is no excuse for it. But I do blame the politicians. We put our police in a difficult situation with bad laws."

Now, Paul probably shouldn't have used the word "bigger." He clearly meant cigarette taxes are an issue that transcends the individual circumstances of Garner's death. But it was chum for critics who wanted to misunderstand him. For instance, a column by Salon's Joan Walsh suggested that Paul's answer "wrecked" his presidential prospects.

"What kind of callousness is required to say the 'bigger' issue in Garner's death isn't excessive police use of force, or police practice toward African-Americans generally, but ... taxes?" Walsh wrote. "What kind of heart do you have to have to use the Eric Garner tragedy to rail against ... cigarette taxes?"

Well, I don't know what kind of heart it requires, but I do know that anyone with a level head should understand -- and agree with -- Paul's point. When you pass a law, you authorize law enforcement to enforce it. That's actually why they're called "law enforcement." Google it.

New York City declared war on tobacco a long time ago, and in the process City Hall has become addicted to Brobdingnagian cigarette taxes. That's why law enforcement is enforcing the laws against bootleg smokes.

Of course, reasonable people can debate the wisdom of such laws. But only unreasonable people can deny that those laws are partly to blame. Without cigarette taxes, Eric Garner would be alive today, period.

What's so strange about the outrage over Paul's remarks is that Paul's point is perfectly consistent with his -- and the left's -- opposition to the drug war.

I ultimately disagree with Paul about that, but it's a morally serious argument. Even outright legalizers (Paul says he isn't one) aren't necessarily in favor of, say, heroin use. Rather, they argue that the costs of prohibition outweigh the benefits. Too many are imprisoned, too many are arrested, and too many die accidentally while being arrested. Well what's true of low-level heroin pushers is also true of low-level cigarette pushers. In the war on tobacco, like the war on drugs, if politicians will the ends, they must will the means.

This is something that libertarians understand better than everyone else: The state is about violence. You can talk all day about how "government is just another word for those things we do together," but what makes government work is force, not hugs.

If you sell raw-milk cheese even after the state tells you to stop, eventually people with guns will show up at your home or office and arrest you. If you resist arrest, something very bad might happen. You might even die for selling bootleg cheese.

Everyone agrees: No one should die for selling bootleg cigarettes. But if you pass and enforce a law against such things, you increase the chances things might go wrong. That's a fact, whether it sounds callous to delicate ears or not.

“The state is about violence. You can talk all day about how “government is just another word for those things we do together, but what makes government work is force”...

Can the law — which necessarily requires the use of force — rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone? I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined. It must be admitted that the true solution — so long searched for in the area of social relationships — is contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice.

Now this must be said: When justice is organized by law — that is, by force — this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization — justice. For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?

Law Is Force

Since the law organizes justice, the socialists ask why the law should not also organize labor, education, and religion.

Why should not law be used for these purposes? Because it could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice. We must remember that law is force, and that, consequently, the proper functions of the law cannot lawfully extend beyond the proper functions of force.

When law and force keep a person within the bounds of justice, they impose nothing but a mere negation. They oblige him only to abstain from harming others. They violate neither his personality, his liberty, nor his property. They safeguard all of these. They are defensive; they defend equally the rights of all.

Law Is a Negative Concept

The harmlessness of the mission performed by law and lawful defense is self-evident; the usefulness is obvious; and the legitimacy cannot be disputed.

As a friend of mine once remarked, this negative concept of law is so true that the statement, the purpose of the law is to cause justice to reign, is not a rigorously accurate statement. It ought to be stated that the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning. In fact, it is injustice, instead of justice, that has an existence of its own. Justice is achieved only when injustice is absent.

But when the law, by means of its necessary agent, force, imposes upon men a regulation of labor, a method or a subject of education, a religious faith or creed — then the law is no longer negative; it acts positively upon people. It substitutes the will of the legislator for their own wills; the initiative of the legislator for their own initiatives. When this happens, the people no longer need to discuss, to compare, to plan ahead; the law does all this for them. Intelligence becomes a useless prop for the people; they cease to be men; they lose their personality, their liberty, their property.

Try to imagine a regulation of labor imposed by force that is not a violation of liberty; a transfer of wealth imposed by force that is not a violation of property. If you cannot reconcile these contradictions, then you must conclude that the law cannot organize labor and industry without organizing injustice.

The Political Approach

When a politician views society from the seclusion of his office, he is struck by the spectacle of the inequality that he sees. He deplores the deprivations which are the lot of so many of our brothers, deprivations which appear to be even sadder when contrasted with luxury and wealth.

Perhaps the politician should ask himself whether this state of affairs has not been caused by old conquests and lootings, and by more recent legal plunder. Perhaps he should consider this proposition: Since all persons seek well-being and perfection, would not a condition of justice be sufficient to cause the greatest efforts toward progress, and the greatest possible equality that is compatible with individual responsibility? Would not this be in accord with the concept of individual responsibility which God has willed in order that mankind may have the choice between vice and virtue, and the resulting punishment and reward?

But the politician never gives this a thought. His mind turns to organizations, combinations, and arrangements — legal or apparently legal. He attempts to remedy the evil by increasing and perpetuating the very thing that caused the evil in the first place: legal plunder. We have seen that justice is a negative concept. Is there even one of these positive legal actions that does not contain the principle of plunder?

/Bastiat

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