UPCOMING EVENT: Wednesday, February 5 at noon. FFF is hosting a get-together in downtown Boston after the oral arguments in Ian Freeman’s appeal, where we will discuss the oral arguments. I will be there. Trillium Brewing Fort Point, 50 Thomson Pl, Boston, MA 02210; (857) 449-0083; https://trilliumbrewing.com. Reminder: The Court of Appeals is located at One Courthouse Way in Boston. The oral arguments are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on the 7th floor of the courthouse. Trillium Brewing is about one block away. See here for more details.
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While there are libertarians praising and thanking President Trump for fulfilling his political promise to pardon Ross Ulbricht (or Ross Ulbright, as Trump referred to him), Trump actually deserves no praise or thanks whatsoever. That’s because federal officials never had any legitimate moral authority to arrest, prosecute, or incarcerate Ulbricht or, for that matter, anyone else for any drug-related crime whatsoever.
As libertarians have long maintained, what a person ingests is simply none of the government’s business. Thus, government officials have no more business jailing people for what they ingest than jailing people for what they read or where they choose to go to church.
Given such, why should anyone thank Trump or anyone else for releasing someone who should never have been incarcerated in the first place? This is especially true given that Trump left Ulbricht to rot in jail during the entire four years he was president the last time around, followed by another four years in prison under President Biden.
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After all, before he left office, President Biden pardoned or commuted the sentences of not just one drug-war prisoner, as Trump has done, but instead several hundreds. I didn’t see many libertarians praising and thanking him, nor should they have. That’s because those people shouldn’t have been in jail in the first place.
One of the big problems we face in American society, including among elements of the libertarian movement, is that all too many Americans have come to accept their lives as serfs or servants, with many of them even convincing themselves that they are living life as free individuals. They have been raised with that mindset, especially those who were indoctrinated in America’s public (i.e., government) schools. Thus, when their political masters appear kind and benevolent to them, they react with obsequiousness, subservience, and servility toward their masters. “Thank you, master, for being so kind and wonderful to me and my fellow citizens. We never appreciated freedom until we learned to serve you.”
Think of a slave owner on a 19th-century plantation. One day, out of the kindness of his heart, the slaveowner decides to free one of his 100 slaves. One can imagine other slaves exclaiming “Thank you, Massah. Thank you for freeing John. We are so grateful to you for your kindness and benevolence to us slaves.”
That’s the mindset of a slave. The mindset of a free and independent person, even one who is enslaved, is: “You don’t deserve anyone’s praise or thanks. You had no right to enslave John in the first place. You don’t have the right to enslave the rest of us. John had the right to be free. So do the rest of us. Free all of us, now!”
In pardoning Ulbricht, Trump pointed out that the sentence he received — life without parole for a non-violent drug offense — was extraordinarily long — sufficiently long to shock any reasonable person’s conscience. He was certainly right in that assessment. But what Trump and so many other statists fail to realize is that any sentence for a non-violent drug offense is too long and totally illegitimate.
Questions arise: Why wasn’t Trump’s conscience shocked back in 2017, when he was sworn into office the first time? Why didn’t he pardon Ulbricht back then? If he had issued his pardon back then, Ulbricht would have been spared the last eight years in prison. Second, when he pardoned Ulbricht why didn’t he also pardon every drug-war prisoner who is serving an extraordinarily long prison sentence, especially blacks, who traditionally receive much higher sentences than whites? Indeed, why not pardon every single non-violent drug-war offender, just as he pardoned all the January 6 people? Why only Ulbricht?
The big reason for Trump’s pardoning only Ulbricht is because of a political deal that Trump made with libertarians. If libertarians supported his bid for president, Trump, in turn, promised to issue a pardon for Ulbricht, who is a libertarian. Of course, it is impossible to know how many libertarians supported Trump in the recent election, but there were plenty who did. Regardless, Trump obviously felt that the number of libertarians who supported him was sufficiently high that he felt morally obligated to fulfill his political promise.
Israel and Hamas have just entered into a political deal in which Hamas has agreed to release Israeli hostages. Should Israelis praise and thank Hamas for its kindness and benevolence? I say not. I say that Hamas never had any moral right to take any Israeli citizen hostage — at least not civilians. And there is no reason for any Israeli to thank Hamas for simply complying with the terms of a political deal into which they have entered.
Should the family of a kidnapping victim praise and thank a kidnapper for sparing the victim’s life and releasing him? That, of course, would be the natural reaction of anyone in that situation. Thus, it would not be surprising if the victim and his family initially have that reaction, just as it would not be surprising if Ulbricht and his family have that reaction toward Trump. But the fact is that the kidnapper never had the right to kidnap the victim and should be treated harshly by the law, not praised and thanked for his “kindness” and “mercy.”
Moreover, let’s not forget that Trump is now embarking on an even fiercer enforcement of the drug war, a governmental program that is as big a disaster as America’s system of immigration controls, which Trump is also now doubling down on, especially through his militarization of American society along the border. In fact, not only has he appointed a fierce drug-war hawk as head of the DEA, he is also ordering the DEA to help enforce America’s 80-year-old failed and destructive socialist system of immigration controls.
So, we have the spectacle of Trump pardoning Ulbricht while, at the same time, sending out his DEA agents and his U.S. Attorneys to arrest, prosecute, and incarcerate thousands of more drug-war victims. Where does that leave libertarians who are obsequiously and subserviently praising and thanking Trump for his pardon of one drug-war victim, who just happens to be a libertarian? Will they condemn Trump’s continued fierce enforcement of the drug war, or will they remain silent out of thanks for pardoning their fellow libertarian Ulbricht?
Oh, did I mention that Trump has now also taken a step toward treating the drug war like the “war on terrorism”? You know — assassination, torture, indefinite detention, bombings, extrajudicial killings, and other totalitarian-like measures that have destroyed the civil liberties of the American people and that might now be employed not just against the “terrorists” but also against the drug-war violators. Should and will libertarians remain silent in the face of Trump’s ever-increasing destruction of liberty in his war on drugs and his war on immigrants simply because he has released one drug-war prisoner, albeit a libertarian one? Perish the thought.
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